Frog music

It is 1876 and San Francisco is suffering a stifling heat wave. Deep in the streets of China Town live a strange menage a trois, a group of refugees from the Parisian circus: Blanche Beunon, once equestrian artist and now uniquely seductive dancer at the House of Mirrors, her lover Arthur and his inseparable companion, Ernest. When Jenny Bonnet, frog catcher for the city's bistros, evader of the law and erratic cyclist, collides with Blanche, Blanche's world is overturned, and her life is suddenly in danger. Frog Music is a wonderfully evocative novel of intrigue and murder: nuanced, elegant, erotic and witty; a tour de force.