England 1819: Thomas Shield, a new master at a school just outside London, is tutor to a young American boy and boy's sensitive best friend, Charles Frant. Drawn to Charle's beautiful, unhappy mother, Shield becomes caugt up in her family's twisted intrigues.
Then a brutal crime is committed, with consequences that threaten to destroy Shield and all that he has come to hold dear. Soon, he is caught up in a deadly tangle of sex, money, murder, and lies--a tangle that grips him tighter even as he tries to escape from it. And what of the strange American child at the heart of these macabre events---what is the secret of the boy named Edgar Allan Poe?
This book is beautifully written, has that "I don't want to put it down" suspense. A great mystery with unsettling, frightening events. Holds you to the very end.
Then a brutal crime is committed, with consequences that threaten to destroy Shield and all that he has come to hold dear. Soon, he is caught up in a deadly tangle of sex, money, murder, and lies--a tangle that grips him tighter even as he tries to escape from it. And what of the strange American child at the heart of these macabre events---what is the secret of the boy named Edgar Allan Poe?
This book is beautifully written, has that "I don't want to put it down" suspense. A great mystery with unsettling, frightening events. Holds you to the very end.
Verywell written murder in England, early 1800's
Based on Edgar Alln Poe's actual biography---he really was the son of actors and he really was schooled in England for a little while--but with Gothic plot and Dickensian characters added. The best kind of historical mystery!
