Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead.
The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice - if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.
In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
At first I was very drawn into this, then it became a chore. Am I alone? I don't buy the characters, or the mystery, and I didn't care about them in the end. That's fatal for me.
The premises and possibilities of this book are really good. It's an interesting time, some interesting characters and a good mystery. But the flash backs are completely confusing and really could have been handled better. Something as simple as a date over the chapter so you could get what was past and what was further on. I'm not sorry I read it, and it's a fascinating view of Old San Francisco. But very hard to follow.