Paul Raymond Reid

Walt Whitman and the Phrenology of Murder Paul Raymond Reid

The journalist Eugene Lannon has not seen his friend and colleague, Walt Whitman, for some time. They meet up at Pfaff's, a local watering hole. Whitman is at a critical juncture as he contemplates expanding and revising Leaves of Grass. Lannon is ensnared in some sort of a relationship with his landlady. Eugene and Walt are soon caught up as participants and would-be detectives in a series of gruesome murders. The killer is marking the victims. What is the story the murderer is trying to tell? What in the past has launched the killing wave? Set against the backdrop of antebellum Manhattan and Brooklyn, this historical mystery mixes sexual mores, politics, music, poetry, and the science of Phrenology in a compelling portrait of a transitional time.