A Mystery of Mysteries by Mark Dawidziak

A Mystery of Mysteries by Mark Dawidziak

An Agatha, Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Ohioana Award nominee!

A Mystery of Mysteries is a brilliant biography of Edgar Allan Poe that examines the renowned author's life through the prism of his mysterious death and its many possible causes.

It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days before he was found, delirious and "in great distress" on the streets of Baltimore, wearing ill-fitting clothes that were not his own?

Mystery and horror. Poe, who remains one of the most iconic of American writers, died under haunting circumstances that reflect the two literary genres he took to new heights. Over the years, there has been a staggering amount of speculation about the cause of death, from rabies and syphilis to suicide, alcoholism, and even murder. But many of these theories are formed on the basis of the caricature we have come to associate with Poe: the gloomy-eyed grandfather of Goth, hunched over a writing desk with a raven perched on one shoulder, drunkenly scribbling his chilling masterpieces. By debunking the myths of how he lived, we come closer to understanding the real Poe--and uncovering the truth behind his mysterious death, as a new theory emerges that could prove the cause of Poe's death was haunting him all his life.

In a compelling dual-timeline narrative alternating between Poe's increasingly desperate last months and his brief but impactful life, Mark Dawidziak sheds new light on the enigmatic master of macabre.

For more than four decades, Mark Dawidziak has worked as a television, film, and theater reviewer. Since 1999, he has been the television reviewer for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. He has written or edited twenty-five books, five of which are about Mark Twain. The Columbo Phile: A Casebook and The Night Stalker Companion: A 25th Anniversary Tribute are two books he's written about iconic TV shows. In 2017, he released Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone, a lighthearted tribute to Rod Serling's famous anthology series.

The Shawshank Redemption Revealed: How One Narrative Keeps Hope Alive, his most recent book, was released in 2019. Grave Secrets, a horror fiction, and The Bedroom, Bathtub, and Armchair Companion to Dracula, a literary biography he co-authored with Paul J. Jim Tully Bauer is an American writer, an Irish Rover, and a Hollywood brawler.