Essay Questions

Who is Byron? What role does he play?

This question might first be raised when Landor makes what will be to some readers an obscure allusion to “paddling” across the Hellespont. The name crops up again a short time later with the discovery of a volume poetry hidden among the abundance of non-fiction books about linguistics, phonetics, history and geography which make up the paltry library of ex-policeman Gus Landor by new acquaintance Edgar Allan Poe. The recurring references to Byron include Poe’s description of Artemus Marquis, the prime suspect in the murder Landor is investigating and Landor’s discovery of an engraving of Byron on the underside of the lid of a truck owned by Poe. Byron becomes an allusive specter hanging over the entirety of the narrative until the final revelation of his concrete significance to the story at hand. This “Byron” will be immediately identified by some readers while remaining a mystery to others. That initial occurrence is an allusion to a poem titled “Written after Swimming From Sestos to Abydos” composed by one of the towering figures of the Romantic movement, George Gordon Byron, more familiarly referred to as Lord Byron. In addition to being a poet of renown, Byron was also one of the participants in the famous writing contest at a Swiss chateau that produced Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and John Polidori’s The Vampyre. Thus, there is a thematic link of horror and the supernatural between Byron and Poe which will be become clearer as secrets are revealed.

What makes the link between Poe and a murder mystery historically appropriate?

Although the murders which are investigated occur in connection with the West Point military academy which Poe actually did briefly attend before things inevitably went wrong for him, it is not that element of history that makes Poe a perfect real-life figure to bring into a work of crime fiction. Edgar Allan Poe is far more closely associated with his stories of the macabre and his poem “The Raven” than he used to be. Doubtlessly, this is partly due to Hollywood’s far greater interest in these tales. Until around the middle of the 20th century, however, Poe was at least as equally famous for being the originator of a new genre of fiction: the detective story. His great detective stories “The Purloined Letter” and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” were at one time more often anthologized than his horror stories. As the man credited with inventing the very genre to which this novel belongs, there could not be a more appropriate historical figure to incorporate into murder mystery novel, especially one that is also tinged with elements of horror and the occult.

What is one horrific aspect of the murder of West Point cadet Leroy Fry?

The murder of a young cadet attending West Point is anything but typical. When Gus Landor first sees his dead body, one of Fry’s hands rests upon his crotch while the other is curled tightly into a balled-up fist. His eyes are ajar, his mouth is grotesquely twisted, his neck a sinister rainbow of red, purple and black. Already, the site is unlike any that Landor ever witnessed during his service as a police officer, but it is one detail in particular that makes it certain this investigation will be like no other because the murderer is certain to be like no other. The chest of Fry’s corpse has a hole in it as if it his body were struck through by a meteor passing right through him. And inside that hole, something is missing among the gooey combination of liver and lungs, something that very definitely should still be there but quite notably is not. In addition to metaphorically stealing the life from Leroy Fry, somebody quite literally stole his heart.