The Poe Shadow

“It was a dark and foggy night…..”
No, no, you will not see that kind of cliché sentence anywhere in Matthew Pearl’s latest novel, The Poe Shadow.
But you will follow the protagonist, young attorney Quentin Clark, into many a dark and foggy night!
Man, the trouble this guy gets himself into! And all of it a result of his indefatigable quest to unravel the mysterious unanswered questions surrounding the final week of Edgar Allen Poe’s life.
Clark, a great fan of Poe’s work, had established a correspondence by letter with the writer. One dreary Baltimore day [October 8th, 1849] he happens upon “the saddest funeral ever seen.” [← Cue first installment of rolling fog]. Unbeknownst to our hero, the funeral is Poe’s own.
Clark, suspecting foul-play in the events surrounding Poe’s demise, is soon entangled in a mesh of intrigue that threatens to destroy every aspect of his former existence. He sifts through a churning sea of spurious information, obvious lies and half-truths. 18 months later, his untiring quest to find out what really happened to Poe takes Clark to Paris, where he discovers two men who claim to be the real-life inspiration [or prototype] of Poe’s fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin.
One of these, [the one Clark himself believes to be the real one] returns with him to Baltimore to work on the case. By recreating the events through a collage of newspaper clippings and the use of Poe’s method of “ratiocination”*[see below] they continue to search through all available clues.
All the while, the second man, claiming to be the real C. Auguste Dupin, resurfaces. And his presence injects a ripping good twist of fog-laden doppelgangerism into an already labyrinthian tale!
We want to believe that Clark knows what he is doing, and we want him to succeed in his [oft-bungling] efforts, but we are never really sure of how it will all turn out. We are never quite sure of who is who…. who is helping, or who is hindering Clark in his investigations.

As I began the book, I wondered if I would have to be a Poe expert [which BTW, I am not] to truly enjoy it. I felt the same way when I began reading his debut novel, The Dante Club.
My conclusion is the same on both counts.
No.
Matthew Pearl is far too fine of an author to hinge the accessiblity of his work on the esoteric expertise of his readers.
There would be very few among us who are as well-versed as Pearl is, in either Dante or Poe. And he knows this. His books, couched as they are in actual historicity, are nonetheless so self-contained and self-explanatory that really, all that is left to do is read and enjoy.
Having said all of that, there is no doubt that a true-blue Poe enthusiast would be reading a different book here, than someone with a casual interest in Poe. There is a lot in The Shadow that depends upon a reader's awareness of the Poe tradition. Knowing it definitely helps see what Pearl is attempting to get across.
Allusions abound!
I found myself, several times, cross-referencing Poe poems and stories and re-reading many of these to get a better sense of Pearl’s story. Such activity may not appeal to all readers, but for someone as far gone as myself, any excuse to learn more about great literature is a valid and readily accepted one.

I hate to say the next thing, because it is placing a preferential evaluation upon two experiences of excellence.
Yet, I think that The Dante Club is a better book, overall, than this one.
Having said that, The Poe Shadow is a book that belongs in the hands of every lover of mystery. All lovers of well-written literature. Every person that loves to squint and try to catch some vanishing detail about that presence in the fog, up ahead.
Get your own copy of The Poe Shadow → HERE.

* Ratiocination. NOUN. The act of deliberate, calculated reasoning through the imagination and spirit; the intimate observation and forecasting of the complexities in human activity, especially the frequent simplicity in that activity. Not interchangeable with mere “calculus” or “logic.”
-- From page 111, The Poe Shadow --

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