Waldegrave is dead. Murdered. His assassin is unknown. His friend, a young man named Edgar Huntly, desperately searches for clues to the identity of the assailant, to no avail. Then one night, Edgar discovers a strange man digging a hole underneath the same elm tree where the slain Waldegrave was discovered. A moment later, the stranger turns from the elm and walks deep into the tangled woods of Norwalk. Thus begins America's first great murder mystery. "Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker" is a dark tale of frontier violence, murder, revenge, and the deep psychological obsessions that break down human rationality. Written in the tradition of the late eighteenth-century European gothic romance, but adapted by Brown to American themes and subjects, "Edgar Huntly" is the crowning achievement of one of America's first great novelists.
Waldegrave is dead. Murdered. His assassin is unknown. His friend, a young man named Edgar Huntly, desperately searches for clues to the identity of the assailant, to no avail. Then one night, Edgar discovers a strange man digging a hole underneath the same elm tree where the slain Waldegrave was discovered. A moment later, the stranger turns from the elm and walks deep into the tangled woods of Norwalk. Thus begins America's first great murder mystery. "Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker" is a dark tale of frontier violence, murder, revenge, and the deep psychological obsessions that break down human rationality. Written in the tradition of the late eighteenth-century European gothic romance, but adapted by Brown to American themes and subjects, "Edgar Huntly" is the crowning achievement of one of America's first great novelists.