Book #1: The Pale Blue Eye

Title: The Pale Blue Eye


Author: Louis Bayard


I started reading The Pale Blue Eye a couple of days before Maren was born, and didn't finish until a few days after the new year, and while I was reading, I kept thinking I couldn't get into it because I kept falling asleep within a couple of sentences of opening it. But after I finished reading The Pale Blue Eye, I read the next book on my list in less than 24 hours, so maybe the book was just boring.


Anyway, The Pale Blue Eye is a really interesting story, in theory. When a cadet turns up murdered (and eviscerated) at West Point in the mid-1800s, the administration calls in Gus Landor, a retired NYC police detective, to solve the crime. Landor, in turn, asks for a cadet on the inside to help him with the investigation, and ends up working with Edgar Allan Poe, a first-year cadet. Poe gets emotionally involved with Landor's prime suspects, and the situation becomes dangerous for everyone involved.


While I was reading, I was frustrated that Landor kept his focus on the Marquis family. With hundreds of cadets at West Point, it seemed illogical to me that he wouldn't widen his list of suspects a bit. But since Poe is a character in the novel, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that there's a significant twist in the end. Maybe I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. And although I was bored, frustrated and sleepy for much of the novel, I'm glad I stuck with it because the ending was very clever and rewarding.


--originally published 1/13/07