In the fall of 1849, Edgar Allan Poe traveled to Richmond, Virginia where he gave a series of lectures and courted Elmira Shelton. Poe and Shelton had been very close to marriage 15 years earlier, but the wedding had been stopped by Elmira’s family who didn’t feel that Poe was suitable for their daughter. Poe and Elmira had both married other people, but both of their spouses were now dead.

After getting reacquainted, the two probably became engaged, or at least reached some sort of agreement. On the evening of September 26th, Poe left Richmond and headed for New York where he had taken on an editing job. Very little is known of his whereabouts or actions for the next seven days. On the afternoon of October 3, he was discovered in a Baltimore bar, drunk and disheveled. He was taken to a hospital where he died four days later.

What happened during the missing seven days has been the subject of much conjecture. It is most frequently assumed that Poe went on a binge, consuming so much alcohol that his brain was destroyed. He was known to have been a binge drinker. Others have brought forth the theory that he was captured by “coopers” who picked up derelicts and kept them locked up until election day when they were drugged and carted around the city to vote at multiple polling places. The only evidence for this theory is that the bar Poe was found in was used as a polling place.

Walsh puts forth his own theory, based on a string of speculation and clever interpretation of sparse evidence. I don't want to ruin the book for you, so I won't say more about Walsh's conclusions.

The book was fairly interesting when dealing with the known facts of Poe’s death. When Walsh was sorting through the “evidence” for his theory, things got convoluted and often boring. While his theory sounds as plausible as any other, it is no more verifiable, which makes the book little more than tabloid journalism disguised as history.