Customer Reviews

In the Shadow of the Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe and Essays by Jeffery Deaver, Nelson DeMille, Tess Gerritsen, Sue Grafton, Stephen King, ... Lippman, Lisa Scottoline, and Thirteen Others

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If you're a Poe fan at all, you owe it to yourself to check out this wonderful collection. To commemorate Poe's 200th birthday its a collection of some of his best stories and poems, with essays and commentary by a number of Edgar Award Winning mystery and horror authors.

I picked it up thinking, well I'll just skip the essays and reread my favorite stories, but surprisingly, the essays were great. They were engaging, insightful and fun to read. You can see how your favorite modern thriller writers were influenced by Poe. Or, if so inclined, you can laugh at their shortcomings next to the undisputed master.

A handful of the essays seem forced (the ones written in verse, and Sue Grafton who seems to be fishing for something good to say) but on the whole the essays are short and sweet (if you consider stories of childhood nighmares sweet). And the book has amazing illustrations; creepy black-and-white, stark, like Edward Gorey without the whimsy.
And of course, there's Poe.

The book includes a variety of his tales, William Wilson, Tell-Tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, Masque of the Red Death, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and others, as well as "The Raven" and "The Bells". And as Poe is undeniably the master, these gems alone would be worth the price of the book.

In the Shadow of the Master: Classic Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Michael Connelly, is more than simply a republishing of 13 of Poe's original tales. If that were all that was here there certainly wouldn't be much to comment on especially since virtually everything Poe ever published is available on the Internet.....for free in most cases. What is of value here are the short essays written by many of today's best authors of the horror/crime genre.

Many of the essayists admit that they first really became interested in Poe in a variety of ways, some, for example, after watching one of Roger Corman's movies from the 60's. The movie The Pit and the Pendulum did it for me. I went to school the next week and checked out The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe from the school library and read it over the Christmas break. Two things happened as a result of that experience. One, I became a lifelong fan of Mr. Poe. The other was the realization that Hollywood could not improve on the written word. Later, when I started buying books, that same edition of The Complete Works was one of the first books I purchased. I still have it and I still read it from time to time.

As I read the essays in the Shadow of the Master, I found that I also shared a fascination with Edgar Allan Poe with each of the writers. A sense of dread over takes the reader when you pick up a Poe story, but it's a dread that won't hurt you. Whether it's a crime story with world famous French detective Dupin or one of Poe's true horror classics like Tell-Tale Heart, we all share a love of the macabre that only Poe can dish up.

In the Shadow of the Master is a fitting salute of Poe's 200th birthday. It is also reassuring that many of today's A list authors are willing to give Edgar Allan Poe his just recognition of having influenced them. All the essays are wonderful, but Michael Connelly, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Laura Lippman's are the best.

This is a perfect book to read some cold winter evening when you can toss a throw over yourself and settle down to a truly frightening session with the master of the macabre.

I highly recommend.

Poe is the best. Horror writing doesn't get any better. I'm so excited to see all these writers who've carried Poe's vision into the 21st century honor him. Their essays are funny and interesting, and make a wonderful compliment to Poe's timeless, terrifying stories.

A brilliantly conceived homage to the master of the detective story: long may Poe and his admirers continue to bring delight to readers of all ages for all time.

If you want to understand America through its literature, it is as essential to read Edgar Allan Poe as it is to read Melville, Twain or Fitzgerald. For America has always been a land marked by a belief in our own exceptionalism. America was the "shining city on the hill," a positive place of eternal goodness and promise. Poe told us to hold off a bit on the laurels. His words took us deep into the darkness and forced us to look whether we liked it or not. He was the first great American writer to teach us that maybe stories don't all have happy endings and redemption doesn't always come with the dawn.

This year marks the 200 anniversary of Poe's birth. But, as Michael Connelly points out in IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER, "happy" is hardly a word people use in the same sentence as Poe. Irregardless, the Mystery Writers of America decided to throw a sort of a birthday party for the dark genius by gathering 16 of his classic short stories and poems along with essays from 20 of today's greatest practitioners of the genre Poe helped create, including Connelly, Stephen King, Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, Laura Lippman and Nelson DeMille.

The result is a wonderfully accessible and lively volume that functions well as both a gateway to Poe for the new reader and a refresher course for those who have not read him since being forced to in high school.

Poe is probably as well known now as a symbol of the macabre, for his booze- and drug-dominated lifestyle and for his bizarre unexplained death at the age of 40 as he is for his actual work. He is the only American author to have an NFL football team named after his most famous creation --- a fact that might be as bizarre as his death.

Well before anybody ever dreamed of "Celebrity Rehab," Poe definitely lived his short life on the edge. And 150 years after his death, as Lippman points out here, who else but Poe has 20 theories circulating about how he died? He was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, wearing clothes not his own. He died soon thereafter, unable to explain what happened to him.

Baltimore native Lippman's essay is one of the things that makes this volume so much fun. Rather than a dry academic analysis, the contributors often tell us how they discovered Poe's work. Several cite the influence of Roger Corman's B-movie horror flicks, and one, DeMille, offers a hilarious story about being trapped in a Long Island graveyard at dusk at the age of 11 after seeing Phantom of the Rue Morgue. Lawrence Block explains how he uniquely figured out a way to lift the curse, not cask, of Amontillado to finally win an Edgar Award, which is the writing prize the Mystery Writers of America bestows each year.

Yet it is the words of Poe himself that still astonish. Not only do the stories hold up, but the shock they provide you as an adult is far different from the thrill you might have experienced as a teenager.

Poe was a revolutionary writer, a true innovator. He invented the detective novel. His character Dupin was what all fictional detectives are based on, according to no less an expert than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As King points out here, "The Tell-Tale Heart" is the first story about a criminal sociopath. And 16 years before Freud was born, Poe was exploring the topic of dual personalities in "William Wilson" and using an unreliable narrator in "The Black Cat."

Poe was not just writing stories; he was writing about psychology before the field even existed. He was also the first well-known American to try to make a living as a writer. For those of us who have followed in his footsteps on that lonely path to poverty, that might explain his need for a drink on occasion. Poe made a grand total of $9 for his most famous work, "The Raven." I would imagine the Baltimore football franchise makes considerably more decked out in their purple and black costumes.

But Poe knew what all good writers know: it is not about the bling, it is about the work. So Poe used words as a sledgehammer to create claustrophobic tales filled with existential dread, horror and death. Every word contributes to the tension, darkness and madness. Like "A Descent into the Maelstrom," the reader is helplessly carried along to an unforgettable climax.

"I will read, and you shall listen; --- and so we will pass away this terrible night together," a character gently says in "The Fall of the House of Usher." Despite living in an age when Hollywood grinds out even more graphic slasher movies each year to shock the young and bored, nothing is quite as scary as reading Poe alone, perhaps in a strange hotel room, far from home. Connelly had that experience while researching one of his novels in Washington, D.C and was literally scared out of his bed. He writes,

"I'd let him take me to a world of dark imagination, where common things become uncommon, where the routine becomes the ghastly unexpected, where a slamming door becomes a shot in the dark."

Poe wrote when America was in the early stages of pushing westward on the road to an Empire that promised universal good. He demanded that we look inside and face the darkness.

King confesses in his essay that the most common question he is asked by people is what scares him in fiction. His answer is "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Poe. King writes, "Here is a creature who looks like a man but who really belongs to another species. That's scary. What elevates this story beyond merely scary and into the realm of genius, though, is that Poe foresaw the darkness of generations far beyond his own." That says it best.

In his fevered dreams and tortured soul, Poe understood something about the human heart that future generations of American writers are still seeking to explore and replicate in their work. But Poe will always be the master. IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER deserves a place on every bookshelf.

--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

I got this book for my mother because she is a high school English teacher. She loved it and is going to be able to use the material in her classroom.

Robert B. Parker, the author of the Spenser and other books, died on Monday, January 18, 2010. Then, for the first time since 1949, on Tuesday, January 19, on Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, no one showed up at his grave to deposit the traditional three red roses and raise the toast to the father of mystery writing. This occurred here on earth. But in heaven, yes in heaven, it was very different.

God, who loves a good mystery, was at the gate to greet Robert, and Edgar was with him. There must have been a thousand angels lined up to the right and to the left of heaven's gate, in a spirited adoring line to get Robert's autograph.

It was a happy day in heaven. Satan could be seen reading a Poe short story. It may have been one that human writers chose, commented upon and placed in In the Shadow of the Master. It is possible. But there was so much merriment, so much chatter, so many angels dancing around looking for more champagne, that it was impossible to see.

Heaven, the angel's knew, would be a more interesting place with both Parker and Poe there. Parker, in fact, had entered heaven with one of Poe's books, for like the angels, he was looking forward to an interesting eternity.

Poe gestured to Parker and offered him a glass of cognac to celebrate Parker's arrival and to mark Poe's birthday. For, you see, it was Poe himself that came to his grave on his birthdays. He would place three roses on his grave to remember the three of his stories that he liked best. Then he would toast himself, as a good writer should, on his successes.

That's why no visitor came to Poe's grave on January 19, 2010. Poe was celebrating in heaven. So were the angels. So was God. And so there was joy that day in heaven, "evermore."

I'm not a E.A. Poe fan - I found this a combination of an Anthology of Poe's works interspersed with "Edgar" award competititors.
I assume Michael Connely lent his name to it for his own reasons, but I could not any rationale for his doing so.

We were required to read several Poe poems and stories when I was in HS in the late 50s. I muddled through them to keep my grades up, but never liked them much.
So recently, looking for some good "old" stories, I bought this collection. Well, just like "Art is in the eye of the beholder", good writing is in the mind of the reader! After finishing this book, I now know why I never liked Poe in High School. He writes about nothing but depressing psychobabble, forlorn whiney characters and really never tells an actual STORY from beginning to end. I can't help but think that his writings were just his personal journals about his perception of his own miserable existance. And how the Edgar Awards represent Mystery Writing is beyond me. Poe's work has nothing to do with mystery stories.
NEVER MORE !!!!
Sorry, Poe fans - get a life!!!!

When you see the list of all the famous authors, you think a collection of short stories honoring " Edgar Allen Poe ". The book is about Poe's works, with an essay from each author, explaining how they first became interested in his works. Would not recommend unless your a die heart "Poe Fan "!!!