Infamous murder, famous author

THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL: MARY ROGERS, EDGAR ALLAN POE, AND THE INVENTION OF MURDER

By Daniel Stashower

Dutton Adult, $25.95, 336 pages

REVIEWED BY GARY ANDERSON

Before there was Arthur Conan Doyle, before there was Ellery Queen, there was Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is now mostly remembered now as the father of the American horror story, but he was also a first-rate mystery writer and probably popularized the genre worldwide, setting the scene for everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Matlock.

“The Beautiful Cigar Girl” traces his development as a writer of mysteries as he tried to solve the real-life “crime of the early 19th century”; that being the brutal slaying of Mary Rogers, the Beautiful Cigar Girl, in New York in 1841.

Mary’s decomposing and abused corpse was dragged out of the Hudson River in the summer of that year on the Jersey side of the waterway, setting off a criminal investigation that was never fully closed. She was the JonBenet Ramsey of her day. The authorities questioned many suspects, all of whom eventually came up with pat alibis. The case was never formally solved, but when the most plausible scenario arose, it was worthy of a great detective story.

Mary’s death might have passed unnoticed in the violent days of the infamous gangs of New York had she not been a minor celebrity before her death. She was the main attraction at what was becoming the most widely patronized cigar store in New York and her beauty reportedly doubled and perhaps even tripled the store’s clientele. Her death, and the inept handling of the case by what passed as the New York Police, actually helped to launch the reforms that would make the NYPD one of the great metropolitan police forces in the world today.

It is hardly surprising that Poe, a rising author and poet who specialized in mysteries, should join in the search for a solution to the case. Poe had actually gained some renown for addressing real-life puzzles. Early in his career, he exposed the real secret behind a chess-playing robot that was an early 19th-century attraction on the carnival circuit. Like his alter ego, the French detective C. Auguste Dupin, reportedly the prototype for Holmes, Poe was an armchair detective who preferred to piece together his crime puzzles from reading newspaper accounts.

The book also traces the sad history of Poe himself. He had a knack for self-destructive behavior that he himself acknowledged. He never met an editor that he couldn’t quarrel with and he had a positive talent for alienating other writers with whom he picked unnecessary fights by his surly style as a book and magazine reviewer. His enemies list included a veritable “Who’s Who” of the greats of 19th-century American literature.

The exception to this was the Englishman Charles Dickens, with whom Poe maintained a friendly correspondence. Most American English students are aware that Poe was thrown out of West Point, but I for one was not aware of his fairly successful career as an enlisted soldier in the artillery branch. Garrison boredom caused the West Point application.

A published writer of mystery novels, Daniel Stashower has also written a well regarded biography on Conan Doyle. He puts together a fast-paced book that successfully weaves the intertwined stories of two tragic characters, Rogers and Poe, and does so in such a manner that the most likely solution to the demise of Rogers is not revealed until late in the book.

Unfortunately, the most likely scenario did not hit the newsstands until a week before the scheduled last installment of a fictional French murder that exactly mirrored the Rogers mystery. Poe had gotten it wrong, and was barely able to recall the piece and rewrite it before publication, averting disastrous consequences for his reputation as a master of mystery.

The book is a good read, and may find a market with Poe fans and mystery story buffs. Along the way, it gives a good account of daily life in the New York of early Tammany Hall and the infamous Five Points.

The tragedy of Poe is also well documented. He never enjoyed the financial success that his talent should have afforded him. He seriously needed a 12 step program as liquor aroused the worst angels of his nature. He was, to say the least, not a happy drunk. It is hard to gauge how Poe would feel about the book in whatever literary Valhalla he now inhabits. He would likely make an enemy of the author by writing a scathing review. Poe, after all, was Poe

Gary Anderson is a frequent contributor to the book review pages of this newspaper.