Poe Shadow (Pearl)

Book Reviews
The Poe Shadow is best understood as a franchise follow-up to a very clever debut novel... The Dante Club....Naturally, Mr. Pearl's second book attempts to replicate this feat. Using Edgar Allan Poe as its literary catnip, the new novel tries to use Poe-related ratiocination as a means of generating Poe fever....The first and most difficult task for Mr. Pearl is to hook his reader into a Poe obsession....[But] the book's fulsome Poe-worship remains more peculiar than persuasive, to the point where the story's benighted skeptics begin to sound reasonable. "Talking of Poe, Poe, Poe!" one complains. "What is all this about Poe anyway?"
Janet Maslin - New York Times

Pearl's narrative is distinguished by a genuine appreciation for Poe's ongoing influence... Blending scrupulous research with his own fictional flourishes, Pearl invents a young lawyer, Quentin Clark, who becomes obsessed with rescuing Poe's reputation after witnessing the author's hasty, ill-attended funeral. Neglecting both his law practice and his fiancee, Clark travels to Paris to find the detective who served as the model for Poe's "Murder in the Rue Morgue" sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin — the only man, Clark believes, who can solve the puzzle of Poe's untimely death. What follows is a satisfyingly Poe-like tale of psychological intrigue, villainy and murder, all dressed up in rich period detail and locution.
Baltimore Sun

The novel is a homage to its subject: Clark has many of the characteristics of Poe's protagonists - he is a man in the grip of obsession, acting under strange compulsions; a man whom neither the reader nor other characters can entirely trust; whose very existence has a dreamlike quality…The homage extends to the plot as well. In Dupin and Duponte, for example, Pearl revisits the doppelganger theme that so fascinated Poe. In terms of research, some of it original, Pearl has covered the ground with admirable thoroughness. The great advantage of this book, however, is that it will send many readers back to Poe's stories — innovative, hugely influential and as readable now as the day they were written.
London Spectator

Tangled literary tale would have pleased Poe. The Dante Club was a spinoff from Pearl's senior thesis at Harvard about Dante's reputation in 19th-century America. His new novel, The Poe Shadow, is similarly informed by literary research: He has dug up some intriguing facts about the death of Edgar Allan Poe and wrapped them in an intricately tangled tale... Pearl does a meticulous, finely detailed and convincing job of re-creating the texture of life in mid-19th-century Baltimore, from the herds of pigs scavenging in the streets to the tensions over slavery... Poe would have liked it.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

This is similar to Pearl's Dante Club (2002), which portrayed renowned authors trailing a serial killer, in its masterful blend of historical and fictional figures, meticulous research, and nineteenth-century literary style. Whether interest in Poe will make this book equally popular remains to be seen.
Booklist

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.
Publishers Weekly

Mild-mannered Baltimore lawyer Quentin Clark enjoys reading stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe. On hearing of Poe's sudden demise in the fall of 1849, Clark, shocked by the vilification of his beloved author in the popular press, decides to restore Poe's literary reputation. But he soon realizes that his investigation needs some professional help, and who better than the hero of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," C. Auguste Dupin, to assist? But who was the role model for Poe's fictional detective? Several candidates present themselves, and Clark is hard-pressed to deduce the identity of the real Dupin. As his obsession grows, he endangers his career, alienates his family and friends, and runs afoul of a gang of French thugs. In his second novel, Pearl (The Dante Club) demonstrates a clear mastery of Poe mythology and uses his knowledge of 1850s Baltimore to excellent effect. Clark is a bit of a bumbler, and the various denouements tend to be ponderous. Still, this literary historical mystery should please fans; highly recommended for all fiction collections.
Library Journal

The still-unexplained death of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) is the subject of the Cambridge, Mass., author's follow-up to his popular debut historical thriller, The Dante Club (2003). Its premise is irresistible: an investigation by young Baltimore attorney Quentin Clark into the tragic fate of his recently deceased favorite author-to whom, furthermore, Quentin had written, precipitating a friendly correspondence heightened by Clark's impassioned "commitment to represent ... [the] interests" of the perpetually impecunious, wrathful and doubtless alcoholic genius. Refusing to believe his idol had drunk himself to death, Quentin abandons his eternally patient fiancee, judgmental law partner and his career, traveling to Paris to seek the freelance problem-solver known to be the model for Poe's ratiocinative genius Auguste Dupin (solver of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," among other fictional enigmas). Quentin is repeatedly interrogated, sidetracked, physically assaulted and misled as he eventually encounters both a retired amateur sleuth (Auguste Duponte) uninterested in Poe's story and "special constable for the English" Baron Claude Dupin, who's rather too eager to prove that he is "the real Dupin." All three men journey to Baltimore, where the game of proving how Poe died (or was murdered) is afoot-or nearly so, in a sluggish narrative that staggers under the weight of Pearl's considerable (and just barely effectively dramatized) researches. Interesting use is made of Poe's stories and poems, and Pearl whets our interest with tantalizing clues (the whereabouts of the woman Poe was to have taken as his second wife; the man's last name he uttered on his deathbed; the reason he remained in Baltimore rather than completing a planned journey from Virginia to New York). A few surprises aside, however, too little of substance happens, and Pearl's virtually bloodless characters never engage our interest. A disappointing successor to Pearl's terrific first novel.
Kirkus Reviews