There's also a dashing lawyer 'the Baron' Dupin who claims to be Dupin and wants to clear Poe's name to restore his own. Clark's main suspect, Duponte, is a retired police officer who resolutely does nothing, so Clark follows him around Paris doing nothing and trying to nudge him into helping. Auguste Dupin of 'The Murders on the Rue Morgue' and a few other stories, is based on a real person and faffs off to Paris to find said person and convince him to solve the mystery of Poe's death. He neglects his job and his supposed love. Things happen, but nothing really seems to happen. When Poe dies and the press drags his name through the mud, Clark is enraged and tries to clear Poe's name by finding answers. Quentin Clark, fan of Poe's exchanges a couple letters with him. It's not like it was bad, I just didn't enjoy it, and I don't know why I forced my self through it. Why am I even bothering to finish this book?ģ00 pages in: Why did I stick with this book so long? I'm so close to the end, it feels pathetic not to finish.ģ54 pages in (today): I nod off during the climax.ģ67 pages in: I read a fascinating 3-page afterword that thoroughly impresses me with the author's research and realize I'd much rather have read this as a nonfiction book. I've been trying to be better about that.ġ00 pages in: I think the plot just started.ġ50 pages in: I tell a coworker I am going to stop reading the book.Ģ00 pages in: I complain to Areg and say I should stop reading the book.Ģ50 pages in: I buy a few used books and put one in my field of vision as incentive to finish this book. Here's how the experience went, approximately:Ģ5 pages in: Why is this guy so obsessed with Poe? And why is he so indifferent to his life-long presumed fiance?ħ5 pages in: I should probably stop. So my reading experience could be as much a product of my changing tastes and interests as the quality of this book itself.

Hence my desire to dip into my older books when looking for a Halloween read.

This year, as I've been trying to weed out my book collection, I've realized that my reading interests have drifted from when I was buying books that I had no time to read to today. Once upon a time in high school (yes, high school) I read and loved Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club enough that I picked up Pearl's next book, The Poe Shadow, from a second hand shop at a point when I had too much homework to read anything for fun, and gave The Dante Club 5 stars when I got a Goodreads account about 6 years later.

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl