The Pale Blue Eye begins with a murdered and mutilated body found at West Point. Retired police detective Augustus Landor is asked to investigate. He finds a assistant among one of the cadets, a young man with a quick mind and who writes poetry, but doesn't necessarily make a good cadet: Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is able to retrieve information from within West Point about the cadets and their families. The two men become friends as their investigation begins to uncover secret societies and bloody rituals. When more bodies turn up dead, they must be concerned with their own lives too. Louis Bayard (
Mr. Timothy) combines the murder mystery with an examination of a young Poe who went on to write his own macabre detective stories.
The Pale Blue Eye has received positive reviews with the Philadelphia Inquirer saying, "The fun continues in Bayard's tightly woven and deftly managed plot. He carries the mystery to its appropriately melodramatic solution, but follows it with a surprising and completely unexpected conclusion that not even the most seasoned mystery readers will see coming."
