The Pale Blue Eye

Investigator Gus Landor tells how in 1831 he investigated a ghastly murder with ritual overtones at West Point, enlisting the aid of an eccentric young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe. Unlike Landor, the listener knows that the dissolute alcoholic youth will one day invent the detective story. Therein lies the central intrigue of this novel, the reason you'd buy or rent this title. What keeps you listening is the nuanced, imaginative performance of Charles Leggett. He makes you forgive his hit-or-miss Southern accent and the author's anachronisms by virtue of his total immersion in the material, which he keeps fresh and surprising. Leggett has the potential to mature into a master narrator. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 10, 2006
Bayard follows Mr. Timothy
(2003), which brilliantly imagined the adult life of Dickens's Tiny Tim, with another tour-de-force, an intense and gripping novel set during Edgar Allan Poe's brief time as a West Point cadet. In 1830, retired New York City detective Gus Landor is living a quiet life at his Hudson Valley cottage, tormented by an unspecified personal sorrow, when Superintendent Thayer summons him to West Point to investigate the hanging and subsequent mutilation of a cadet. Poe aids Landor by serving as an inside source into the closed world of the academy, though Poe's personal involvement with a suspect's sister complicates their work. But the pair find themselves helpless to prevent further outrages; the removal of the victims' hearts suggests that a satanic cult might be at work. This beautifully crafted thriller stands head and shoulders above other recent efforts to fictionalize Poe. 3-city author tour.