Review by Martha Quillen
Leadville – September 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Second Glass of Absinthe
by Michelle Black
Published in 2003 by Tom Doherty Associates
ISBN:0-765-30854-1
TWENTY-ONE YEAR OLD Kit Randall walks out on his beautiful, wealthy benefactress, Lucinda Ridenour, owner of the notorious Black Lace House, because the greedy, older woman taunts and lures Kit into unseemly, deviant behavior — or so he believes.
And then Lucinda is murdered, and Kit is the prime suspect.
I was a little disappointed when I started this book, because I thought a novel billed as a “Mystery of the Victorian West” would be fairly gothic. So I expected lots of stark, brooding descriptions of Leadville and Central Colorado.
You know: gray granite ridges; forbidding peaks; cold, dark, dripping tunnels. A terrifying road chiseled into slick vertical cliffs; rows of tiny clapboard shacks; a fancy three-story brick hotel crowded with vintage furnishings: garish wallpaper, roman recliners, needlepoint pillows, feathers, lamps, bolsters, bear rugs, and clawfoot couches with antimacassars. The mournful whistle of the evening train; a breath-taking walk up Harrison Avenue in the high, thin air; the smell of woodsmoke; the rattle of dice; gleaming red satin; and the cloyingly sweet taste of sarsaparilla.
In essence, I was hoping for a touch of Edgar Allen Poe, but nothing quite as lengthy or revolting as Stephen King would dish up.
But The Second Glass of Absinthe begins with curiously little description of Leadville. The book is awash with facts about the place, however, plus street, business and mine names.
In the first half, I didn’t feel that the author had caught the spirit of the place. But toward the end, Black’s narrative gains momentum.
An obvious sequel, the book recounts plenty of detail from a previous book, a technique I find irritating (although it’s often employed even more clumsily by better known authors).
Anyway, Kit’s aunt Eden apparently spent the last book living with the Cheyenne and then met Kit’s uncle in a dynamic rescue at the Battle of the Washita, and liked him. But Kit’s uncle was already married, except his wife was cheating with another man….
Unfortunately, the author seems more taken with this prior work than the one under construction in the first chapters. But eventually the author remembers her new characters and plot and The Second Glass of Absinthe starts to quicken.
Even in the beginning, this book isn’t dreadful or even particularly slow — since it’s a simple, fast-paced romance/mystery — but the narrative seems rather detached and uncommitted.
Finally, however, the author gets the characters together and sends them on a chase, and the end is surprisingly sweet.
This isn’t a classic, but it’s fairly entertaining. And for locals, the fun of agreeing and disagreeing with the author’s depiction of Leadville and of finding flaws or surprises in the historical references can provide extra entertainment.
Plus there’s an absinthe party and book signing on September 20th at 4 p.m. at the Delaware Hotel, where readers can get together and compare their impressions of romantic, early Leadville.
–Martha Quillen
