Blackest Bird: A Novel of Murder in Nineteenth-Century New York, (Paperback)

from maxsumillion

Not a bad book and i think it would appeal more to a fan of the murder mystery genre but i find joel rose's style of writing hard to follow at times and the fact that he spent 18 years writing the book only shows through in the amazing amount of adjetives he manages to fit on each noun. If the bo...

from Laurenbdavis

This is an intriguing, if flawed book, and it's certainly not for everyone. If you're looking for a murder mystery (and that sort of plot pacing) look elsewhere. If you enjoy languorous period character pieces, full of somewhat squalid details and a good bit of depravity, this one's for you. As i...

from wulf

I wonder if The Blackest Bird, "a novel of history and murder", by Joel Rose would be more intriguing for someone well-versed in the time and place of its setting (New York in the 1840s)? As a murder mystery, a genre in which I am better read, it drags along in a desultory manner. The book starts...

from Doondeck

It took Joel Rose 18 years to write this book. He should have quit after 18 days. A silly look at Edgar Allan Poe and an amateurish attempt at a murder mystery.

from Uffer

The problem with this book is that it's trying too hard to be too many things at once. The murder supposedly at the core of the story gets sidelined for an eternity while we are shown a different (and frankly uninteresting) murder or two, the politics of the publishing of the day, the neuroses of...