Historical crime set at West Point

Submitted: 6th March 2026

The Pale Blue Eye – Louis Bayard

Destination

West Point Military Academy

New York, USA

boarding pass new

This book and the destination is one I have wanted to go to for some time now. A real place and an iconic place with a very interesting story of its own. Edgar Allan Poe – yes THAT one – was a cadet here for a time. He plays a major part in the story and the historical world is ALIVE!

Location map of The Pale Blue Eye

The Pale Blue Eye

Review

I loved this. Oh to be in a novel WITH Edgar Allan Poe as he investigates someone who is murdering people. Someone who left a body and removed his heart.

Grateful I visited this place in a novel mind you. The corridors of cadets and all their goings on is fascinating but chilling and dark too. This is a world I have never experienced before. Well, in an early episode of Columbo..but never in a book I don’t think. It’s fascinating!

Location map of The Pale Blue Eye

The way the books is written really fits well with the subject and the story – it’s of its time, reads like something Edgar Allan Poe would have written himself funnily enough. There are shadows, dark corners and more than a little bit of gore. What it explores is the dark side of people, of the mind, of the world. The dark side of the psyche even.

And for all that, its a slow read, a measured read and one you really need to take your time over. I did. I was resident in West Point for over a week. And it felt good. I took time to see around the place, to really get under its skin and to look at the faces of all those cadets.. But this means I also saw the lingering images of dismembered bodies….

And my favourite bit – Edgar Allan Poe – I met him here during his early days. Before he started writing what he is famous for now. And knowing that as I read was magical – I felt the tingle of knowing about those stories, those images that would become so iconic in the gothic literary world and being right there before the man whose genius would imagine them into being.

This is a novel that builds slowly and then totally whips the mat from under you. Bravo Mr Bayard. I hear this is going to be a movie. Can’t come soon enough.