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POE NEWS & BOOKS 2006
Poe Forward News 2006
Poe Books 2006
Poe Forward News 2006
Sylvester Stallone announced he will be producing a film about Poe starring Robert Downey Jr.
The PoeForward website's new navigation design continues to be built and plans are to open the revised site in 2007.
Poe Books 2006
Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder
by Daniel Stashower
Hardcover - Oct 5, 2006
From Publishers Weekly:
The author of Edgar winner Teller of Tales now recounts the story of Manhattan tobacco store clerk Mary Rogers, a mysterious beauty whose posse of admirers made her a minor celebrity in 1841 in various newspapers' society pages. The discovery that year of her mutilated corpse fueled a public outcry and a newspaper circulation war, as well as a fictional magazine serial by Edgar Allan Poe featuring his famous detective Dupin speculating on the murder of working-class Parisian "Marie Rogêt." Poe rightly deduced that Mary wasn't a victim of the gang violence that plagued New York City in the absence of an effective police presence. But he came late to the accepted theory that Mary had died of a botched abortion and had to tweak his final installment to maintain his and Dupin's reputations. Although Stashower's account bogs down in comparisons of Poe's revisions of the Rogêt manuscript, it's a generally absorbing account of the birth of the modern detective story. The sordid details of Mary Rogers's stunted life pale in comparison with Poe's own love-starved childhood, self-destructive tidal wave of alcoholism, poverty and rants against publishers and rivals; Poe's genius and literary legacy are hauntingly drawn here.
(Penguin Classics)
by Edgar Allan Poe and J. Gerald Kennedy
Paperback - Oct 3, 2006
by Theodore Besterman
Paperback - Sep 15, 2006
by Louis Bayard
Hardcover - May 23, 2006
From Publishers Weekly:
Bayard follows Mr. Timothy (2003), which brilliantly imagined the adult life of Dickens's Tiny Tim, with another tour-de-force, an intense and gripping novel set during Edgar Allan Poe's brief time as a West Point cadet. In 1830, retired New York City detective Gus Landor is living a quiet life at his Hudson Valley cottage, tormented by an unspecified personal sorrow, when Superintendent Thayer summons him to West Point to investigate the hanging and subsequent mutilation of a cadet. Poe aids Landor by serving as an inside source into the closed world of the academy, though Poe's personal involvement with a suspect's sister complicates their work. But the pair find themselves helpless to prevent further outrages; the removal of the victims' hearts suggests that a satanic cult might be at work. This beautifully crafted thriller stands head and shoulders above other recent efforts to fictionalize Poe.
by Matthew Pearl
Hardcover - May 23, 2006
From Publishers Weekly:
Fans of Pearl's bestselling debut, The Dante Club (2003), will eagerly embrace his second novel, a compelling thriller centered on the mysterious end of Edgar Allan Poe, who perished in Baltimore in 1849. Poe's ignominious funeral catches the notice of Quentin Clark, a young, idealistic attorney, who finds himself obsessed with rescuing Poe's reputation amid rumors that the writer died from an excess of drink. Clark's preoccupation soon becomes all-consuming, imperiling his practice and his engagement, especially after he learns that Poe's legendary master sleuth, the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, was modeled after a real person. The lawyer journeys to France to track down the real Dupin, in the hopes that the detective can help him solve the puzzle of Poe's death. Pearl masterfully combines fact with fiction and presents some genuinely new historical clues that help reconstruct Poe's final days. While Clark remains a little enigmatic, the exciting plot, numerous twists and convincing period detail could help land this on bestseller lists as well.
An Edgar Allan Poe Mystery
(Edgar Allan Poe Mysteries)
by Harold Schechter
Hardcover - Mar 7, 2006
From Booklist:
In the third Edgar Allan Poe mystery, set in late 1845, the amateur sleuth (and would-be literary giant) takes a trip to Massachusetts, looking for a cure for his wife's illness. Naturally, he finds mayhem and murder--a series of murders, in fact, mind-boggling in their deviousness. Aided by a plucky sidekick, one Louisa May Alcott (before she wrote Little Women),Poe pieces together the clues and exposes a criminal mastermind. Schechter, who made his bones writing true crime, clearly has a solid grasp of evil's psychological underpinnings. The Poe novels are gimmicky, to be sure, like any mystery where the protagonist is a famous person, but Schechter makes sure the stories don't feel gimmicky. Poe, who narrates the novel, doesn't seem like a pastiche, and the plot itself is as well constructed as any more conventional mystery. This series could be around for a while.
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