IRENE'S LAST WALTZ

Let lesser lights like Sherlock Holmes investigate the servile murders of two seamstresses at Charles Worth's exclusive Paris salon. There's choicer fare for Holmes's nemesis/love Irene Adler (Irene at Large, 1992, etc.): a charge from Worth's client Queen Clotilde of Bohemia to find out why her husband, the former lover who brought Irene into the Holmes canon, declines to consummate their marriage (``I believed I knew what that meant, in a general sense,'' observes Irene's demure amanuensis Nell Huxleigh), and an urgent request from Baron Alphonse Rothschild to look into the reports of a resurgent Golem of Prague. Irene's dealings with the King and the Golem (whose mysteries turn out to be unsurprisingly but logically connected to each other, and ultimately to the murders as well) bring her up against the King's treacherous Russian mistress Tatyana; Allegra Stanhope, the forthright (``An event of ghastly import has transpired! Clotilde is prostrate'') young niece of Nell's missing love Quentin; and, inevitably, Holmes himself, whom she battles to a chivalrous draw. Beneath the relentless infatuation with its intrepid heroine, this is the best—luckily, since it's also by far the longest—of Irene's adventures to date.