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, Laura Lippman, Lisa Scottoline, and Thirteen Others

Overview

Few have crafted stories as haunting as those by Edgar Allan Poe. Collected here to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth are sixteen of his best tales accompanied by twenty essays from beloved authors, including T. Jefferson Parker, Lawrence Block, Sara Paretsky, and Joseph Wambaugh, among others, on how Poe has changed their life and work. Michael Connelly recounts the inspiration he drew from Poe's poetry while researching one of his books. Stephen King reflects on Poe's insight into humanity's dark side in "The Genius of 'The Tell-Tale Heart.'" Jan Burke recalls her childhood terror during late-night reading sessions. Tess Gerritsen, Nelson DeMille, and others remember the classic B-movie adaptations of Poe's tales. And in "The Thief," Laurie R. King complains about how Poe stole all the good ideas . . . or maybe he just thought of them first. Powerful and timeless, In the Shadow of the Master is a celebration of one of the greatest literary minds of all time. The Mystery Writers of America, founded in 1945, is the foremost organization for mystery writers and other professionals dedicated to the field of crime writing.

Editorial Reviews

The Mystery Writers of America presents a collection of Poe tales with afterwords by 20 distinguished writers who honor Poe's powerful influence on the modern crime story. Stephen King, reflecting on "The Tell-tale Heart," credits Poe with writing "the first tale of criminal sociopathy." Lisa Scottoline, in her perceptive appreciation of "William Wilson," cites a score of contemporary works that silently acknowledge its influence in their exploration of "the spookiness that comes from the fragmenting or doubling of the self, and the splintering of identity." P.J. Parrish, writing reverently on "The Black Cat," praises it as, among other things, "an early example of genre-crossing" in its splice of horror and detection. Contributions from Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Tess Gerritsen and others-many of them Edgar winners-vary in their appreciation from the deeply personal to the respectfully analytical, and from the lightly humorous to the deadly earnest. (Jan.)

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Author Information

Bio of Michael Connelly

MICHAEL CONNELLY decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing--a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews. After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. You can read this story at the Sun-Sentinel web site. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper echelons of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and landing him in the city about which Chandler, his literary hero, had written. After three years on the crime beat, Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992, and later won the Edgar Award for best first novel by the Mystery Writers of America. Connelly followed up with three more Bosch books, The Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde, and The Last Coyote, before publishing The Poet, a thriller with a newspaper reporter as a protagonist, in 1996. In 1997, he went back to Bosch with Trunk Music, and in 1998 another non-series thriller, Blood Work, was published. Blood Work was inspired in part by a friend's receiving of a heart transplant and the attendant "survivor's guilt" the friend experienced, knowing that someone died in order that he have the chance to live. Connelly has been interested and fascinated by those same feelings as expressed by the survivors of the plane crash he wrote about years before. Blood Work is soon to be released as a major motion picture in early fall 2002 starring Clint Eastwood, Anjelica Houston, and Jeff Daniels. Angels Flight was released in 1999 and was another entry in the Harry Bosch series. Void Moon, was released in 2000, and introduced a new character, Cassie Black, a high-stakes Las Vegas thief. His 2001 release, A Darkness More Than Night, united Harry Bosch with Terry McCaleb from Blood Work, and was named one of the Best Books Of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times. Michael Connelly was also one of the creators, writers, and consulting producers of Level 9, a TV show about a task force fighting cyber crime that ran on UPN in the fall of 2000.. Connelly's books have won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Nero, Maltese Falcon (Japan), .38 Caliber (France), and Grand Prix (France) awards. He lives with his wife and daughter. - Bio courtesy of www.michaelconnelly.com

Bio of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 49), was born in Boston, USA. His parents were actors but both suffered from tuberculosis and died in 1811. The two-year-old Edgar was taken in by John Allan, a wealthy merchant - hence the middle name. He had a very happy childhood as the only child of a rich family. He did well at school, especially in languages and athletics. In 1926 Edgar went to the University of Virginia. In his first term her did no work, spending his time on wine, women and song! He had a huge row with his step-father and ran away to join the army. A few years later Mrs Allan begged her husband to find him and make up the quarrel. This happened but the two men never managed to have a good relationship again. When his wife died, John Allan remarried and his new wife hated Edgar. So, by 1831 he was out in the world, alone and broke. Edgar was by now writing poetry but with little success. He did find a new family, an aunt and married her fourteen-year-old daughter. They moved from place to place and so Edgar moved from job to job getting the occasional story printed. They were very poor, often cold and close to starvation. His wife was ill and Edgar was almost an alcoholic. When his wife died, Edgar began to court wealthy widows and his writing became more and more tortured. George Bernard Shaw called him, "the finest of finest of artists"; but he died alone in pain and poverty when he was only forty. Almost his last words were: "I wish to God someone would blow my damned brains out." - it is not difficult to see why some of his best-remembered stories are grotesque and macabre.

Bio of Nelson DeMille

Nelson Richard DeMille was born in New York City on August 23, 1943 to Huron and Antonia (Panzera) DeMille. He moved as a child with his family to Long Island. In high school, he played football and ran track. DeMille spent three years at Hofstra University, then joined the Army and attended Officer Candidate School. He was a First Lieutenant in the United States Army (1966-69) and saw action as an infantry platoon leader with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam. He was decorated with the Air Medal, Bronze Star, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. DeMille returned to the States and went back to Hofstra University where he received his degree in Political Science and History. He has three children, Lauren, Alexander, and James, and still lives on Long Island. DeMille's earlier books were NYPD detective novels. His first major novel was By the Rivers of Babylon, published in 1978 and still in print, as are all his succeeding novels. He is a member of The Authors Guild, the Mystery Writers of America, and American Mensa. He holds three honorary doctorates: Doctor of Humane Letters from Hofstra University, Doctor of Literature from Long Island University, and Doctor of Humane Letters from Dowling College. Nelson DeMille is the author of By the Rivers of Babylon, Cathedral, The Talbot Odyssey, Word of Honor, The Charm School, The Gold Coast, The General's Daughter, Spencerville, Plum Island, The Lion's Game, Up Country, Night Fall, and Wild Fire. He also co-authored Mayday with Thomas Block and has contributed short stories, book reviews, and articles to magazines and newspapers. His newest book, THE GATE HOUSE, is the much-awaited follow-up to his beloved novel The Gold Coast and will be released in October 2008.

Bio of Jeffery Deaver

Jeffrey Deaver was born in Chicago, Illinois. He received his journalism degree from the University of Missouri and his law degree from Fordham University. Before attending law school, Deaver worked as a business writer, writing poetry in his spare time, as well as songs, which he traveled around the country and performed. After law school, Deaver got a job with a Wall Street law firm practicing corporate law. He later quit practicing law, in 1990 to write full time. His first novel was entitled "Voodoo," a horror story, his first and only book of that kind. Deaver went on to write suspense novels, including "A Maiden's Grave," which was made into a film by HBO called "Dead Silence." His novel "The Bone Collector" was made into a feature film by Universal Pictures featuring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. He writes short stories for Ellery Queen Readers and Alfred Hitchcock magazines. Deaver is a 4 time Edgar Award nominee as well as having received the Ellery Queen Readers Award for Best Short Story of the Year twice. He is the author of fifteen novels and has written some of those stories under the pseudonym William Jeffries.

Bio of Et Al.

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Bio of Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen is the author of several successful medical thrillers. Gerritsen began writing as a means of relaxation from the stressful life of a physician and ultimately abandoned her career as an internist. Her books, such as Life Support and Bloodstream, deal with highly ethical dilemmas in a complex and hypnotizing manner. Bloodstream, which is primarily about the selling of human organs on the black market, also explores the subjects of youth violence and parents who become afraid of children. Gerritsen was born on June 12, 1953 in San Diego and attended Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco. In addition to her medical stories, she is the author of several romantic suspense novels published as part of the "Harlequin Intrigue" series.

Bio of Sue Grafton

New York Times bestselling author Sue Grafton is published in 28 countries and 26 languages-including Estonian, Bulgarian, and Indonesian. Books in her alphabet series, begun in 1982, are international bestsellers with readership in the millions. And like Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Robert Parker, and John D. MacDonald "the best of her breed". Sue Grafton has earned new respect for the mystery form. Her readers appreciate her buoyant style, her eye for detail, her deft hand with character, her acute social observances, and her abundant storytelling talents. Sue divides her time between Montecito, California and Louisville, Kentucky, where she was born and raised. She has three children and two grandchildren. Grafton has been married to Steve Humphrey for more than twenty years. She loves cats, gardens, and good cuisine.

Bio of Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman was a newspaper reporter at the Baltimore Sun for twelve years. Her previous novel, What the Dead Know, was a New York Times bestseller. Her Tess Monaghan books--By a Spider's Thread, The Last Place, The Sugar House, Baltimore Blues, Charm City, Butchers Hill, and In Big Trouble--have won the Edgar, Agatha, Shamus, Anthony, and Nero Wolfe awards, and In a Strange City was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Lippman is also the author of the critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Every Secret Thing. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Bio of Lisa Scottoline

Lisa Scottoline writes legal thrillers that draw on her experience as a trial lawyer at a prestigious Philadelphia law firm and also her clerkships in the state and federal systems of justice. She is an honors graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and its law school, where she was associate editor of the Law Review. Scottoline won the premier award in suspense fiction, the Edgar Award, for her second legal thriller, Final Appeal. Her books are used by bar associations for the issues of legal ethics they present and she has lectured on the subject at law schools around the country. Lisa Scottoline ' s books have been translated into more than twenty languages. A native Philadelphian, she lives with her family in the Philadelphia area.

Bio of Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of the elderly couple. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged. Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. On Mother's Day of that year, Stephen learned from his new editor at Doubleday, Bill Thompson, that a major paperback sale would provide him with the means to leave teaching and write full-time. Carrie was published in the spring of 1974. That same fall, the Kings left Maine for Boulder, Colorado. They lived there for a little less than a year, during which Stephen wrote The Shining, set in Colorado. Returning to Maine in the summer of 1975, the Kings purchased a home in the Lakes Region of western Maine. At that house, Stephen finished writing The Stand, much of which also is set in Boulder. The Dead Zone was also written in Bridgton. In 1977, the Kings spent three months of a projected year- long stay in England, cut the sojourn short and returned home in mid-December, purchasing a new home in Center Lovell, Maine. After living there one summer, the Kings moved north to Orrington, near Bangor, so that Stephen could teach creative writing at the University of Maine at Orono. The Kings returned to Center Lovell in the spring of 1979. In 1980, the Kings purchased a second home in Bangor, retaining the Center Lovell house as a summer home. Because their children have become adults, Stephen and Tabitha now spend winters in Florida and the remainder of the year at their Bangor and Center Lovell homes. The Kings have three children: Naomi Rachel, Joe Hill and Owen Phillip, and three grandchildren. He has put some of his college dramatic society experience to use doing cameos in several of the film adaptations of his works as well as a bit part in a George Romero picture, Knightriders. Joe Hill King also appeared in Creepshow, which was released in 1982. Stephen made his directorial debut, as well as writing the screenplay, for the movie Maximum Overdrive (an adaptation of his short story "Trucks") in 1985.

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins e-books

Filesize

2.60 MB

Number of Pages

416

eBook ISBN

9780061727177