Poe Must Die

"Poe Must Die" is one of my favorite books and I've read it several times. Marc Olden takes Poe, the father of the detective story, on a dangerous journey into New York's seamy underworld on the hunt for a necromancer. Joining Poe on the hunt is a powerful Englishman, Pierce James Figg, who is a boxer and equally skilled with the pistol, cudgel, short sword and knife. The necromancer, Jonathan, has brutally killed Figg's family and Figg is going to have his revenge. Figg provides the brawn and Poe the brains as they pursue their quarry. The book is set in the 1840s, the same era as "Gangs of New York" and it evokes the squalor and danger of the city at that time. Other historical figures like P.T. Barnum and Charles Dickens appear in the story. The character of Poe is richly drawn and you only wish that there could be a sequel to the book. Unfortunately, in real life Poe dies only a couple of years after this story would take place. But he would've enjoyed "Poe Must Die", no doubt about it. And so will you.

Fans of historical pastiches like Doctorow's "Ragtime" or Hjortsberg's "Nevermore" will enjoy this clever and action-packed yarn about Edgar Allan Poe and an adventure that embroils him toward the end of his short life. He gets to use all of his deductive powers in a nasty and occult-tinged case that would have challenged his immortal detective, C. Auguste Dupin. It helps to have a knowledge of Poe and his works, but Olden provides plenty if biographical info along the way, so it's not necessary to be a Poe nut to enjoy it. Along the way, we meet Charles Dickens and P.T Barnum among other historical figures well known in the 1840s, and we see the seamy hell-hole that was New York in those days, as limned so well in Martin Scorsese's movie "Gangs of New York." I'd call this a tasty entertainment for a cold night-- not as conceptually gratifying as Rudy Rucker's Poe pastiche "The Hollow Earth," but worth seeking out if Poe is to your taste.