Life > November 1, 2007

By Kyle Lawrence | Contributing writer

At West Point Academy in the 1830s, a murder mystery stems from the discovery of a young cadet found dead hanging from a tree, body swinging by a rope.

The death might be chalked up to suicide, however, if not for one pernicious and gruesome detail.

The next morning, the cadet’s chest has been cut open, and his heart removed.

Such is the scene set at the beginning of The Pale Blue Eye, best-selling author Louis Bayard’s follow-up novel to his debut, Mr. Timothy.

In what seems at first a run-of-the-mill mystery flick, disparate groups of suspects are corralled for questioning by the inquisitive and acutely keen retired police detective Gus Landor, who has been coaxed out of retirement by the Academy.

The novel’s unique quality emerges, though, when one of the cadets is summoned for questioning due to his peculiar habits and queer behavior in class. This cadet is Edgar Allen Poe.

In Mr. Timothy, Bayard made critics’ heads turn when he fictionalized the adult life of Tiny Tim from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

In The Pale Blue Eye, Bayard stays true to his established theme of fictionalizing literary figures, and this time skillfully, though fictionally, illustrates the life of a young, troubled, Edgar Allen Poe in his brief stint at West Point.

As the mystery progresses and more deaths occur in the same gruesome manner, Detective Gus Landor befriends the young cadet with a penchant for alcohol, volumes of poetry and a slight gambling addiction.

In the non-fictional world, some have credited Poe as first engineering the modern mystery story.

In Bayard’s fictional account, the young Poe’s astute attention for detail and psychological motives behind the crime assist Landor in unraveling the case.

Throughout the story, Louis Bayard effectively makes use of a dual narrator structure, with both Gus and Poe afforded an account of events.

Most readers may find Poe’s narration to be rather verbose, as words such as vociferous and pulchritudinous, among others, adorn his language.

Some of the more stalwart linguistic readers, however, might delight in the language which, ring true to Poe’s style.

Bayard did a fantastic job of constructing both characters’ narratives, each having its own personality and language: Gus Landor is the gruff, hardened, New Yorker’s, and Poe is the aspiring poet, romantic to the utmost.

All at once the novel mixes mystery with history, with characters that did in fact roam the campus of the Academy in the 1930s.

Read from a historical perspective, the novel in fact shines beyond its topical element of mystery-thriller. It’s clear that Bayard researched the Academy in the 19th century extensively, and many of the officers presiding over the Academy in the novel are in fact real.

Bayard does make reservations in the acknowledgements, though, noting that while the characters are in fact real people, no cadets were ever killed at the Academy during this time.

Nonetheless, the life of a West Point cadet in the 1830s is well encompassed, from clandestine trips to taverns in the middle of the night, to the tensions existing between first generation cadets and cadets with long family histories at the Academy.

On the whole, the novel’s well-sculpted characters prove to each be little gems of craftsmanship on the part of Mr. Bayard.

For fans of Poe, there is hardly a better fictional account of the eccentric author’s younger years. As well, an intricate plot twists itself throughout the novel, with surprises emerging up until the epilogue.

Undoubtedly, Louis Bayard’s second novel deems itself a worthy 412 pages of reading, and a cure to the typical stodgy mystery in print today.