The Blackest Bird: A Novel of History and Murder
Joel Rose
Language: English
Pages: 317
ISBN: B01K93E12U
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Sweltering New York City, summer of 1841, the beautiful 'Segar Girl' Mary Rogers is brutally murdered. Popular amongst the journalistic and publishing elite, the task of finding her killer falls to High Constable Jacob Hays.
At the end of a long and distinguished career Old Hays's investigation will ultimately span a decade, involving gang wars, grave robbing, and clues hidden in the poems of the hopeless romantic and minstrel of the night, Edgar Allan Poe.Superbly researched and compellingly readable, "The Blackest Bird" is both a richly textured and atmospheric portrait of the birth of New York, a city raging with bloodshed and duplicity, and a thrilling murder mystery.
Beastly Things (Commissario Brunetti, Book 21)
Copycat Killing (A Magical Cats Mystery, Book 3)
Too Many Cooks (Angie Amalfi, Book 2)
Flowers for His Funeral (Mitchell and Markby Mystery, Book 7)
is no longer a boy, but it was he.” “Tweeter Toohey?” “Is that how he is called?” “His sobriquet in the underworld.” “There were others there as well. I heard voices. Another name called. I don’t remember what.” He snapped his fingers. “Ossian! That is what it was.” “Ossian?” Hays considered. “Mr. Poe, could you fetch the Colt manuscript, please?” From the Plumed Pen of One Who Must Remain Unnamed Even peering through those bothering magnifying spectacles at the title page,
the hard floor for additional effect. Adams’ body remained covered, and the room in the Dead House was dark and sinister. Hays suddenly swept the sheet off the corpse. “Look upon this body!” he ordered Colt. At the same time, he carefully shone the beam of his lantern on the remains. “Behold the cold and clammy body of your victim, Mr. Colt! Have you ever seen this man before?” Colt jerked back, terrified, and cried out in horror, but Hays, unrelenting, shoved him forward and pressed his head
below, cholera and yellow fever seeping upward. All at once the rich moved out and the poor moved in, mostly penniless Irish immigrants of the lowest class and freed Negroes. The neighborhood came to be known as the Five Points, renowned as the worst slum in the world, according to what Dickens was saying, surpassing even London’s fabled Seven Dials for its misery. Tommy Coleman’s brother, Edward Coleman, pictured himself a fierce, rough cove. His was the Forty Thieves, one of the first truly
James, and the lawyer Robert Emmet, awaited the couple. John Colt’s friend the poet Poe had been asked by the family to read a suitable poem for the occasion. When word reached the crowd that Colt was out of the block and in view, there was much muttering and talk, some of it having to do with the opinion that he was wrongly condemned. Out of respect, when the bride entered the yard the crowd became quiet. Mr. Poe had chosen a poem he introduced as “in progress, but assuredly of love.” The
ascertain that the sum of $1,000 had been offered to each of three of the deputy keepers. As result all sorts of rumors remain in circulation relative to the suicide. Many doubt Mr. Colt is dead. Bennett charged the supposed “suicide” was at that very moment on his way by private coach to either California or Texas. Perhaps with his new wife. “Nothing is beyond the family Colt and their influence,” he sniffed. And then more. In the next day’s edition, the publisher-editor pondered: DID