The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder by Daniel Stashower
The Beautiful Cigar Girl was given to me to read by a friend, but I hadn’t gotten around to it when I signed up for a class on Creative Fiction and found it on the reading list. I moved it up to the top of the pile and I’m glad I did. It’s an interesting read. The author had a great concept and executed it well.
The book focuses on Edgar Allen Poe’s connection to the real life murder of Mary Rogers which he eventually fictionalized as “The Murder of Marie Roget.” The book was entertaining throughout and I learned a lot about Poe, Mary Rogers’ murder, and the general state of New York City at the time.