I'd been curious about this book since I first saw it on the shelves - the title, and the raven on the cover, both appealed to me very much. So when I found this fair-condition paperback on the Tyngsboro post office book-swap shelf I was delighted!

Later: Well, it wasn't quite what I expected. Oh, there was a body found bricked into a wall, a la "Cask of Amontillado", and there were Poe-esque references throughout (including a mention of his bust in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx, which I now want to visit someday, and a delightful mention of a "Jeopardy" question citing a Poe story as the first mention in print of the concept of the Big Bang(!)), but as that whole subplot shared the book with a case involving a serial rapist, I didn't find the "entombed" theme as strong as I'd hoped.

If I'd been reading these books in order some of the characters' back stories may have had more impact. As it was, I found them adequately interesting but not enough to make me want to revisit them - not least because of an authorial sucker-punch to one of them late in the story, which seemed to have nothing to do with this plot at all, and could only be seen as a way to set up the next book.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I left this book on a bench in Railroad Square at about 12:45; hope the finder enjoys it!