I didn't like this book in the early chapters. I picked it up because I enjoyed Pearl's previous book, The Dante Club and I am also a fan of Edgar Poe's writing. Although the book gets off to a slow start, it became a complex mystery that I found engaging. Great characters and a credible description of the time and place in pre-civil war US, with a brief section in France. I usually guess the perp in most mysteries but this one surprised me.

Se nota la admiración y el cariño del escritor hacia Edgar A. Poe. Muy bien documentado.
Su estilo narrativo engancha desde el primer capítulo. Sabe crear muy bien puntos de tensión que te mantienen en vilo asi como sumergirte en giros inesperados.
Muy recomendable para fans de Poe y de la literatura de misterio/detectivesca.

I read The Poe Shadow while living in Connecticut. It was an interesting book based on a side of the Poe story I never knew. Poe had always been a weird character for me, based on my "forced" readings of "The Raven", "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" in high school. At that time, my question was "who writes this stuff?", said with all the ignorant sarcasm my 17 year old opinionated self could muster. Mr. Pearl did a good job of answering that question for the, at the time, 50 year old version of myself, actually getting me to empathize for Poe's situation and condition. The story moves, it gets a bit heavy at times, but Poe was a rather "heavy" kind of guy. I will buy into Pearl's conclusion about Poe's physical state as I read some additional background on Poe and it makes sense. But, all of this was academic. I was in Connecticut, read an interesting, well written book (does Matthew Pearl write anything but?) and that was that.

Fast forward a couple of years and I'm living in Maryland. Went to Baltimore a few times, read about the mysterious character who always left the champagne and rose on Poe's headstone on the anniversary of his death, saw his house, and even the place he supposedly died. Pearl's story took on a bit of a different meaning because the atmosphere of the city brought a lot of his narrative and descriptions to life in a way I could not otherwise experience. Poe is such an anti-hero not only in the book, but also in Baltimore. That city can't seem to honestly come to grips with what they have in that weird little man (yes, despite it all, Poe was weird). I don't suggest you have to visit Baltimore to read this book, but recognize that Pearl has brought the city and their novelist/poet to life through his writing. Visit the city if you can, they can use the tourism dollars. Read the book. It is enlightening.

This is the second book I have read by this author. The first was The Dante Club, an excellent murder mystery where, using clues from passages of Dante's Inferno, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell solve a series of murders in the Boston area. In real life, Longfellow translated The Divine Comedy into English, and Pearl used Longfellow's expertise to great effect in the novel, so much so that I ended up reading The Inferno.

The Poe Shadow attempts to answer questions surrounding the untimely death of Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore in 1849. Pearl did an excellent job of portraying the details of that period in Baltimore. The protagonist, Quentin Clark, a lawyer and devoted Poe fan, felt that the accounts of Poe's death left him with more questions than answers. He travels to France, enlists the help of the supposed "real life" C. Auguste Dupin, who is the Sherlock Holmes type character of the Poe mysteries (Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letters), and from there they begin to untangle a very complicated web with some surprise twists and turns. Pearl has again caused me to dig through my bookshelves to find my crumbly old copy of collected Poe stories.

He's got a third book called The Last Dickens, another murder mystery surrounding the untimely death of Charles Dickens, which I am adding to my "to read" list.

The Poe Shadow is about the lingering shadow of a the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. This book is wonderfully written by Matthew Pearl in the language of the 19th century and Edgar Allan Poe. His main character Quentin Clark investigates the strange circumstance around the death of Edgar Allan Poe in October 1849. Quentin witnesses the funeral of someone who only had 4 attendees to the funeral. He later finds out that it was the funeral of Edgar Allan Poe the famous writer. Quentin goes on an adventure to find out how Edgar Allan Poe died. The last few days of Edgar Allan Poe's life when he comes back to Baltimore are very mysterious, there is little known about the last days of his life. Matthew Pearl attempts to solve this mystery. This book is historical fiction but sprinkled with true facts from the investigations of his contemporaries. This book is well written with many twists and turns. This book is broken down into 5 sections, Baltimore 1849, Paris, Baltimore 1851, Phantoms Chased Forevermore, and the Flood. Each takes Quentin down some interesting places with really good adventures. There are dopplegangers and all sorts of different characters that surface. This is a fascinating read and a great mystery in itself. Although, it does not have a lot of violence, it is a page turner. This is a great read for someone who likes good mystery.

Good book.
I couldn't put it down

The premise of this novel was very intriguing. I liked the concept behind the story, but it could have used a lot more editing. There were quite a few descriptions and events that could have been omitted and allowed the plot to move at a better pace. The ending was one area that needed to be edited. I found myself re-reading a lot to try and follow along as Pearl was revealing Poe's last hours. I'm still not sure I understood where he was going with his story. Then, all of a sudden, everyone's lives were neatly tied up in a mini chapter. Definitely not my favorite read.

It was all fun and games at the beginning but the end of this book was just exhausting. Poe's legacy needed to be more in this book and in the focus, not two (even three) characters fighting for his legacy like a fan girls lol.

I think I actively disliked this book.

The more I think of it, the more I dislike. I read his book about Dante, and didn't hate, but wow I disliked this one.

First off, I know a lot about Poe. Helps that I was a docent (fancy word for tour guide) at the Richmond Poe Museum. So, yeah, I got your Poe right here.

The whole plot didn't make sense. Oh my god, I hated the main character who was pretty much a 19th century stalker. Poe should have gotten a restraining order on this guy. So when Poe dies, the main character, Clark, decides to hunt down the inspiration for Auguste Dupin, from Murders in the Rue Morgue, and find out what happened to Poe.

Hijinks ensue.

But annoying boring hijinks....lowjinks?

Either way it's just OMIGOD GET TO THE POINT and WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS and DON'T YOU HAVE OTHER THINGS TO DO and WOW, SHE SHOULD TOTALLY DUMP YOU and OMIGOD ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS PLOT TWIST.

Seriously, there is no way a person poison a guy in prison because she knows the walls in the hospital are leaking and it's raining a lot and so they will fail after he's transferred to the hospital and that way he can escape.

No.

And that's what you should say to this book...No.

The real redeeming this about this book is that at the end (in the historical notes) you find out that the main character's conclusions about Poe might really be true. That made the book a million times more interesting... and yet I still think it only gets two stars. The main character is a bit too irritating, and not in any sort of loveable or identifiable way. You get sick of him, which makes it hard to keep reading the otherwise interesting story about Poe's death. If you're interest in Poe, just read the last 50 or so pages and the historical notes at the end of the book. The author actually made some previously unknown discoveries about Poe's last days in his research.

I have tried to read this book numerous times and I can’t get myself to finish. I WANT to like it, and the idea is there, but the writing style is not.

I'm going for a tentative 3 stars, I wanted to give this more...but I just couldn't finish it, which is unlike me.

It was nothing to do with the writing, it's well crafted and researched, the author certainly has a district voice, and the story plot had me hooked straight from the cover. Unformataly, it just didn't grab me enough much past the first hundred pages with were hard going. Though I wish it had, I wanted to love it.

It may just be me. I seem to have a personal issue with male writers of this genre (which is my genre) the characters don't always speak to me, and I end up feeling alienated from them. This was certainly the case with The Poe Shadow, I found myself a little too lost in the detail of the writing to form a relationship with the main character.

I'm sure some will absolutely love this, sadly it wasn't for me.