A Lady in Shadows
A Madeleine Karno Mystery
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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Publisher Description
“Madeleine’s inquisitive mind and candid voice are enough to keep us reading.” —The New York Times Book Review
New York Times bestselling author Lene Kaaberbøl returns with her beloved protagonist Madeleine Karno—an ambitious young woman who shatters the confines of nineteenth century France.
On June 2nd, 1894, in the wake of President Marie Francois Sadi Carnot’s assassination, France descends into chaos and riots in the streets of Varbourg. Many lives are lost in the mayhem, but when one lady of the night is found murdered with brutal incisions and no sign of a struggle, it is clear something is amiss. Madeleine Karno must ask herself the terrifying question: Do they have their very own Jack the Ripper in France?
Madeleine is no stranger to cases such as this. Though she is a woman in forensic pathology (a career considered unseemly even for men), her recent work with a string of mysterious deaths and becoming the first female student admitted to the University of Varbroug has earned her some semblance of respect. But there’s only so much her physiology courses can do to help her uncover the mysteries of a mad scientist’s brutal murders. Madeleine must do whatever it takes—investigate the darkest corners of the city and even work undercover—to track down a murderer at large. But if there’s one thing the press has right about “Mademoiselle Death,” it’s this: it takes a woman to find a killer of women.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kaaberb l's exhilarating sequel to 2015's Doctor Death finds budding forensic pathologist Madeleine Karno shaken by the discovery of a woman's mutilated body in a coal yard, the corpse's abdomen sliced open. As the streets of Varbourg, France, erupt in violence following the assassination of President Marie Fran ois Sadi Carnot by an Italian anarchist in 1894, Karno, who's also just been accepted as a physiology student at the local university, and with the Commissaire des Morts attempt to first identify the victim, then solve the woman's brutal murder. Newspapers jump on the similarities to the murders of London's Jack the Ripper, and fear ripples through the community at the thought that France might have its own Ripper. Karno eventually identifies the victim as Rosalba Lombardi, one of the city's numerous prostitutes. As her clandestine investigation continues, Karno discovers disturbing facts about the murder that bring up female rights issues as relevant then as they are today. Kaaberb l has created a genuinely tough, empathetic female heroine in an era when women were meant to be seen and not heard.
