Harold Schechter, The Tell-Tale Corpse

The Tell-Tale Corpse

Harold Schechter

Ballantine, Mar 2006, $24.95, 336 pp.

ISBN: 0345448421

Edgar Allan Poe is despondent because his wife, who is also his cousin, is very ill and in danger of dying. Poe's friend PT Barnum recommends he take her to see Dr. Farragat in Concord, Massachusetts. The physician uses homeopathic remedies concentrating on botanics that provide amazing results. Barnum offers to fund the trip from New York if Poe will stop in Boston to pick up items from a killer who hung himself.

Poe agrees, and with his spouse Sissy stay at the home of the sister-in-law of a friend of Barnum, Mrs. Randall. While there Poe helps prove to the police that Elise Belton, whom he met at a show given by dentist Dr. Marston, was murdered instead of accidentally drowned. In Concord, Dr. Farragut accepts Sissy as a patient, but his medicines are stolen, he believes by his enemy Dr. Cassidy, who calls him a quack. Poe returns to Boston where he becomes embroiled in a series of murders that include the deaths of the dentist Dr. Marston, as well as Mrs. Randall, her maid, Ms Belton and daguerreotyped Herbert Ballinger. Poe assumes a serial killer is at work, but to prove it before returning to Concord is impossible.

Harold Schechter portrays Poe as a person who believes in his own genius as he has a high opinion of himself. His love for his wife, which means risking his life for her, keeps Poe from being totally insufferable. There is some graphic violence in some scenes as Poe's tales are not for the faint of hearted. The complexity of the murders and Poe's subsequent investigation make THE TELL-TALE CORPSE an entertaining historical who-done-it.