The Pale Blue Eye

Bayard picks a fantastic time and place--West Point in its earliest days--to develop a detailed mystery and to develop both a well-defined fictional detective and an actual historical figure. Edgar Allan Poe isn't actually critical to the book, but Bayard doesn't try so hard that he detracts from it, either. The mystery has plenty of twists and enough detail and character motivation for someone reading carefully (not me) to see them coming. ( )

Self-delusional writing. Boring halfway through. Gave up three quarters through. At that point I know longer cared who committed the murders. I just knew I no longer wanted my time wasted. ( )

It's the beginning of the 19th century and a murderer is praying on West Point cadets, hanging them and then - literally - cutting out their hearts. Fortunately, a retired police detective of some cunning lives locally: the Commandant of West Point calls him in to solve the crime. But Augustus Landor needs an "inside man" - someone who can report gossip and conduct undercover investigations. For this purpose he seconds a 4th class cadet by the name of Poe. Edgar Allen Poe, that is.

The story is narrated, first person, by investigator Landor, in the form of journal entries directed at the reader. Don't know about you, but first person narration in the hands of skilled writers always makes me wary - one feels it necessary to take the precaution of constantly querying the credibility of what the narrator chooses to share. Without spoiling the plot, can tell you that In The Pale Blue Eye, this precaution is wholly justified.

Looking back, it's the parts of the story involving Poe that I'll remember most fondly. Bayard does a worthy job of capturing not only the poet's patterns of speech, word usage, and rhetorical patterns, but also - more impressively - manages to create a character that convincingly reconciles several seemingly contradictory aspects of Poe's life - one of the most jarring of which would seem to be the presence of the poet at an institution designed for the express purpose of churning out graduates lacking in poetry.

What I'm hoping I'll forget are the some of the more silly, melodramatic aspects of the plot. The problem with seconding Poe as a character in your narrative is that it invites potentially unhappy comparisons. In this case, I was left contemplating the notion that when Poe does melodrama you can feel the anguish; but when Bayard indulges in similar excesses (let's face it - does it get more melodramatic than corpses with their hearts cut out?), the result is vaguely uncomfortable.

Giving this 3 1/2 stars because I reserve 4 stars for something I'd read again, and while I enjoyed this the first time through, definitely not the sort of thing I'd ever go back to. ( )

This was a real treat. I love historical fiction and I love mystery but I think it is hard to find a real good blend of the two. A series of murders with post-mortem mutilations haunts 1830's West Point Academy. A fictionalized Edgar Alan Poe is a cadet there and he not only becomes an assistant to the investigator, retired New York detective Gus Landor but intimately involved with the suspects. The story is multi-faceted and fairly suspenseful and actually written quite well with prose that seems authentic to the times in an unselfconscious way.

I waffle between 4 and 5 stars. I guess I settle a bit towards the former because some parts of the end seemed more outlandish than they did horrific; a bit too melodramatic. Otherwise I thought the characters were well drawn, a great sense of place and atmosphere, a Wow! what a twist at the end. Didn't see that one coming. And really the young Poe stole the show; you had to love his earnest, self-inflated, but still tender self.

Overall, quite good. Recommended for lovers of more literary mysteries. Reminded me a bit of Caleb Carr's novels. I would definitely read more by this author. ( )

This book bordered between 3 and 4 stars much of the way, probably closer to 3... however, i really want to give it two because of its ending:*** spoiler alert ***Look. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the only book where the narrator can be the killer. Period. That's it. Doing that again is like someone trying to play piano like Monk: it's just bad form. It was done once, terribly inventive, almost got Christie thrown out of Chesterton's 'Detection Club' for breaking the rules of fair play despite there being no denying its cleverness, etc, but doing it again is silly. Someone already wrote the Star Spangled Banner, too. Besides... the ending just seems tacked on. It was obvious that there needed to be a resolution with the daughter sub-plot, but that was silly.OK... anyway, outside of the hated ending and the somewhat overdone prose of both Poe's letters and speech (i know, i get it, that's how he wrote in real life, wordy and self important and all that, but it was a little over the top even for Poe at times), the book was certainly well written overall, will probably go read Mr. Timothy... here's to hoping Mr. Bayard doesn't go all silly on us again. ( )