Nevermore

In his first novel since the classic Falling Angel, William Hjortsberg returns to the labyrinthine world of mystery and horrific murder he has made uniquely his own. Set in 1920s New York City, at the dawn of the Jazz Age, Nevermore opens with the shocking discovery of a brutal double murder in a Hell's Kitchen tenement. The seemingly random attack baffles the police, but as the murder rate escalates, each new crime more grotesque and elaborate than the last, a shocking pattern takes shape. From the bloodcurdling screams of a one-eyed cat atop a decomposing corpse to a bottle-blond floating in the Hudson River, the unknown killer meticulously recreates grisly scenes out of the pages of Edgar Allan Poe's fiction - crimes that until now existed only in the famed author's macabre imagination. Meanwhile, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the brilliant creator of Sherlock Holmes, while touring America to promote the Spiritualism in which he passionately believes, finds himself plagued by visits from Poe's ghost. His unlikely friend Harry Houdini, the world-renowned magician (who takes personal and professional pleasure in debunking mediums - all the while secretly yearning for contact with the beloved soul of his deceased mother), may in fact be the murderer's true target. Both men fall under the spell of Opal Crosby Fletcher, a beautiful and seductive high-society clairvoyant. Convinced she is the reincarnation of Isis, the ancient Egyptian fertility goddess, she truly appears to have the startling ability to contact inhabitants of the spirit world. Opal knows entirely too much about the nature of the crimes, and she haunts Houdini's dreams in ways that are not entirely spiritual. . As the noose tightens around Houdini, he is bound together with Sir Arthur and Opal in a thrilling knot of maniacal terror. Forces beyond their comprehension conspire to destroy all three, sweeping them into a bloody vortex of vengeance, madness, and death.