Poor despite Nice writing, Excellent narration,

"The Scribe", by Matthew Guinn is a vaguely supernatural detective story set during the reconstruction of Atlanta following the American Civil War. This book follows an irritating trend I've run across lately, taking a TRUE incident from history and twisting it so that it fits into the author's weird vision. "Child 44" did this, and a few more years ago, I was only person I knew who hated "The Alienist" for doing the same thing.



In this case, Guinn clearly read "The Devil in the White City", a NON-FICTION book about a serial killer who operated during the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, and thought, "Aw shucks! I wish I'd written that! But I'm from Atlanta. Did we ever have a World's Fair?"

No, Atlanta did not, however, they did have an International Cotton Exposition in 1881. But, alas! there was no murderous fiend on the loose in the city! So let's take one of Atlanta's most-notorious crimes, the murder of Mary Phagan, and move it from 1913 to 1881! No one will notice! Only change the name of the child to Mary FLANAGHAN, and change the alleged perpetrator from New York Jew Leo Frank, to New York Jew LEON GREENWALD. Keep the lynching the same, but make the murder MUCH more graphic and gory. In fact, use the illiterate note found with Phagan's body VERBATIM, use the testimony given by the factory janitor VERBATIM, keep the setting in a pencil factory, and then pretend that the solitary rape-murder of a REAL PERSON was part of a sick series of ritualistic torture murders.



Seriously, does the author think people haven't heard this story, which at least 4 movies and a Broadway MUSICAL have been written about? ("Parade" - you should definitely see it.) There isn't a reason to incorporate Phagan's murder into this tale, particularly moving it more than 30 years onto the past, when the political atmosphere (16 years after the Civil War) was entirely different than it would be by the time the incident really happened, nearly 50 years after the War.



Ultimately: the man CAN write. It's a pretty good book, although not satisfying in the end (which takes FOREVER). "The Scribe" is a pretty convoluted title, considering the only mention of that word in the story, and the author can't make up his mind about supernatural content. In addition to "Devil in the White City", he draws from The Crucible ("scary negroes teaching dat dere debbil magic to them white chilluns") and probably a ton of other resources not so well-known to me.

