Customer Reviews

The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Although this book holds itself out to be a review of the grisly murder of Mary Rogers in 1841 New York, it appears to, instead, turn into a biography of Edgar Allan Poe. That's not to say that this is a bad thing, but perhaps the title should have reflected that more than it does. The book is well written, with emphasis on what the newspapers of the time reported. That there is no solution to the murder mystery does dampen the enthusiasm of the reader somewhat, but that's what often happens when dealing with true crimes. I found the atmosphere presented very tangible, and I did enjoy the Poe biography (I've been to his grave in Baltimore), so the book held my interest. Perhaps others, not as interested in Poe as I am, will not find the book as enjoyable to read.

THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL is attention-holding social and literary history nimbly written by Daniel Stashower. It is the story of a real crime committed in July 1841 in or about New York City that transfixed the media of the day, challenged Edgar Allan Poe to put his detective fiction theories to the test and transformed New York before eventually fading away in the public consciousness a few decades later.

If there is something to be learned by the ubiquitous episodes of the "Law and Order" and "CSI" franchises, it is that a murder is never straightforward. Just like those shows, when the lovely, alluring yet innocent seeming Manhattan store clerk who worked in a popular smoke shop frequented by men of all walks of life goes missing and her body is later found washing up near a waterfront park in Hoboken, New Jersey, Pandora's box is opened. Circumstantial evidence suggests connections to the city's gang culture and abortionists. There is a revolving door of individual suspects, too, who may or may not have been the victim's swains. The police department is largely night watchmen and process servers prone to corruption and unequal to the task of fighting and detecting crime. Then the media steps in and it is hyped beyond belief. In Philadelphia, where he has taken umbrage after burning just about every personal and professional bridge in New York, Poe reads the newspaper accounts and realizes that his ever-present money problems and professional ambitions could be resolved by inserting the fictive detecting methods he created for "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." He puts himself on the line, advertising that in his new story starring his detective Dupin, "The Mystery of Marie Roget," he will solve the puzzle.

To say more is to spoil this very real plot. I think Stashower does a fine job of balancing and interweaving the various strands of biography, social history, crime detection and the birth of detective fiction. He has a very direct but graceful way of writing and ordering his information. He evokes 19th century New York vividly. If you liked THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, then you should enjoy this. My only complaint, too small to demote the book a star, is that I wish the author were more explicit as to naming his sources when he quotes, for instance, "a writer of the day." There is a considerable bibliography at the end, but no idea which source gave up what information per se.

It's a true story, but The Beautiful Cigar Girl reads like a top-flight mystery novel. I'm a big fan of biographies, and Stashower makes this period come to life. This is a great follow-up to his "Teller of Tales" a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle for which he won the prestigous Edgar Award.
The final chapters read like something Poe himself might have written. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.
It's too bad the rating system only goes to five stars!

Daniel Stashower's newst book is a compendium of exacting scholarship; tight writing and razor sharp historical sleuthing that we have come to know from this modern master of the historical biography. The Beautiful Cigar Girl traces the murder of a popular commoner of the 19th century whose death captivated the press, ushering in a new era of sensationalism. Stashower does not duck the responsibility of going toe to toe with the hard facts and the murky details of the time and places. He edges into this story with the undeniably fascinating character of no less than Edgar Allan Poe and his interest in this most unusual story. While there have been at least 4 or 5 texts to deal with this murder, these figures and E. A. Poe's involvement, none holds a candle to this opus by the Edgar Award winning Stashower. His award is safe and worthy of the man it is named after, and how appropriate that EAP should sit on his shelf overlooking this story that never ends...for this volume makes us reconsider our modern press and every "murder of the century" from the story at hand right up to the Amish massacre recently. One word describes this massive amount of work, scholarship and raw talent: Bravo!

I would certainly tend to agree with some of the other reviewers who point out quite correctly that "The Beautiful Cigar Girl" appears to be more about the life of Edgar Allan Poe than about the unfortunate murder of a beautiful young woman. Nevertheless, author Daniel Stashower does a workmanlike job of weaving together the two stories that were so representative of life in New York City in the late 1830's and early 1940's. Times were tough indeed as the nation limped through a severe downturn in the economy.
The young lady who came to be known as "The Beautiful Cigar Girl" was Mary Rogers. In 1938 the proprietor of a local cigar emporium named John Anderson hired Mary to work as a salesgirl in his store. Thanks to his new hire and the convenient location Anderson's Tobacco Emporium proved to be an immediate and smashing success. Newspaper moguls, business leaders and government officials all frequented the store. Suddenly, Mary Rogers was somewhat of an "item" and her name would appear from time to time in various newspapers. As things turned out Mary Rogers only worked at Anderson's for a short period of time. However, when her her battered and bludgeoned body was fished out of the Hudson River in 1941 the apparent murder of Mary Rogers became a sensation in the newspapers.
The stories were rife with speculation and inuendo. Over the next year or so the story would take any number of strange twists and turns. And while the murder of Mary Rogers has never been conclusively solved the most likely scenario turns out to be quite surprising indeed!
In the meantime, it seems that Daniel Stashower devotes more than half of the pages of "The Beautiful Cigar Girl" to the life of Edgar Allan Poe. While Poe certainly did become involved in the case of Mary Rogers with his fascinating article "The Mystery of Marie Roget" I certainly had no reason to expect that so much of this book would be devoted to him. Since I knew very little about Edgar Allan Poe to begin with I really did not mind learning about his life here. It turns out that despite his obvious and enormous talent, Poe's penchant for self-destructive behavior would severely limit his ability to earn a living in the literary world. Time and time again, in job after job, Edgar Allan Poe would wear out his welcome. His story is both sad and tragic and one cannot help but wonder what might have been had Poe been able to overcome his personal problems.
In any event, the bottom line is that "The Beautiful Cigar Girl" was not quite what I had expected. Too many pages devoted to Poe really did seem to detract from the real reason I was reading this book--the murder of Mary Rogers. Despite its shortcomings, this is still a book that managed to hold my interest from cover to cover.

Stashower has done a number of things extremely well here. He's uncovered an interesting, historical true crime murder; he describes the scene so well you can hear the snap of the buggy whip and smell the horse manure in the streets; he's brought in one of the most fascinating characters of the period, Edgar Allen Poe, and he's tied it all together with prose that's as good as is being written anywhere in fiction or non-fiction today. Read it.

Truth, fiction, and what the papers report are three sides of one story. This books examines all of these different parts of a story. At times, some facts and stories are repeated like the reader can't remember what was previously read, but it's easy enough to scan and skip the bits. It is a good insight into Poe, literature, history, and early nineteenth century newspapers. Read, be informed, and discover the mystery.

Being a Poe enthusiast as well as a history and true crime buff, I have found this book fascinating. The author does a good job of telling two stories at the same time - first the story of Poe, his upbringing and his erratic behavior throughout his life and second the story of the beautiful and tragic Mary Rogers. I love the way he intertwines the stories and draw the paralells between the two. The author draws you into the story in the way a good mystery novel would and makes it come to life on the page. I am glad that I bought this book!

Did you wonder at the title of this book? Did Poe make his way into it just to sell more copies? And what is "the invention of murder"? I wondered, too, and the answer to the second question is "no". While I remain puzzled by "the invention of murder", certainly Poe belongs in the title. Stashower (evidenced by the 5-page bibliography) does a masterful job of tying the famous poet, author, and inventor of C. Auguste Dupin to a real-life 1841 murder case in Manhattan. Author provides deep background on several decades of the mid-19th century, especially the NYC press. He focuses on James Gordon Bennett's "Herald"; many other newspapers and magazines are brought into this story. Why? Because there was never a trial in the murder case, and published accounts were Stashower's primary sources. However, the journalism background pales against the background provided about Edgar Allan Poe. I thought I knew a bit about Poe, having read his ouevre and visited Mrs. Clemm's house and the Poe Museum and grave in Baltimore. Possibly Poe scholars will not agree, but I found much of the detail new. Poe wrote a contemporary account of the murder entitled "The Mystery of Marie Roget", set in Paris rather than in New York, repeating the ratiocination and "Calculus of Probabilities" techniques he employed with C. Auguste Dupin in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (and later in "The Purloined Letter").

Stashower builds his own suspense with parallel stories (much as Larson did in "The Devil in the White City" for Chicago, the grave robbers, and the World's Fair). I found the author's technique to be nearly perfect, not confusing, and extremely enlightening as to the crime culture of the 1840s, the prime players in that era's law enforcement and journalism, and the background of victim Mary Cecilia Rogers... Will the police solve this murder?... Will Poe beat them to it with his 20,000-word, 3-part magazine series about the crime (thinly disguised in "The Mystery of Marie Roget")?... Can we follow Poe's "Rue Morgue" detective, Dupin, sitting in his armchair, trying to outguess the police?... Will Poe ever afford his own literary magazine? Poe's treatment of this crime was a precursor to the methods used by Arthur Conan Doyle and by Truman Capote. [Note: Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Roget" does not appear in this volume.]

I'm usually a generous star-giver in my reviews, but I've lowered my rating from 5 to 4 for this book, despite the entertainment and educational value. There are numerous editorial errors and repetition (hard to say if it's the fault of the writer or an editor at Dutton), and to an incomplete index. Yes, it's a 10-page index, but some items I tried to use omitted more than one page reference, and some New York characters are not listed. A few narrative glitches stood out but come too close to spoilers to mention here. One cannot, however, fault Stashower's deep research and dedication to the details and era of this murder case and to portraying Poe as a complex human being. I found myself thinking about the crime and the characters once away from the book all together. Also, I appreciated the design of the book, period jacket, deckle edges, and bringing 1800s engravings to chapter headings.

Stashower wrote the award-winning biography of Arthur Conan Doyle (1999); he is probably the best contemporary author for this story. As he himself said of Poe, Stashower showed a "masterful grasp of the complexities of the case" and "extraordinary flashes of inspiration set off by an equal measure of guile". You will not be disappointed if you like detailed, well-written historical narratives. There is little conjecture here, but what does exist makes logical sense up to (as Poe said) "There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told."

When I purchased The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder, I was expecting something more along the line of The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl; that is historical fiction - fictional characters set against the backdrop of an historical story and setting.

The Beautiful Cigar Girl is Daniel Stashower's (Teller of Tales) attempt to recount the story of Mary Rogers, a Manhattan tobacco store clerk whose mutilated corpse was discovered afloat in the Hudson River in the summer of 1841. Her death fueled a newspaper war and served as the basis for The Mystery of Marie Rogęt, a magazine serial by Edgar Allan Poe featuring C. Auguste Dupin, who first appeared as the detective who used "ratiocination" to solve the mystery in Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue. In his story, Poe rightly deduced that Marie, her demise modeled after Mary Rogers', wasn't a victim of gang violence, as the press and police believed. However, as evidence was discovered that Rogers may have instead died of a botched abortion, he had to amend his final installment to keep his reputation from being tarnished.

Stashower doesn't attempt to solve the still unsolved mystery of Mary Rogers' murder - we likely will never know the truth - but instead endeavors to recount the events surrounding her demise as well as the efforts to track down the perpetrator, or perpetrator's, Poe's own fascination with the murder, and the uncanny parallels of Poe's and Rogers' lives.

In an age prior to pin-up girls, striptease or pornography, Mary is depicted as perhaps America's first sex symbol - as the Herald newspaper wrote, "Mary Rogers's face was well known to all young men about town." A popular T.V. show recently put forth: "We will never view women as equals until we view them as equals in death (a reference to women dying on the battlefield), and so Stashower succeeds in portraying the sensationalism Miss Roger's death caused. Certainly had she been a he, her death would not have caused the stir it did, the story reaching as far as Philadelphia and Baltimore - both cities in which Poe resided. Yet many of the details of Mary's life amount to conjecture and hearsay in comparison to what is commonly known of Poe's self-destructive abuse of the bottle, poverty, love life and rants against publishers and fellow writers of the period. The title is misleading, as The Beautiful Cigar Girl - particularly in the final third, perhaps the result of Poe's greater celebrity - reads more like a biography of his life. It was only as I neared the conclusion of The Beautiful Cigar Girl that I came to understand the "and the Invention of Murder" portion of the title as Poe having given birth to the modern detective story.

Stashower shows Poe as his own worst enemy. Despite his genius and a literary legacy that would go unrecognized until after his death at the age of 40, Poe forever portrayed himself a victim of lesser talents and those unable to recognize talent even as he continually sabotaged his own career.

If you're expecting fast-paced historical fiction, you may be disappointed. However, as an account of life in New York City in the mid-nineteenth century - including the birth of the tabloid, the many gangs that instilled fear in the local population, a nearly non-existent police force made up of volunteers, and an inept coroner - the mystery surrounding a grisly murder the likes of which had never before been seen (think Criminal Minds), and a biography of one of this country's greatest writers, I found The Beautiful Cigar Girl a fascinating read.