Now, I will be honest, my knowledge of Edgar A. Poe’s work is not vast. In fact I am embarrassed to admit that after two stories and some poems I volunteered for the Tennessee Williams alternative in school and never looked back. Actually tell a lie, I seem to also remember a very interesting adaptation of The Raven in the Simpsons but let’s not go there… What I’m trying to get to is that although not a huge fan of Poe’s work even I knew that his death was mysterious to say the least. And here came a book to explain it all to me – I was sold before I even read it!
I always found historical fiction immensely enjoyable but I always seemed to focus in medieval times. Something about how horrible life could be in the Middle Ages seemed strangely alluring, so 19th Century historical crime is certainly new territory for me. There is one thing though that really gets to me in historical fiction, and that’s anachronisms. I am excited to report that Matthew Pearl’s work passed my anachronism scrutiny! Hooray for well-written fiction!
The plot follows a young lawyer, Quentin Clark, in Baltimore who is a great admirer of Poe’s work and happens to witness Poe’s funeral. He finds out about the circumstances surrounding his death and tries to shed some light to the mystery. He becomes particularly fixated on finding the real life inspiration for Poe’s literary detective and asking him to solve the crime. When two such candidates become involved the story surrounding Poe’s death becomes even more complex and chaos ensues.
This is the part where I want to point out that Quentin is a moron. An obsessive, hero-worshipping moron! His actions are, for the majority of the plot at the very least naïve if not idiotic! Why yes, if you are being wanted by the police why not stroll around the city for hours. MORON! Aside from the unfortunate mental abilities of the protagonist there is another issue with the book- this book has not met a coincidence it didn’t like. Even statistically there are so many coincidences surrounding what goes on around Quentin that my eyes rolled so far back they came back around.
Yet somehow this book is brilliant! It is well written, well planned out and it creates an atmosphere that you feel you emerge yourself in a foggy 19th century Baltimore just by opening the cover. And there is another point of brilliance in this book. As explained in the historical note the book is extremely well researched and the plot is used as a method for the author to present his original research findings and opinions on the death of Edgar Poe. The reasoning, which I will admit the author takes ages to get to, is simple clear and elegant. All in all, with the exception of an unfortunate series of characters cropping up, this book is great. More please!
Enjoyed it: Yes!
Read again: A definite maybe!
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