Thoreau on Wolf Hill
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Far from the tranquility of Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau confronts the chilling reality of an epidemic. . .as well as cold-blooded murder.
The winter of 1847 has brought a consumption epidemic which is devastating the village of Plumford, Massachusetts. In an atmosphere of increasing hysteria and superstition, country doctor Adam Walker and philosopher Henry David Thoreau seem the only voices of reason.
The winter also brings two visitors to Plumford. Solomon Wiley hails from Rhode Island and offers his services as a vampyre hunter, insisting that the scourge is supernatural in origin. At the same time, Adam's cousin Julia has returned home from France, mysteriously without her new husband.
When a former student of Thoreau's is found mutilated and drained of blood in the woods, Wiley insists that a legendary Indian vampyre has arisen. Dismissing the blustering fearmonger, Thoreau and Adam follow clues to the backstage world of a Boston theater, the smoky decadence of an opium den, and an Indian burial ground. Both men will need to keep their wits about them--or risk ending up in coffins of their own. . .
Praise for Thoreau at Devil's Perch
"A promising debut. . .Thoreau is just as you'd expect him: erudite, eccentric, waxing philosophical about his love of nature, and a natural detective." --Publishers Weekly
"Ambitious. . .the research and fresh take on Thoreau make for an admirable start." --Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
During the winter of 1847, consumption rages through the small community of Plumford, Mass., in Beth and Ben Oak's enjoyable second Henry David Thoreau mystery (after 2013's Thoreau at Devil's Perch). Thoreau's friend Dr. Adam Walker, who has returned to Plumford from Boston to take over his late physician grandfather's practice, must contend with the superstitious Solomon Whitty, who insists that vampirism is responsible for the deaths attributed to the illness. Whitty goes so far as to dig up the corpse of his dead niece, Hetty, to prevent her from rising from the grave and sucking the life out of her sister, Joanna. The subsequent murder of a former student of Thoreau's, with wounds suggesting that his throat was torn out by some mysterious creature, raises the ante. Walker is an able Watsonian sidekick to the Holmes-like Thoreau, and the solution is even cleverer than in the previous book.
