The Pale Blue Eye
A Novel
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- $189.00
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- $189.00
Descripción editorial
Now a Netflix film starring Christian Bale, Harry Melling, and Gillian Anderson
“Shockingly clever and devoutly unsentimental . . . reads like a lost classic. Bayard reinvigorates historical fiction.” — New York Times Book Review
An ingenious tale of murder and revenge at West Point, featuring a retired detective and a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe—from the author of Courting Mr. Lincoln.
At West Point Academy in 1830, the calm of an October evening is shattered by the discovery of a young cadet's body swinging from a rope. The next morning, an even greater horror comes to light. Someone has removed the dead man's heart.
Augustus Landor—who acquired some renown in his years as a New York City police detective—is called in to discreetly investigate. It's a baffling case Landor must pursue in secret, for the scandal could do irreparable damage to the fledgling institution. But he finds help from an unexpected ally—a moody, young cadet with a penchant for drink, two volumes of poetry to his name, and a murky past that changes from telling to telling.
The strange and haunted Southern poet, for whom Landor develops a fatherly affection, is named Edgar Allan Poe.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
