Baltimore, 1849: Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, even Poe's own family readily accept the official report that he was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. The exception is a young lawyer named Quentin Clark, who puts his own reputation at risk in a quest to find the truth behind Poe's mysterious end. In his "meticulously researched and detailed discussion of the events surrounding Poe's death" (Washington Post Book World), Matthew Pearl reopens this persistent literary enigma, with characters that easily could have been Poe's inspirations. "Thick with intrigue and thicker still with carefully researched details … [the author] doesn't just disinter Poe's story; he disinters the language of Poe's time."—NYTBR