Sheldon Rusch, For Edgar

For Edgar

Sheldon Rusch

Berkley, Aug 2005, $23.95

ISBN: 042520409X

McHenry County Sheriff Dave Manger shows the skull nailed to a tree with a ribbon hanging down to Illinois State Police Special Agent Elizabeth Taylor Hewitt. She realizes that there is more to the skull, which reminds her of Poe's The Gold Bug and regains a gold scarab that the child witness had taken from the crime scene.

Brenda Kaczmarck is the first victim of the killer. Genevieve Bohannon is next, but Hewitt already sees a weird pattern forming that the culprit is paying homage to Edgar Allen Poe with these homicides that emulate his work. Hewitt turns to academia for a Poe expert, her former lover Professor Scott Gregory to expedite the dark literary pattern so that they might stop and capture the Raven before he finishes in a nevermore blaze of infamy.

Though some readers may initially object to the coincidence of an ex-lover Poe expert, FOR EDGAR is a brilliant police procedural that uses literary references from the great writer as crime clues and messages from the serial killer. Elizabeth is a dedicated law enforcement official struggling to silence the Raven's macabre reign of terror before others end in the rue morgue. Gregory provides her with able professional interpretation of Poe's works. A final arc of the pendulum will surprise yet excite readers who Rusch to read the delightful FOR EDGAR.

Harriet Klausner