That's a B-Format paperback there, and 290 pages, which at the current penny to page rate of British publishers is something of a bargain if the book were average. As it's first rate it's a steal.
You'll probably know the unprolific Mr Hjortsberg as the author of Falling Angel, the best horror/crime fiction crossover book ever, and worthy of your attention if you haven't read it. Nevermore features Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife on tour in America. A killer is recreating scenes from Edgar Allen Poe's fiction, in horrific detail. Doyle is friends with, and sometimes in conflict with Harry Houdini. The conflict is over Spiritualism - Doyle is a proponent of it, Houdini an equally fervent debunker.
Doyle is asked to 'solve' the murders and at the same time is haunted by the shade of Poe - or is he a figment in Poe's glimpses of the future? Doyle comes to believe that the final target of the Poe killer is Houdini himself…
This brief summary does little justice to the fully realised world that Doyle, Houdini, a gallery of contemporaries and the shade of Poe exist in, nor to the suspense Hjortsberg's command of language and plot deliver. Like EL Doctorow's The Waterworks this captures past America in amber. One of the best books of recent times, seek it out.
