A Poe and Dupin Mystery

Edgar Allan Poe arrives in London to meet his friend C. Auguste Dupin, in the hope that the great detective will help him solve a family mystery. For Poe has inherited a mahogany box containing sheathes of letters that implicate his grandparents in some of London’s most heinous crimes - those committed by the so-called London Monster who, for two years, terrorised the city’s streets.

Philadelphia, 1844. As violent tensions escalate between 'nativists' and recent Irish immigrants, Edgar Allan Poe’s fears for the safety of his wife, Virginia, and mother-in-law, Muddy, are compounded when he receives a parcel of mummified bird parts. Could his nemesis have returned to settle an old score? Just as odd is the arrival of Helena Loddiges, a young heiress who demands Poe’s help to discover why her lover died at the city’s docks on his return from an expedition to Peru.

Dupin needs Poe’s help solving a deadly crime. Poe agrees and soon becomes enmeshed in Dupin’s quest to bring down the man who single-handedly ruined his family. This rival now wishes destruction upon Poe’s head too. Caught in a deadly cat-and-mouse game within Paris’ famous necropolis, Poe and Dupin must use their wits to survive. And they discover that when venturing down into the Empire of the Dead, it’s not so easy to return from the darkness.