Not Quite Dead

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		Not Quite Dead
		Not Quite Dead

基本信息·出版社：Minotaur Books
·页码：304 页
·出版日期：2007年11月
·ISBN：0312374712
·International Standard Book Number：0312374712
·条形码：9780312374716
·EAN：9780312374716
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语

内容简介

On a rust-bucket cargo ship bound from Liverpool to the United States in 1848, an Irish stowaway named Devlin steals a suspicious package after witnessing it changing hands between two sea captains. All he finds is a seemingly worthless pile of papers marked “David Copperfield, Final Four Numbers, by Charles Dickens.” Devlin is determined to see if he can somehow turn events to his advantage by paying a call on Dickens’s American publisher.
            A year later, a newly admitted patient to a Baltimore hospital, a disreputable writer who goes by the name of Edgar Allan Poe, is clearly raving mad, which makes it easy to dismiss his claims to have information about the murder of an innocent woman.

Meanwhile, the eminent English novelist Charles Dickens has embarked on a tour of America, where his views are not received as he would have wished. Dickens’s growing discomfort reaches new heights of intensity when he finds himself sharing disreputable lodgings---and reluctantly collaborating with---none other than Edgar Allan Poe, who has gone into hiding after faking his own death in a desperate attempt to escape the Irish mob.

Like White Stone Day, which The Washington Post hailed as “a Dickens of a thriller,” this is a brilliantly imaginative tale in which crime and literature intersect in surprising ways.

媒体推荐 A deep streak of black humor and an imaginative plot make for another rich read from the talented Gray. -- Booklist

Achingly, and really very darkly, funny. Read Not Quite Dead immediately. -- William Gibson (Spook Country) Blog

Not quite Dead is not quite perfect, but it's damn close. -- Hamilton Spectator, 17 November, 2007

This terrific book, Gray's best, is a witty tour de force of historical reconstruction. -- The Globe and Mail, November 17, 2007

Witty, stylish, literate fun. (starred review) -- Kirkus Reviews
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly

Canadian author Gray (The Fiend in Human) joins the growing ranks of novelists using Edgar Allan Poe as a fictional protagonist, but despite flashes of brilliance—especially in the portrayal of the corrupt Philadelphia of the period—the book falls short of the standard set, for example, by Louis Bayard's The Pale Blue Eye (2006). The first-person narrative of Baltimore doctor William Chivers, a childhood friend of Poe, alternates with the third-person account of Irish rabble-rouser Finn Devlin. Dr. Chivers, who attends the famous author after his collapse in 1849 that in real life led to his demise, agrees to help Poe evade his enemies by colluding in a scheme to fake his death. The plot thickens after Devlin slaughters Charles Dickens's U.S. publisher in a manner reminiscent of one of Poe's tales and later kidnaps Dickens, who's on tour in America. Poe fans may find his prolonged absence from the action not compensated for by the extended portrayal of the tormented Chivers. Still, Gray does a fine job of evoking his mid–19th-century milieu. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
文摘 Chapter 1 Here begin the memoirs of Dr. William Chivers, not to be read until the author’s demise.  I do not expect that my tale will enhance my reputation. I can but trust the fair-minded reader to take into account my years of service and my spotless moral character, up until the events of which I write.
Perhaps you have already grasped the fact that, as you read this, I myself am dead. While I cannot personally affirm this, the manuscript in your hand was secured in a sealed envelope, care of the lawyer Carville D. Bendix of Richmond, with clear instructions that it remain so until my death. Only if he followed my instructions to the letter was he to receive the balance of his fee. (Ordinarily, lawyers are paid to circumvent the law, but not in this case.)
In reporting the following I harbor two objects:
My first aim, and a public-spirited one, is to shed light on the lingering mystery over the death of Edgar Allan Poe—the author, critic, and essayist, whose fame and notoriety will resound long after my death, and yours too, dear reader, I dare say.
My second purpose is to attain an understanding for myself of the events to follow, and to place them in the context of natural law.
Since Eddie’s catastrophic reappearance in my life, one question has nettled my mind by the day, the hour, the minute: By what cause-and-effect sequence of natural events did this happen?
I say “natural” because many would resort to a metaphysical explanation, which is how the ignorant deal with the unknown. Here in the New World, a plenitude of spooks have immigrated from Europe and Africa on the backs of their believers—not to mention the all-embracing Christian hobgoblin of Original Sin, pounded into us every Sunday morning.
Having eschewed the supernatural, and having found no explanation through ratiocination, I write the following in the hope that a trickle of enlightenment might escape through the nib of
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