The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard
Publisher: HarperCollins, Jul 2006
Louis Bayard has written an extraordinary novel in
The Pale Blue Eye. Ostensibly, it's a work of historical fiction: the US West Point Academy, on the banks of the Hudson River, and the cadets who toiled there in 1830 are leading characters; Edgar Allan Poe, a cadet that year; Sylvanus Thayer, the commander; Gouverneur Kemble, arms manufacturer; these and other real life figures take roles in this purely fictional murder mystery. It is largely told by Gus Landor, a retired constable from New York City, who is brought in to investigate the grisly murder of one of the young cadets: he has been hanged and his heart cut out and stolen. The second voice is Poe's, a young cadet who is pressed into secret service to detect where Landor cannot tread.
Bayard's facility with prose is often breath-taking, weaving unexpected images into others to describe a scene, a motivation, a memory. It's sometimes funny, too; but most often the smile it evokes is triggered by sheer virtuosity -- can
those words really rub elbows, create sparks of recognition? Hidden in the paragraphs, discretely, are enough lost words and forgotten usage to bring to life, particularly in Poe's speech, the somewhat desparate times and lives of those shaping the early years of the Republic when Andrew Jackson was President.
But best of all Bayard has written a cracking good mystery, with many twists and turns, puzzles to work out, puzzles to savour, and a sort of double denouement that must leave your jaw dropping and your rational self cheering ... for the virtuosity and artistry fused. Mistake not: the prose is so good, one could scarcely be bored re-reading the whole thing again, from start-to-finish. Highly recommended.
An early review appeared in the
New York Times.
Available in
Kindle and
Kobo for abt $9.