New York Times best-selling author Matthew Pearl is hailed by Angels & Demons novelist Dan Brown as "the new shining star of literary fiction." In this intricately crafted thriller, most people in 1849 Baltimore believe Edgar Allan Poe drank himself to death. But attorney Quentin Clark is determined to restore Poe's reputation, and he knows Poe's fictional detective, Auguste Dupin, was based on a real man. Putting everything on the line, Clark travels to France to track down the sleuth who can determine the true cause of Poe's death. "Pearl masterfully combines fact with fiction and presents some genuinely new historical clues that help reconstruct Poe's final days."-Publishers Weekly