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“I present to you . . . the truth about
this man’s death and my life.”
Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan
Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the
press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion
that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end
as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except
a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer
who puts his own career and reputation at risk in a passionate
crusade to salvage Poe’s.
As Quentin explores the puzzling circumstances
of Poe’s demise, he discovers that the writer’s last days
are riddled with unanswered questions the police are possibly
willfully ignoring. Just when Poe’s death seems destined to
remain a mystery, and forever sealing his ignominy, inspiration
strikes Quentin—in the form of Poe’s own stories. The
young attorney realizes that he must find the one person who
can solve the strange case of Poe’s death: the real-life model
for Poe’s brilliant fictional detective character, C. Auguste
Dupin, the hero of ingenious tales of crime and detection.
In short order, Quentin finds himself enmeshed
in sinister machinations involving political agents, a female
assassin, the corrupt Baltimore slave trade, and the lost
secrets of Poe’s final hours. With his own future hanging
in the balance, Quentin Clark must turn master investigator
himself to unchain his now imperiled fate from that of Poe’s.
Following his phenomenal debut novel,
The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl has once again crossed
pitch-perfect literary history with innovative mystery to
create a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of
suspense. Pearl’s groundbreaking research—featuring
documented material never published before—opens a new
window on the truth behind Poe’s demise, literary history’s
most persistent enigma. The resulting novel is a publishing
event that, through sublime craftsmanship, subtle wit, and
devious twists, does honor to Poe himself.
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