Ambrose Bierce and the trey of pearls Book

This ends up a mixed review, a "yes, but" affair… What else can you say about a well-wrought pot-boiler?

I read a couple of these Bierce novels in 2014, shortly after reading Hall's magnum opus, Warlock, and I was more tickled by the premise than the reality. The idea of the tart-tongued Bierce being a sort of Sherlock Holmes whose exploits and words are recounted by a Watson-like newspaper colleague is brilliant, but that brilliant idea is only sketched out, not fully, sumptuously developed. The writing is competent and there are accurate historic touches that place everything squarely in San Francisco and its culture circa 1870, but at the same time it all feels schematic, merely outlined.

This installment in the series has Bierce and Redmond each dealing with affairs of the heart when'while trying to solve the murder of a flamboyant pastor whose twisted past reveals the ease with which people were able to re-make/re-invent themselves in the wild west'they get entangled with a leading advocate of the Suffragist movement and her court of attractive women, the three pearls.