Joel Rose's first novel, Kill the Poor, spent four months on the Voice Literary Supplement bestseller list. His journalism has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, New York Newsday, and various other publications. He has written for several television shows including Miami Vice and Kojak and he was an editor at D.C. Comics where he wrote stories for both the Superman and Batman comic strips.

Sweltering New York City, summer of 1841, the beautiful 'Segar Girl' Mary Rogers is brutally murdered. Popular amongst the journalistic and publishing elite, the task of finding her killer falls to High Constable Jacob Hays.
At the end of a long and distinguished career Old Hays's investigation will ultimately span a decade, involving gang wars, grave robbing, and clues hidden in the poems of the hopeless romantic and minstrel of the night, Edgar Allan Poe.
Superbly researched and compellingly readable, The Blackest Bird is both a richly textured and atmospheric portrait of the birth of New York, a city raging with bloodshed and duplicity, and a thrilling murder mystery.