“And I prayed that I would find a way to tell my most honorable friend, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, the truth about how I had finally been murdered, and by whom.” Summer, 1849. Edgar Allan Poe has come to Paris to help his friend C. Auguste Dupin hunt down the criminal who brought the Dupin family to ruin during the French Revolution, but the prefect of police engages the sleuthing duo to recover a letter stolen from an infamous Parisian society hostess. Is the thief one of the French literary greats who attend her salons? Or might it be Dupin’s own enemy, who is scheming to become Emperor of France? Poe and Dupin are quickly embroiled in a deadly cat and mouse chase through the notorious streets of the Île de la Cité and into the treacherous tunnels of the city’s necropolis. Poe discovers he has enemies of his own in Paris – and that few who dare to venture into the Empire of the Dead ever return from the darkness… A historical mystery about alchemy, mesmerism and magic, the shadows of the past and the endurance of love.