Customer Reviews

For Edgar (An Elizabeth Hewitt Mystery)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this book because it centers around one of my favorite authors, Edgar Allan Poe. This book, unfortunately lost track of Poe's personality and talents. Though the book is well written, I was able to figure out who the murderer was mid-way because it follows basic mystery formulas. I also was annoyed that the main character was given a gimmicky love of Swiss Miss hot chocolate to muse over in almost every chapter. Give me a break!

If you're interested in reading two excellent mysteries based on Edgar Allan Poe, definitely read, Randall Silvis' "On Night's Shore" and "Disquiet Heart" in that order.

Illinois State Police Special Agent Elizabeth Taylor Hewitt is a no nonsense, straight talking official who takes it personally when The Raven, dubbed so by the media, enters and starts carving up women in her town. What's a gal to do? She contacts her ex-lover/professor a self-proclaimed Poe specialist and joins forces with him to ferret out this serial killer and bring him to justice.

As the murders get more gruesome, Hewitt gets more desperate in her quest and takes on risks she knows she shouldn't. Will her final quest for the deranged man who kills by the book be an act of heroism, or her final act of vengence?

Sheldon Rusch does a good job with the Poe references in weaving them through the story. He builds tension and creates believable suspense. Rusch brings the story to a satisfying conclusion with the appropriate amount of twisted, gruesome insight that pulls the reader along. Hewitt is a character I'd watch out for.

I actually originally stumbled upon this book at a second hand book store in orlando, Fl. My friend had found it by its title and jokingly said "here's another POE book." I bought it for a whopping $.99 and loved it. I had that copy for about 2 years until the 20th person to borrow it must have loved it too since they stole it from me. There weren't many copies made so if you are a POE fan then buy this book while it still here and be amazed at how this author put a whole new spin on the twisted world of Edgar Allen Poe. Enjoy

Well written, gruesome and scary! There aren't a lot of first-rate books in the serial killer genre, so this was a real find. Even though I suspected who the killer was, there was always enough room for doubt to up the fear factor.

Not just plot, which is fast-paced with a very interesting premise, but also has an excetional literary and lyrical quality to the writing which makes it an unusual and pleasurable read.
Definitely not your regular,formula "who dunnit!" A joy to read how the author consistenly strings words together in such a poetic manner within a prose genre.
Looking forward to his next book: "The Boy With Perfect Hands"

A killer, a serial killer, a serial killer with a fetish for Poe-like killings. This is what faces world-weary Illinois State Homicide detective Elizabeth Hewitt, as she inventories her empty life, which also parallels the empty existences of the divorced murder victims.
Rusch spends a fair amount of time exploring female sexuality. But that is just an unintentional red herring, in this itinerant hunt for the killer. But there is not a lot of detecting going on, Hewitt is not a great intellect, and not very good investigator, who carries a revolver, instead of an automatic, and no back-up piece. She does not make any breakthroughs in the case, most of her time is consumed by being a Jazz aficionado, always having music in the car, in the house, running through her brain, and even while getting porked by her old boyfriend. We are treated to such musical lines as, "Like a Colrane explosion of thirty-second notes" or "The laid-back contrapuntal arrangements of Miles Davis and the octet." Wow, Rusch sure knows a lot about Jazz, but what does this stuff mean, and is it important? Not really. If you read mysteries, it is not too difficult to realize the truth of the story. N.B. Although there is a Poe house/museum in Baltimore, as well as his grave, there is a much larger collection in Richmond Virginia, and would have been a more realistic robbery site for Poe memorabilia. They even have Poe's walking stick.

Every moment we get to ride along with special agent Elizabeth Hewitt in this fast-paced mystery actively engages one's mind and viscera. Her clues to discover the identity of the killer are premeditated and linear, yet the reader's narrative is deftly cloudy and metaphoric. The murders themselves are grisly and inhumane, exactly the stuff that would make Poe himself turn the pages. From start to finish this book is crafted to be a sophisticated balancing act, between the purposeful homage to Poe and the clever use of his work as vital clues to a modern-day killing spree; between the heroine's remarkable strength and womanly vulnerabilities; between the internal ramblings of the psyche and our public self-projections; between our hope goodness will prevail and a superior evil intellect; between the vile details of the murder scenes and the illusion of beauty crystallized in prosaic sentences. You will be astonished this masterful and wonderfully imaginative novel is Rusch's first.

McHenry County Sheriff Dave Manger shows the skull nailed to a tree with a ribbon hanging down to Illinois State Police Special Agent Elizabeth Taylor Hewitt. She realizes that there is more to the skull, which reminds her of Poe's The Gold Bug and regains a gold scarab that the child witness had taken from the crime scene.

Brenda Kaczmarck is the first victim of the killer. Genevieve Bohannon is next, but Hewitt already sees a weird pattern forming that the culprit is paying homage to Edgar Allen Poe with these homicides that emulate his work. Hewitt turns to academia for a Poe expert, her former lover Professor Scott Gregory to expedite the dark literary pattern so that they might stop and capture the Raven before he finishes in a nevermore blaze of infamy.

Though some readers may initially object to the coincidence of an ex-lover Poe expert, FOR EDGAR is a brilliant police procedural that uses literary references from the great writer as crime clues and messages from the serial killer. Elizabeth is a dedicated law enforcement official struggling to silence the Raven's macabre reign of terror before others end in the rue morgue. Gregory provides her with able professional interpretation of Poe's works. A final arc of the pendulum will surprise yet excite readers who Rusch to read the delightful FOR EDGAR.

Harriet Klausner

My husband and I both love Poe's works...our initial courtship began with a line from Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado". When I saw this book in our local bookstore, naturally I had to buy it. Alas, the writing style is sophomoric, the author references Poe's most well known works in the most obvious manner possible, and he also has an annoying penchant for capitalizing the epithet "Goddamn"...even when it's used in the middle of a sentence! I grew up in Chicago and I've spent a fair bit of time in the near Wisconsin suburbs as well, so I know there actually are intelligent people who live there, but you'd never know it from reading this book. I'm hoping I kept the receipt so I can take this execrable pseudo-"homage" to one of America's greatest horror writers back to the bookstore for a refund!

This was an extremely disappointing book. The identity of "The Raven" was so obvious that for a while I hoped the author was trying to make it seem that obvious only to throw in a last-second twist. Unfortunately, there was no twist and it seemed almost amateurish. The best I can say about this book is that I'm glad I got it as a paperback, and hopefully I can trade it in at a used book store toward a better book. Don't make the mistake I made and spend any money on this book.