Madeleine Karno Mystery
2 primary works
Book 1
Strong-minded and ambitious, Madeleine Karno is eager to shatter the constraints of her provincial French upbringing. She wants to become a pathologist like her father, whose assistant she is, but this is 1894, and autopsies are considered unseemly and ungodly, even when performed by a man-hence his odious nickname, Doctor Death. That a young woman should wish to spend her time dissecting corpses is too scandalous for words.
Thus, when seventeen-year-old Cecile Montaine is found dead in the snowy streets of Varbourg, her family will not permit a full post-mortem autopsy, and Madeleine and her father are left with a single mysterious clue: in the dead girl's nostrils they find a type of parasite normally seen only in dogs. Soon after, the priest who held vigil by the dead girl's corpse is brutally murdered. The thread that connects these two events is a tangled one, and as the death toll mounts, Madeleine must seek knowledge in odd places: behind convent walls, in secret diaries, and in the yellow stare of an aging wolf.
Eloquently written and with powerful insight into human and animal nature, Doctor Death is at once a gripping mystery and a poignant coming-of-age story.
Thus, when seventeen-year-old Cecile Montaine is found dead in the snowy streets of Varbourg, her family will not permit a full post-mortem autopsy, and Madeleine and her father are left with a single mysterious clue: in the dead girl's nostrils they find a type of parasite normally seen only in dogs. Soon after, the priest who held vigil by the dead girl's corpse is brutally murdered. The thread that connects these two events is a tangled one, and as the death toll mounts, Madeleine must seek knowledge in odd places: behind convent walls, in secret diaries, and in the yellow stare of an aging wolf.
Eloquently written and with powerful insight into human and animal nature, Doctor Death is at once a gripping mystery and a poignant coming-of-age story.
Book 2
"New York Times bestselling author Lene Kaaberbøl returns with her beloved protagonist Madeleine Karno--an ambitious young woman who shatters the confines of nineteenth century France as she struggles to become the first female forensic pathologist and hunt down what appears to be a Jack the Ripper copycat. On June 2nd, 1894, in the wake of President Marie Francois Sadi Carnot's assassination, France descends into chaos and riots in the streets of Varbourg. Many lives are lost in the mayhem, but when one lady of the night is found murdered with brutal incisions and no sign of a struggle, it is clear something is amiss. Madeleine Karno, the tenacious protagonist from Doctor Death, must ask herself the terrifying question: Do they have their very own Jack the Ripper in France? Madeleine is no stranger to cases such as this. Though she is a woman in forensic pathology (a career that is considered unseemly even for a man), her recent work with a string of mysterious deaths has earned her some semblance of respect--she has even become the first female student to gain admission to the University of Varbourg. But there's only so much her physiology courses can do to help her uncover the mysteries of a mad scientist's brutal murders. Madeleine must do whatever it takes--investigate the darkest corners of the city and even work under cover--to track down a murderer at large. But if there's one thing the press has right about "Mademoiselle Death," it's this: it takes a woman to find a killer of women"--