The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl

I have a beef with Matthew Pearl, the author of The Poe Shadow. Let me praise his book first. People who love Poe often also love Dupin, one of the most important detective characters to ever be created. He starred in the famous The Purloined Letter, which you can read here. Sherlock Holmes is very similar to him.

Don't get me wrong, no one is more of a fan of the book than me. I love Dupin, and the way Pearl creates this great sense of who exactly was the inspiration for him? Was it someone posing as a genius with a detective type mind, or someone who really was a Sherlock Holmes person?

The hero in The Poe Shadow writes to Poe, finds out he's just died under very strange and mysterious circumstances, and investigates. His interest in finding the 'real' Dupin takes him to France and into crazy situations. I actually bought this book for myself--I love it that much. It's like an intellectual adventure story almost in the vein of Umberto Eco's excellent Foucault's Pendulum.

If you like Neal Stephenson, you will probably like Eco, and if you like Eco, then Pearl's book is just a shorter version with less foreign language epigrams.

Pearl's obviously got great ideas, I mean a book about Dupin that was that meta at its core was excellent--I my usual rule is no meta ever. This was an exception. By the end of the main action, you feel like you're actually in one of those odd repetitive poems of Poe's or at the end of his infamous and great story The Cask of Amontillado, a great scary story. It's really atmospheric, like his other infamous and excellent story, The Masque of the Red Death. It was even made into a movie.

My problem is that he tells this great tale and then abruptly ends it, and the hero settles into a perfect little life. While this is realistic, I wanted an more epic ending, not nonsensical or anything, just more of a sense that the hero had changed. I needed more. Clearly, I should be housekeeper, and suggest things to him. While I'm at it, I'll do part-time work at the Nolan's house as well!