An Historic Crime, "The Beautiful Cigar Girl"

[XanaDUer]

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/living/16400174.htm

But a brutal crime that year had a long-reaching impact on the life of the city and American culture in general, Daniel Stashower shows in “The Beautiful Cigar Girl.”

The case of Mary Rogers was a sensation that led to the establishment of New York’s first full-time police force, new prominence for its newspapers (the Herald in particular) and the furthering of an infant genre of storytelling, the whodunit.

Stashower, who has written five mystery novels and a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, does an excellent job of weaving together several distinct stories: Rogers and her death, the subsequent investigation as reported in the scandal-sheet newspapers of the day and the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe.

Mary Rogers, born in 1820, was well-known in late 1830s New York as the “beautiful seegar girl,” a clerk at John Anderson’s Tobacco Emporium at 319 Broadway. She was, by all accounts, a lovely young woman, raven-haired, full-figured, with dark eyes and a bewitching smile...

[myrna minx]

1. This sounds like a very interesting book.

Thanks for posting. :hi: