The Angel of the Opera

The unforgettable place: Paris, 1890. The glittering scene: the labyrinthine Paris Opera. The irresistible premise: what if Sherlock Holmes, lured across the Channel by the beleaguered managers of the Opera House, unlocks the true secrets motivating the infamous Phantom? As the hunchbacked Quasimodo was the soul of Notre Dame, so is Erik - shadow ruler of the Opera's nether regions - the Opera's true soul. Living at the heights of passion, despising the concerns of ordinary men who are the acknowledged keepers of his domain in the eyes of the world, the Phantom - defiant and tormented genius that he is - poses a persistent threat to his unwilling landlords, lesser men who are not even certain they believe in his very existence. But, as is the case with all problems presented to the great Sherlock Holmes for solution, nothing is quite as it seems at first . . . as thrilling episode follows even more thrilling episode in a tempestuous drama, played out against a background of one of fiction's most romantically eerie settings. Sherlockians and the Phantom's fandom both will relish Sam Siciliano's sympathetic imagination and find themselves charmed by such reinvented characters as Christine Daae ("the angel") and her arrogant suitor, Raoul de Chagny. And every reader should welcome Holmes' engaging new comrade, Henry Vernier, M.D., his cousin, who joins him for this memorable adventure.