Thank you to Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press for sending me an ARC of this title. I received this copy for free and this review contains my honest opinions. 

 

A Mystery of Mysteries is an obviously well-researched book that could have been really fascinating for me to read, but was never quite cohesive enough to fully engage me. My primary issue was with how the events were presented: the book is split into two timelines, which normally I enjoy but just didn’t work for me here. The first timeline details the 5 months preceding Poe’s death and the second timeline deals with the rest of Poe’s life up to those 5 months. Neither timeline was distinctive enough for me to keep people and events in order and I often had to backtrack to figure out what was going on. 

 

Often Poe’s works and the influential people in his life were mentioned in one timeline (but actually appearing late in Poe’s life) but then wouldn’t be fully introduced until the other timeline (earlier in Poe’s life). I would have preferred a full introduction the first time things appeared, and if the entire book had been organized chronologically I don’t think this would have been an issue. It’s almost as if the manuscript was written chronologically and then broken up into this format without cohesively integrating each section. Perhaps this book would have benefited from a 1-page timeline and a list of people and their various names (such as nicknames and married names) to help keep track of everything. 

 

I did really enjoy the short sections that focused on Poe’s importance to the literary world - especially the dive into Poe’s influence on the detective mystery genre - although those weren’t the primary focus of the book. Thank you again to the publisher for sending me a free ARC.