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Popular Culture Review
early hybrid of horror detective fiction. It is this blending of genres that is
identifiable in Douglas Preston’s and Lincoln Child’s Pendergast detective
series. Using Poe’s stories listed above and Preston and Child’s novels, Cabinet
o f Curiosities^ Still Life with Crows, and Brimstone, I will examine how Preston
and Child directly connect their stories with Poe’s using textual allusions to both
Poe’s horror and detective texts in order to create their horror stories, to found
the mystery aspects of these same three novels, and to characterize their
infamous Dupin-like detective, Aloysius Pendergast, in order to create the
blended literary offspring of horror detective fiction.
The first and most obvious connection between the two bodies of work is
the direct reference made to Poe’s writing. By specifically alluding to Poe, the
writers have drawn from his legacy of horror and madness to increase the sense
of foreboding and to darken the mood of their own stories. In the three texts I
examined, I found five direct links to Poe’s stories. Cabinet o f Curiosities
contains two Poe references. The first occurs on page 238 when a witness
compared Pendergast’s great-uncle’s appearance to Roderick Usher in “Fall of
the House of Usher”: “Have you read Poe’s ‘Fall of the House of U sher’?
There’s a description of the story that, when I came upon it, struck me
terribly. . . ‘a cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and very
luminous . . . Finely molded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want
of moral energy’.” This physical description is not only eerie in that it could
almost be used to describe the main character Detective Pendergast himself, but
the reference to Roderick Usher also calls to memory the qualities of familial
madness and the sibling relationship of twins, of which Pendergast himself
embodies the good half; this reference increases the suspense on the part of the
reader and adds to the horrific effect intended by the creators.
The other direct allusion to Poe in Cabinet o f Curiosities is the use of the
word “ratiocination” (545). The use of the word brings to mind the type of
reasoning used by Detective Dupin to solve his crimes and provides evidence of
the combination of the horror and detective genres. In Cabinet o f Curiosities, the
character who uses the word while slicing into the spinal column of a murder
victim is actually the villain who so much wants to logically justify his evil
deeds but cannot, so he explains his diabolical practice of “Surgery. . . [as]
more an art form than a science .. . There was very little ratiocination involved;
very little intellect came into play. It was an activity at once physical and
creative, like painting or sculpture” (545). By negating the term of ratiocination,
Preston and Child have their evil-doer unknowingly confessing to the
illogicality, or insanity, of his crimes.
In Still Life with Crows, the one direct reference to Poe’s writing occurs
with a description from “Masque of the Red Death” (351). Pendergast’s assistant
Wren, while working alone in the vaults under 891 Riverside Drive, references
these details from the story:
The long journey [through the underground vaults] reminded
him, somehow, of Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red