Rating: 4.5
What it's about:
Having proved his deductive brilliance solving Baltimore's notorious "Nevermore Murders," Edgar Allan Poe turns his investigative eye to the streets of mid-nineteenth century New York City. A young beauty with a shadowy past has been savagely murdered; her hideous wounds mirror a gruesome tableau in P.T. Barnum's wax exhibit -- and it is in defense of his own innocence that America's greatest showman has come to Poe for help. But neither the writer nor the huckster has anticipated the jagged maze that is the soul of a madman....
Harold Schechter, whose historical fiction "keeps the finger of suspicion wandering until the very end" (The New York Times Book Review), adds a wry, pitch-perfect, and suspense-laced dimension to the fascinating life and times of the literary master of morbid, criminal motivation -- Edgar Allan Poe. -taken from Barnes&Noble.com
My thoughts:
This is the second of the Edgar Allen Poe mysteries written by Harold Schechter. They are such fun! In The Hum Bug, Edgar Allen Poe and P.T. Barnum work together to solve a gruesome murder. Some of Barnum's "Human Curiosities" make up part of the colorful cast. Some of my favorites are the bearded lady, the human skeleton, the alligator boy and the changeling baby. Schechter goes into great detail about P.T. Barnum's fascinating American Museum. It's as if the reader is actually there! The details of the mystery itself will keep the reader guessing as to who the perpetrator is and what the motives were for the murders. It all comes together in the end. The reader watches as everything slowly falls into place. Part of the charm of Schechter's Poe mysteries is the actual writing. He writes in the first person as Edgar Allan Poe and does a fantastic job of capturing the feel of Poe. The Hum Bug left me eager to read the next in the series!
1 comment:
Sounds like a fun book.
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