Edgar Poe, an aspiring writer, goes to Boston in search of a cure for his consumptive wife. But instead, he discovers mutilated corpses and finds himself involved in the devilish machinations of a criminal, which Poe is helped to unravel by the owner of the circus of freaks, Phineas Barnum, and the future famous writer Louisa May Alcott, author of the novel “Little Women.”

Harold Schechter managed the impossible : he wrote a fascinating mystery, a story told by Edgar Poe himself - an unsurpassed master of mystification, and his Poe is a living person far from mysticism, a future writer. At the same time, there is no stylization, although style is felt in everything. Tom Holland has a serious competitor.

BOSTONBOOK REVIEW