I was looking through my Overdrive wishlist when I found this! A true crime story plus author biography mashup sounded interesting, especially since I enjoyed The Man Who Would Be Sherlock. In The Beautiful Cigar Girl, Stashower takes the reader through the murder of Mary Rogers and the literary career of Edgar Allen Poe.

Mary Rogers was famous for being beautiful and worked at a tobacco shop run by John Anderson. She was the talk of the town and her disappearance in 1838 made waves. Three years later, Mary lied to her fiance about where she was going and was later found dead in the Hudson River. Was she killed by a gang of thugs? Was her death due to a botched abortion? Many theories abound but the truth has never been found.

Both the case of Mary Rogers and the life of Edgar Allen Poe are interesting, but because they didn’t really intersect, the two stories never really came together. Poe may have written about the murder and have a lot riding on its success, but he wasn’t actively involved in it, the way Doyle was involved in George Edjali’s case, and I think that is why the book feels like two stories tied together by an epilogue rather than one story exploring the idea of art drawing from real life.

Another thing that the book missed was the opportunity to look at how Mary Roger’s death was exploited by pretty much all the papers and Poe. Given that Poe literally wrote a story based on her murder and tried to solve it in order to start his literary journal and achieve success, it would have been fascinating to consider why people felt so comfortable using her death as a way to gain and what the ethical implications of it were. I mean, I can definitely think about this issue on my own, but it would have been nice to have the book kickstart the discussion and I think that would have tied the two parts of the book together.

Overall, The Beautiful Cigar Girl had two interesting stories, but unfortunately did not manage to weave them into one account. Most of Poe’s career was unrelated to Mary Rogers, which made the first half of the book feel choppy as we went from Mary’s story to Poe’s career and back. However, if you’re interested in both literature and the true crime genre, you may find this to be an interesting book to read.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva