Speakers of the Dead: A Walt Whitman Mystery Audiobook (Free)

Lambda Award Champion

Speakers of the Deceased is a mystery novel centering around the investigative exploits of a young Walt Whitman, in which the reporter-cum-poet navigates the seedy underbelly of NY City’s body-snatching industry so that they can exonerate his friend of a wrongful murder charge.

The year is usually 1843; the place: New York City. Aurora reporter Walt Whitman finds the Tombs jail lawn where his friend Lena Stowe is normally scheduled to hang for the murder of her hubby, about Speakers from the Deceased: A Walt Whitman Secret Abraham. Walt intends to provide proof on Lena’s behalf, but Sheriff Harris converts him aside. Lena drops to her loss of life, and Walt vows to posthumously exonerate her.

Walt’s estranged partner, Henry Saunders, returns to NY, and both men uncover a connection between body-snatching and Abraham’s murder: a guy named Samuel Clement. To get to Clement, Walt and Henry descend right into a harmful underworld where resurrection men steal the bodies of the recently deceased and sell these to medical colleges. Without legal means to acquire cadavers, medical learners depend on these bad guys, and Abraham’s involvement with the Bone Bill-legislation that would place the resurrection guys out of business-seems to possess resulted in his and Lena’s fatalities.

Fast-paced and gripping, Speakers of the Dead is a captivating reimagining of 1 of America’s most much loved literary figures.