The Hum Bug

400 pages. Edgar Allan Poe's introduction to America's greatest showman is, more accurately, a confrontation. Poe has taken Barnum to task in print, exposing Barnum's museum "curiosities" as frauds - flagrant humbugs designed to feed a vulgar public appetite. But Barnum hasn't come to Poe's New York City residence for a retraction. He has arrived - with the audacity that has made him one of the city's most famous men - to ask for a favor.A young beauty with a shadowy past has been savagely murdered. Her hideous wounds mirror a gruesome tableau in Barnum's wax exhibit - down to the flawless rose between her lips - causing authorities to ponder Barnum's own responsibility. He has no recourse other than to solve the crime himself - with the aid of the master of morbid, criminal motivation. Having already achieved a reputation for deductive brilliance by solving Baltimore's notorious "Nevermore Murders," Poe accepts Barnum's challenge.But neither the writer nor the huckster - each with a curious taste for the macabre - has anticipated the jagged maze that is the soul of a madman. For someone else among the night streets has a gift for the sensational. The blood he spills is no humbug. And - with the blade of a butcher's knife - he'll do what he must to outshine these two legends.…