Not an awful book, but hate to see so much potential squandered. Choosing to pluck Ambrose Bierce, the famous American satirist, from the pages of history and present him with a mystery centered around the suffragette movement - the topic of many a satirical attack back in the day - would seem an inspired choice if you're setting out to write something clever and witty, but this delivers neither.

For one thing, the story isn't even narrated by Bierce, but by a fellow journalist, a character lacking in both perception and wit. He spends about a third of the novel narrating interactions that involve Bierce, which are the most entertaining parts of the book, but then he spends another third of the book engaged in investigations that have less to do with following clues than serendipity, and the final third courting his pretty Free Love suffragette cousin, which I think is intended as light-hearted fun but merely comes off as predatory and a bit icky.

Appreciated the authentic period detail, but the murder mystery plotline was sloppy and improbable, and I remain disappointed how little of Bierce's cleverness is on display here. Each chapter opens with an excerpt from Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, but I don't think the author stopped to consider the extent to which this might draw unwelcome attention to how much more ingenious the real Bierce was vs. the fictionalized version presented here. ( )

Ambrose Bierce and his colleague/sidekick Tom Redmond are called on by their boss, publisher “Willie” Hearst, to look into the murder of a very popular San Francisco preacher. Said preacher was better known for his many, many female conquests than for his piety, which means there’s a long list of suspects, but Bierce hones in on one of the preacher’s other passions, that of the suffragettes, who happen to be planning a march in The City which many men oppose. Things only get more complicated when three young female orators known as “the Trey of Pearls,” come to town and Tom Redmond falls madly in love…. I think there are four or five books in this series, although I’ve only read three before this one; at any rate, the series order doesn’t seem to matter very much in this case. Many readers will be quite upset with the misogynistic and racist stereotyping in the series, but if you can keep in mind the fact that these attitudes were the norm in the period in which the series is set (this book is set in 1892), there’s a lot to enjoy here, not least the fact that each chapter is headed with a definition from Bierce’s real book, “The Devil’s Dictionary,” which are hilarious. I didn’t really buy into the solution to the crime, but the period setting and characters were well done; so, with the caveat about race and gender noted above, a mild recommendation from me. ( )

Anything about Ambrose Bierce is interesting ( )