Overview

Mesmerizing Poe is an imaginary solution to the authentic secrets within the Edgar Allan Poe story The Mystery of Marie Roget, revealed through overtly and explicitly retelling the old story in a new version (to generate understanding and add depth through intertextuality). The tale of mystery and suspense shows how Poe was hired by a dark horse political candidate running for mayor of New York to solve the homicide of the beautiful young girl Mary Rogers who had once worked for the office seeker. Through the candidate's subterfuge, the alleged killer was publicized as a sailor, and the contender was cleared of all suspicion. Ultimately, the candidate confessed to murdering Mary Rogers. Poe had written in his Philosophy of Composition, The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. With this aim, Poe staged his saga by writing in the voice of his double and alter ego, Le Chevalier Cesar Auguste Dupin, a knight in the French Legion d'honneur, to capture the key to the crime. While arousing the fascination of the public, Poe's psychological persona masked his own darker Gothic depths or bipolar disorder.

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9781511475471

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Rick Hammer was born to be a writer in 1952, skilled in communications at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota and became conversant in journalism for 33 years. June 18, 1982, while his wife Brit was modeling through Elite agency in New York, another charmeuse she knew named Marie Josee Saint-Antoine was discovered stabbed to death. Models work wonders, not just as femme fatales, alluring the public eye, not just as risque caprices. Yet when the latest sensation's mesmeric life was cut short, she fell victim to those who confuse enchantment with provocation. After sharing Brit's shock and horror and worry for her safety due to their likeness, they recognized the resemblance of her confidante's name to that of the murdered girl in the Poe story. Strange coincidences, that these two events happened near the same place, that each could have involved suspects who were eminent, yet indiscreet men who betrayed girls' trust. First pursuing the angle with scrutiny for the weekly newspaper New York Press edited by Russ Smith, illustrated by Tom Chalkley, the author later developed the idea as a screenplay and a novella. Morgan Library, Paris, Philadelphia and Baltimore were resources.

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