Entombed

Acknowledgments

My first encounter with Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque made an indelible impression on my adolescent imagination. A dead man's heart beating beneath the floorboards, the huge pendulum descending on a prisoner in the pit, the Red Death invading the festive masquerade, and the repeated torment of premature burial and entombment behind cellar walls-each of these narratives was responsible for youthful nightmares, and all of them have lured me back over the years to delight in their dramatic power and poetic elegance.

That Poe was capable of such a body of work-stories, poems, journalistic pieces, and literary criticism-is even more remarkable when one considers his short life and the tragic circumstances of it. Several cities claim the great master of crime fiction as their own- Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston. To my surprise, though, were the many places in New York where Poe lived and in which some of his greatest works were written, and the inspiration he drew from the landscape he so loved to walk.

My greatest pleasure in plotting this book was the opportunity it provided to reread all of Poe's writings. My source was the ten volume collection published by Stone and Kimball in 1894, including the memoir by George E. Woodberry. Poe's life is well-described by Kenneth Silverman in Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance; and by Arthur H. Quinn in Edgar Allan Poe-A Critical Biography.

The Bronx County Historical Society maintains Poe Cottage in remarkable condition, for tourists and scholars alike. Kathleen McAuley is not only its knowledgeable curator, but an enchanting guide. The splendid setting that is the New York Botanical Garden is one of the city's true jewels, as I saw in the hands of Dr. Kim Tripp, and a far less threatening site than it appears in my novel. I am grateful to both institutions for opening their doors to me.

Thanks once again to everyone at Scribner and Pocket Books- Susan Moldow, Roz Lippel, Louise Burke, Mitchell Ivers, Pat Eisemann, Erin Cox, Sarah Knight, Angella Baker-and to John Fulbrook, for my own elegant raven.

To Susanne Kirk, who has guided my hand and spirit from the first pages of Final Jeopardy through the last edit of Entombed, may you always be sitting on my shoulder as I write, through your long and happy retirement.

To Hilary Hale and David Young at Time Warner UK, my gratitude for taking Alex Cooper around the world in such grand style. And to Esther Newberg, the best in the business, I'm glad to have had you at my side since the outset.

My family and friends are my inspiration and source of sustenance. Librarians and booksellers are the generous souls who put my books in readers' hands. And my beloved Justin Feldman- whose childhood playground, in the Bronx, was actually Poe Park-remains my steadfast partner in law and literature, which gives me happiness beyond imagining.