Poe's True Following

by Jeanne Matthews
Author of the Dinah Pelerin Mysteries

Everyone who leaves a comment this weekend will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of Jeanne's new book, HER BOYFRIEND'S BONES.

Edgar Allan Poe invented the mystery genre before the word “detective” was coined.  His brainy sleuth Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin was the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot and everyone who writes detective fiction today owes a debt to Poe’s creative genius. The writers who blog as “Poe’s Deadly Daughters” pay homage to his legacy on a daily basis.

I hadn’t thought consciously about the man for years until I tuned in to an episode of the TV show, “The Following.” 
 
The plot involves an English lit professor who is obsessed with Poe. As a “tribute” to his hero, he has murdered dozens of women. Captured and sent to prison, he escaped and launched a cult of copycat serial killers. Call me cozy, but psychotic serial killers aren’t my cup of tea. Personal taste aside, I still think “The Following” exploits the element of horror in Poe’s work while ignoring the craft and complexity. It’s true that whenever a woman appears in one of his stories or poems, she tends to be dead. Reading his biography, it’s not hard to see why. Poe experienced a lot of bad luck in his life – persistent poverty, melancholy, alcoholism, and more than a few scathing reviews of both his work and his character. But when it came to the ladies, he was positively snakebit.

His mother Eliza, an itinerant actress, died of consumption at the age of 24 and his father, who had deserted Eliza and their three children, died a few weeks later. Two-year-old Edgar was taken in and raised by the Allan family, but the love of a foster mother couldn’t compensate for the loss of his birth mother. He spent his entire life searching for a substitute. 

At the age of twelve, he attached himself to Jane Stanard, the beautiful mother of a school friend, but she soon went mad and died. His childhood sweetheart Elmira Royster comforted him for a time, but while he was away at school she married another man. Resilient to a fault, he transferred his affections to his cousin Virginia. He married her when he was 27 and she was 13, although he maintained publicly that she was much older.
 
He idolized little Virginia, but it wasn’t long before “a wind blew out of a cloud” and chilled his young bride, as recounted in the poem “Annabelle Lee.”  While Virginia lay dying of tuberculosis, Poe drowned his sorrow in drink. His spirits rebounded miraculously when he met the “ardent, sensitive, and impulsive” Fanny Osgood.  The two conducted a clandestine love affair until Fanny, too, felt a chill and betook herself to a warmer clime for her health’s sake. With Fanny gone and Virginia coughing her life away, poor lonely Edgar again sought solace, this time in the arms of an author named Elizabeth Ellet. Things were looking up in the romance department until Fanny got wind of the affair and in a jealous snit, tipped Virginia to her husband’s infidelity. If Virginia was saddened by the news, she didn’t suffer for long.  She died at the age of 20.

 Poe continued to write, but his stories didn’t earn enough to keep his creditors at bay.  “Murders in the Rue Morgue” fetched all of $56.  “The Purloined Letter” paid $12 and “The Tell-Tale Heart” $10.  His gambling debts mounted and his drinking grew heavier. He despaired of finding a woman who wouldn’t abandon him, but then along came Sarah Helen Whitman, a writer and poet who awoke in him “an ecstatic happiness and wild, inexplicable sentiment.”  More importantly, this one appeared physically sturdy and mentally sound, not the type to sink into madness or succumb to a chill wind. Unfortunately, her mother didn’t cotton to Poe and Sarah decided that his drinking habit was more than she could handle. She very sensibly declined his offer of marriage.  

Heartbroken once more, he found consolation in the sympathetic company of Mrs. Annie Richmond.  He wrote to her, “My love for you has given me new life.” But Annie had no intention of leaving her wealthy husband for a poverty-stricken drunk and Edgar’s hopes of a lasting relationship were dashed. At the end of his romantic rope, he learned that Elmira Royster’s husband had died and, hope renewed, he hastened back to her and proposed. But Elmira couldn’t put up with his drinking either and sent him packing. 

The most interesting writers aren’t always the most agreeable people. Sad to say, Poe doesn’t sound as if he would have made a very pleasant companion for any woman. It would no doubt astound him to realize how thoroughly his influence has permeated the culture and how many deadly daughters and sons his pioneering stories have spawned.

Everyone who leaves a comment this weekend will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of Jeanne's new book, HER BOYFRIEND'S BONES. 
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Jeanne Matthews is the author of the Dinah Pelerin international mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press, including Bones of Contention, Bet Your Bones, and Bonereapers.  The newest release, Her Boyfriend’s Bones, is set in Greece on the Aegean island of Samos.  For more information about Jeanne’s books, visit her website.    

View from Preikestolen

by Jeanne Matthews

In the early ‘80s, my husband and I fell in love with cross-country skiing.  We lived in Colorado then and there were lots of tracks to explore.  But we dreamed of going to Norway where the word “ski” was invented (from the Old Norse “skid,” meaning a piece of split wood).  We drooled over photos of Norway’s rugged, snow-capped mountains and spectacular fjords.  But for one reason or another, we never made it. 

Thirty years later, as I began to think about a setting for the third book in my Dinah Pelerin international mystery series, the idea of visiting the Land of the Midnight Sun resurfaced.  I had become fascinated by the Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault in Longyearbyen, Norway and submitted a proposal and the first hundred pages of the manuscript to my publisher.  I settled on an itinerary that combined sightseeing with research and bought the tickets.  We were to depart on July 23, 2011.

On July 22, Anders Behring Breivik, a blue-eyed Norwegian with a hatred of immigrants and all those who advocate on their behalf, detonated a massive bomb in the heart of Oslo, killing eight and critically injuring ten more.  While the police and emergency units rushed to secure the downtown area and tend to the dead and wounded, Breivik boarded a ferry and proceeded to the island of Utoya where a number of children of the immigration-friendly Labor Party were attending a summer camp.  Disguised in the uniform of a policeman, he hunted down and shot to death sixty-nine more people, mostly teenagers.  It was the deadliest attack by a single gunman in recorded history and the worst violence to hit Norway since World War II. 

When we arrived in Oslo two days later, the grief was palpable.  Crowds of mourners poured nonstop into the churches.  Every public space was blanketed with flowers and candles and miniature Norwegian flags and pictures of the dead.  Many of the bouquets and wreaths bore messages of condolence and gratitude from immigrant groups the Norwegians have welcomed into their country. The city looked like a war zone.  The concussion from the explosion destroyed the government headquarters and shattered the windows of buildings for blocks around.  Workers nailed plywood over the gaping holes and erected chain link fences to seal off the cratered buildings.

We took a bus from Oslo to Bergen and as we passed by Utoya, our driver choked up.  When we reached Bergen and checked into our hotel, we found the receptionist in tears.  The whole nation seemed to have succumbed to grief.  It was heart-wrenching.  Sitting in my hotel room and watching that grief unfold on TV, I cried, too.  And then I opened my e-mail.  “Congratulations,” said a message from my publisher.  “Your book will be published next June.  You need to finish it fast.”

I don’t write tragedies.  My books fall on the lighter side of the crime fiction spectrum.  In Bergen, I didn’t see how I could write anything light ever again.  At least, not in or about Norway.

I had always wanted to hike to the top of Preikestolen, one of the most jaw-dropping, ya-gotta-see-this-to-believe-it pinnacles in the world and an iconic image of Norway.  Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock in English) looks like the prow of a monstrous ship.  

On three sides, sheer granite cliffs plunge 2,000 feet to the cobalt waters of the Lysefjord below.  There are no fences, no rails, nothing between you and the abyss.  Just looking at the photographs made an acrophobe like me feel queasy.  But we might never be so close again and the lure of adventure outweighed fear.  On August 3, we hopped a ferry to Stavanger and set out to conquer The Big Rock.

 

The sun was shining for the first time in a week and there were hundreds of people on the trail, all of them climbing faster than us.  After an hour of scrambling over boulders the size of SUVs, we stopped to catch our breath beside a small lake and struck up a conversation with a Norwegian family from Oslo.  They expressed sadness over the massacre, but spoke with pride about Norway’s history of tolerance and equality for all.  They and all Norwegians place great value on their open and inclusive way of life and they refuse to be intimidated by the hateful acts of a bigot.   

The confidence and resilience of those people, not to mention the way they vaulted over chest-high boulders and leapt from precarious ledge to ledge, reminded me that Norwegians are descended from the Vikings, some of the bravest, toughest people who ever walked the planet.  They will endure and, as their national motto says, remain “united until the mountains crumble.”  I decided I could finish my book and even end it on a triumphant note.  We scored the view from the top.  And I modeled the Sami policeman who helps Dinah solve the mystery on a Norwegian Good Samaritan who helped my husband make the descent down the mountain after he fell and broke his arm.
 
Jeanne’s latest Poisoned Pen Press novel is Bonereapers. Visit her website for more information.

Descendant of the Fire Goddess

By Jeanne Matthews 

“Pele” was all things volcanic to the ancient Hawaiians. She was the fire, the lava, the steam, the new-formed land, and a temperamental goddess – hard to predict and hard to appease.  Pele has spawned almost as many myths and legends as the volcanoes have spawned scientific studies. A superstitious belief in the powers of Pele has persisted in spite of the overwhelming dominance of Christianity, and not without some strong circumstantial evidence.

There are five volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii. Two are extinct, one is dormant, and two are active.  A sixth “baby” volcano remains 3,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, but it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Volcanologists expect it to poke its head above sea level about a thousand centuries from now.  Mauna Kea is the tallest of the island’s volcanoes. If measured from the sea floor, it would be the tallest mountain in the world, taller than Mt. Everest. And Mauna Loa, which means Long Mountain in the Hawaiian language, dwarfs every other mountain on earth in terms of volume. It is sixty miles long and thirty miles wide and comprises fully half of the land area of the island. At 13, 679 feet, Mauna Loa doesn’t soar above the surrounding terrain like a conical volcano. Hawaiian volcanoes are broad and round like native shields. When they erupt, the lava flows in all directions.

In November of 1880, Mauna Loa burst open and began discharging lava.  There was no great concern during the winter, but over the spring the lava oozed closer and closer to Hilo.  The forests west of town glowed red and the air was thick and acrid with smoke.  By June, the fiery flow had reached the outskirts of town and real estate values plummeted.  On June 26 the flow coursed down from the stream beds above Hilo, gobbling as much as 500 feet of earth each day.  Methane explosions sounded like cannon fire and the heat and glare were intense.  

The Christian inhabitants closed their shops and businesses and thronged the churches to beg the intercession of Jehovah.  The Hawaiian inhabitants sent an urgent message to Princess Luka Ke'elikolani, a descendant of King Kamehameha I and an unreconstructed worshipper of Pele. Princess "Ruth" (as she had been re-christened by the Western missionaries) was 55 years old and tipped the scales at 450 pounds, give or take.  Her nose had been crushed in a pitched battle with her second husband and her voice boomed like thunder.  She wasn't one to be overawed by the U.S. government, or the white man's Jehovah, or Madame Pele's flare-ups.

When she came ashore in Hilo in July, Princess Ruth ordered a batch of red silk handkerchiefs, a large quantity of brandy, two roast pigs, and an unrolled taro leaf and commanded her underlings to conduct her royal personage to the edge of the flow.  The horse selected to pull her carriage wasn’t up to the task and a crew of prisoners had to be released from the Hilo jail to haul her to her destination.
 
When she was satisfied with her vantage point, she disembarked and directed that a luau be held on the spot. Then, chanting a sacred poem and swaying her imposing hips in a hula, she fed the taro leaf and the handkerchiefs into the flames.  When these had been consumed, she smashed a bottle of brandy against the hot lava, sending up a hair-singeing gust of fire.  The Princess and her party drank the rest of the brandy, ate the pigs, and slept all night in the path of Pele's progress.  By morning, the lava had cooled and the goddess had retired to her mountain.

In my new mystery Bet Your Bones, my series sleuth Dinah Pelerin meets a character much like Princess Ruth, a woman named Eleanor Kalolo who regards herself as a direct descendant of the fire goddess.  Eleanor remains a defiant pagan and a bitter critic of American policies that have trampled the rights of Native Hawaiians from the early nineteenth century to the present day.  She resents the annexation of Hawaii by American businessmen, the overthrow of the Hawaiian queen, and the subsequent degradation of Hawaii’s ancient culture and its language and customs.  Ultimately, it is the Hawaiian custom of ho’oponopono, the art of healing through confession of one’s own errors and the forgiveness of others’ mistakes, that becomes the saving grace of both Eleanor and Dinah.

Jeanne Matthews was born and raised in Georgia.  She graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism and has worked as a copywriter, a high school English and Drama teacher, and a paralegal.  She currently lives in Renton, Washington with her husband, who is a law professor, and a West Highland terrier, who is a prima donna. Visit her website at http://www.jeannemathews.com.