In the Shadow of the Master by Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online Page A

into the catacombs beneath the Montresor palazzo. Every step inexorably takes us away from the excesses and frivolity of the celebrations above-down into a dark and chill place, where even the bells on a fool’s cap become fuelfor nightmares. We may have seen more graphically violent representations of the mind of a killer in fiction, but Montresor, capable of mocking both his victim’s prayers and his screams, is as heartless as any.
    With the power of a conjurer, Poe knew exactly how to summon our fears. Read “The Cask of Amontillado.” Then feel free to sleep with the light on and the bedroom door open.
     
    ***
     
    Jan Burke is the Edgar-winning author of twelve novels, including
Bones, Flight, Bloodlines,
and
Kidnapped
. Her newest is a supernatural thriller,
The Messenger
. She is currently at work on the next Irene Kelly novel.

The Curse of Amontillado BY LAWRENCE BLOCK
    I knew I wanted an Edgar Award back in 1961, when my good friend Don Westlake failed to win one.
    He’d just published
The Mercenaries,
and it was nominated for an Edgar for Best First Mystery. Someone else took home the statuette (for what was in fact a first mystery by a veteran science-fiction writer, which made it eligible under the letter if not the spirit of the rule), and we all assured Don that it was honor enough to be nominated, and he pretended to believe us. We don’t need to feel sorry for the man, though; he has a whole shelf full of those porcelain busts now, plus a sheaf of nominations. Anyway, this isn’t about him.
    It’s about me.
    I began publishing paperback original crime novels in 1961 and hardcovers a few years later. And while I can’t say I was obsessed with the idea of winning an Edgar, I had my hopes. One book I published in the mid-1970s, under a pen name (Chip Harrison) that was also the name of the book’s narrator, was dedicated “To Barbara Bonham, Newgate Callendar, John Dickson Carr, and the Edgar Awards Committee of the Mystery Writers of America.” Barbara Bonham was the chief fiction reviewer for
Publishers Weekly
. Newgate Callendar was the pen name that music critic Harold Schonberg used for his crime column in the
New York Times Book Review
. And John Dickson Carr, master of the locked room, reviewed mysteries for
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
.
    I was shameless, and to no avail. Well, not much avail anyway. The book got a mention in the Callendar column, where its dedication was quoted and its literary merits overlooked. Carr and Bonham paid no attention, and when Edgar time rolled around, Chip Harrison was left out in the cold.
    But a year or so later one of my Matthew Scudder novels,
Time to Murder and Create,
picked up a nomination for Best Paperback Original. I went to the dinner somehow convinced I was going to win, and I didn’t. Someone else did. I sat there stunned, barely able to assure people that it was honor enough merely to be nominated.
    A couple of years later I was nominated again, this time for
Eight Million Ways to Die,
short-listed for Best Novel. “Honor enough to be nominated,” I muttered and went home.
    It took years for me to realize what was holding me back. It was, quite simply, a curse.
    The curse of Amontillado.
     
    I realized the precise dimensions of this curse only recently, when Charles Ardai was editing an early pseudonymous book of mine for his “Hard Case Crime” imprint. He pointed out that I’d referred to “The Cask of Amontillado” as having been written by Robert Louis Stevenson. Gently he asked if my attributing Poe’s story to Stevenson was deliberate, indicating something subtle about the character who’d made the error.
    The mistake, I replied, was not the character’s but my own, and he should by all means correct it.
    And not a moment too soon. Because it was clearly responsible for a long train of misfortunes.
    This misattribution, I must confess, was not an isolated slip-ofthe-keyboard confined to a single forgettable book. While that