Larger	Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades (Penguin Mysteries) Author: Oakley Hall
	Book Information Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) Book Type: Paperback Rating: 2 ISBN-13: 9780140288605 - ISBN-10: 0140288600 Publication Date: 2/1/2000 Pages: 288 Book Reviews

When the Morton Street Slasher leaves the corpses of his victims on the tangled gaslit streets near San Francisco's Union Square, he marks each body with a playing card. Ambrose "Bitter" Bierce, the city's famed newspaperman, immediately blames the rash of murders on his sworn enemies, the Southern Pacific Railway magnates. Bierce and his young protege at the Hornet, Tom Redmond, set out to solve the case, uncovering conspiracy and corruption at every turn.

Smart, funny, and compulsively readable, Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades is more than a simple murder mystery. Like Caleb Carr's The Alienist and E. L. Doctorow's The Waterworks, it exposes the sordid underbelly of Gilded Age America.