The Illusion of Murder
McCleary transforms real-life crusading reporter Nellie Bly into an easily flustered ditz in the sequel to 2010's The Alchemy of Murder. In 1889, as actually happened, Nellie sets out to beat the round-the-world record of Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days. Two weeks into her trip, Bly is horrified to witness a fatal stabbing in Port Said and hears the dying man's last words. Despite her conviction that the victim was English, her traveling companions insist that she's mistaken. The killing may be connected with an effort to drive the British out of Egypt through acts of terror. Bly's escapades continue as she moves on to Asia and the U.S., but her reactions to what befalls her are more in keeping with an out-of-her-depth neophyte than the accomplished and independent woman who successfully faked madness to go undercover at a New York City insane asylum. (Apr.)(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC.  All rights reserved.