This one is a favorite of mine. Nan generally writes Lois as tough, smart, and cagey. This story is no different. Lois gets bonked on the head leaving a Halloween Ball sometime in S2 after the Wedding Fiasco and Lex's death and wakes up with Lex alive and she is married to him. Rather than totally freaking out she analyzes the situation and begins working to get to Clark to get him to help her get out of the situation and figure out what has happened. The story's detail of how she slips the Lex surveillance is textbook Nan Smith. With Clark's help she finds that a Simon Temper (Tempus in Nan's world) has kidnapped her and put her in place of the Lois in this new time dimension. The Lois of this time dimension has already figured Lex and has gone on the lamb with damning evidence. She is trying to get it to Henderson to put Lex away. She has refused to go to Clark not wanting to put his life in danger. So Lois (of our time dimension) and Clark(of the new time dimension) must find her, find Temper, put Lex away, and put everything back as it should be. No problem for our duo (actually trio with Lois Luthor in the mix). They get some help from Morrie who is actually a time cop chasing Temper and posing as a newspaper reporter.
The story has suspense, conflict, and resolution just as a good story should have. If you like Nan's writing you will love this story. If you have not read any of Nan's work then this is a great place to start
.
A bit unusual in this story is that Nan does not have Lois figuring out Clark is Superman until Temper exposes him to Kryptonite during the penultimate part of the story. Normally Nan has her figuring Clark out early then waiting around for him to get around to telling her, sometimes she has to just tell him she knows because of circumstances. In this case though she remembers that Clark is Superman in her "dream" and then when getting ready for bed she finds the cut on her ankle (she suffered that during a battle with Lex's goons attempting to kill Clark earlier in the story it all begins to click and of course the story ends.
I love Nan's depiction of Lois as opposed to many of the current stories where she is weak or damaged or just "glactically stupid" with regard to Clark and of course his relationship to Superman.
I just can't get enough of Nan
. Now if her Smallville would make a comeback...
Mike
