Mesmer’s Disciple
A dark tale with a building sense of the eerie, Mesmer’s Disciple moves from the street violence of mid-19th Century New York City to the younger yet equally dangerous city of St. Louis. Police Captain Alvord Rawn is forced to resign his post in New York, and his side-career as a private investigator takes him to St. Louis to bring a wayward artist back to his worried mother. The artist, real-life Charles Deas, has fallen prey to a mesmerist – a practitioner of the art of animal magnetism. Ostensibly used for therapy, mesmerism has darker connotations, and these rise slowly to the fore of this tale. Rawn finds that his attempt to bring Deas back home is not as simple as he had thought, and the story climaxes in a melange of art, the occult, and a clash of armies.
Swanson adeptly explores history and art history, and his renderings of the outdoor life of the untamed West is obviously based on lived experience. The time period is adequately captured, and an interesting side-narrative involves the often rough interaction between nationalities and races. All of the characters are clearly defined, and the pacing is good (not always true with debut authors). The dialogue is at times forced and stilted, and a map of the then-young St. Louis would have been helpful, but these things do not detract from a solid story and a fascinating look at a small sliver of Americana.
