Ambrose Bierce and the Trey of Pearls - Softcover

Hall, Oakley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143034707 ISBN 13: 9780143034704

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2004

Synopsis

The arrival in San Francisco of three beautiful young suffragists could be linked to the murder of Reverend Divine, a famed advocate of spiritualism, the female vote, and temperance, and Ambrose Bierce and Tom Redmond join forces to investigate a possible dark side to the three girls--free love, a harem, and some of San Francisco's leading citizens with dark pasts to hide. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

Oakley Hall is the author of more than twenty works of fiction, including several hard-boiled crime novels published under the pen name Jason Manor, and is general director of the famed Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

From Publishers Weekly:

The suffrage cause, embodied by three pretty suffragists (the "trey of pearls" of the title), provides the background for Hall's fourth literate historical (after 2003's Ambrose Bierce and the One-Eyed Jacks), set in San Francisco in 1892. Curmudgeonly journalist Ambrose Bierce and his young sidekick, Tom Redmond, look into the shooting death of popular preacher and notorious ladies' man Henry Devine. A second murder follows, of banker William P. Jaspers, whose wife was a devotee of the Reverend Devine. In between interviewing jealous husbands and trying to locate possibly vengeful offspring, Tom pursues his free-love-advocating cousin Amanda Wilson with mixed success, while Bierce exchanges barbs with novelist Gertrude Atherton and otherwise comments cynically on the proceedings. During one interlude, the author of The Devil's Dictionary cites approvingly examples of Ulysses S. Grant's direct and vigorous prose. Hall's spare, laconic style is of comparable quality. Despite a contrived denouement that allows Redmond to perform some stagy heroics during a suffragist parade and a remote killer who remains little more than a set of motivations, Hall delivers an ingenious twist at the end, with subtle hints along the way, that should catch most readers by surprise.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0143034707
• ISBN 13: 9780143034704
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224