Daniel Stashower - The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder

Praise for

The Beautiful Cigar Girl:
Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and
the Invention of Murder

A Featured Alternate Selection of
Book-of-the-Month Club, Mystery Guild,
The Literary Guild, Doubleday
and Quality Paperback Book Clubs

[An] atmospheric, suspenseful re-creation of a crime, a city, and a writer as doomed as the victim he wrote aboutMr. Stashower, deftly interweaving contemporary press accounts of the murder and the investigation into his narrative, vividly re-creates the atmosphere of the period in a moody, sepia-toned style that recalls The Alienist by Caleb Carr and The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Cutting back and forth between the Rogers investigation and Poes life, he gradually brings his two subjects to the point of convergence, creating a compelling portrait of Poe along the way.A triple-twist ending to a fascinating tale. Poe would have appreciated the ingenuity.

The New York Times

A solidly comprehensive look at the predecessor to todays all-too-common media crime frenzies.

Entertainment Weekly

[A] compelling narrativeStashower deftly combines his talents as a novelist, mystery writer, and biographer in The Beautiful Cigar Girl.

The Washington Post

Stashower artfully weaves together a portrait of a self-immolating literary genius with the story of the beautiful, melancholy murder victim.Eminently readable and thick with research, The Beautiful Cigar Girl draws a rich portrait of mid-nineteenth-century Manhattanfascinating.

The Boston Globe

Well-crafted and suspenseful[Stashower] makes murder a beguilingly edifying and entertaining subject.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Stashower weaves fact with such related story lines as the lurid newspaper coverage, inept police work and, most provocatively, Edgar Allan Poes fictionalized Marie Rogt expos of the case.Intrigue is revived with each new break in the case.

USA Today

Stashowers book conjures a writer in search of inspiration and a girl whose beauty and gruesome death would be immortalized in Poes The Mystery of Marie Rogt.

New York Daily News

Daniel Stashowers The Beautiful Cigar Girl not only establishes itself as the book on the Mary Rogers case, but offers an enormously important look into how Americans think about murder, as well as a unique portrait of our most undervalued literary genius, Edgar Allan Poe. Books like this are an increasing rarity, and should be snapped up by all audiences.

Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist

Writing simultaneously as a novelist, biographer, historian, and sleuth, Daniel Stashower unfolds a suspenseful detective story inside a detective story inside a detective story.

Kenneth Silverman, author of Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance

Daniel Stashower masterfully re-creates 1840s New York and the murder that captivated the city. If you loved The Devil in the White City, youll love The Beautiful Cigar Girl. Its an impressive work of history with all the drive and passion of a finely tuned novel.

Harlan Coben, author of Promise Me

The Beautiful Cigar Girl is a beautiful melding of literary research, biography, and creativity. Seldom has Poe himself emerged so sympathetically as the tortured, alcoholic, brilliant, and enigmatic man he was. After reading this fascinating book, no one will be able to read The Mystery of Marie Rogt again without acknowledging the haunting ghosts brought forth by Stashower.

Stuart M. Kaminsky, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and author of Always Say Goodbye

Stashower makes the past so vivid you feel as if you must have been there and walked these streets yourself.

Anne Perry, author of We Shall Not Sleep

An informative, swift-moving accountStashower knows murder, and he knows the craft of biography.[He] brings to this current, complex task both considerable intelligence and wide-ranging research.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Readers who enjoyed Erik Larsons The Devil in the White City will like mystery novelist and biographer Stashowers work here.Well researched and accessible, here is a gripping story that is hard to put down; literary buffs in particular will enjoy this wonderful back story to the creation of Poes sequel to The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

Library Journal

AbsorbingPoes genius and literary legacy are hauntingly drawn.

Publishers Weekly

Stashowers well-paced, thoroughly researched blend of historical narrative and detective novel is imaginative and ably captures the boisterous sprawl of nineteenth-century New York, the activities of its numerous cutthroat newssheets and the sad lives of both Rogers and Poe.

BookPage

[An] intriguing story, one that sheds considerable light on the snares of a big city for a young woman.

Booklist

Praise for

Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

Mystery writer Stashower pieces together clues from his subjects iconoclastic life to create a gripping, sympathetic bio that proves that Doyle was anything but elementary.

Entertainment Weekly

Marked with a nice mixture of affectionand the detachment to be expected from the winner of the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective and Crime Fiction Writing.

The Washington Post Book World

Stashowers Teller of Tales is an appealing and much-needed biography of the man who created one of literatures renowned eccentrics while for most of his life displaying every outward sign of beefy, walrus-mustachioed respectability.

The Wall Street Journal

[An] excellent biography of the man who created Sherlock Holmes.

The New York Times

This is a fine biography; one neednt give a fig for Sherlock Holmes to enjoy it.

The Boston Globe

[A] wonderful biography.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

Stashower has produced the most readable and authoritative work possible on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Well-written and highly entertainingStashower relates [Doyles life] with a brisk pace and gentle humor.

Detroit Free Press

A LSO BY D ANIEL S TASHOWER

Nonfiction

Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television

Fiction

The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man

Elephants in the Distance

The Dime Museum Murders

The Floating Lady Murder

The Houdini Specter