The Poet Essay -- Essay s Papers

The Poet The Poet is about a search for a serial killer that the FBI names â€Å"The Poet† due to this person’s signature of forcing the victims to write suicide notes in the form of a quote from Edgar Allen Poe. Jack McEvoy, a newspaper reporter from Denver, is the brother of a victim who was killed by the Poet. In an attempt to avenge his brother’s death McEvoy, and the FBI, form a nation-wide manhunt in search of this cunning illusive killer. The Poet begins with the Rocky Mountain Newspaper reporter Jack McEvoy being informed of his twin brother’s suicide. As two of the detectives from the Denver police department who also worked with Sean McEvoy in the Crimes Against Persons unit inform McEvoy of the incident, he immediately has doubts about his twin’s alleged suicide. Seeking to better understand what his brother did and what the Denver PD says his brother did, Jack McEvoy decides to write a story for the paper about his brother. From this point on McEvoy began to learn about evil in a new way. Sean McEvoy was discovered in his car in a parking lot at Bear Lake, and the park ranger who discovered him came immediately after he heard the gunshot to find him dead. The investigators came up with the information that Sean had placed the gun inside his mouth and killed himself. Due to the high stress that Sean’s co-workers and therapist had experienced him in due to the current homicide investigation, the case was closed and it was ruled a suicide. Jack investigated his brothers death and the further he got into the case the more clues he found suggesting foul play. The final line written on the inside of the windshield by Sean McEvoy was ‘Out of Space out of Time.’ Jack linked the epitaph with the final entry in the chronological record of the case his brother was working on which read simply that he’d received a call from an unknown source and then: RUSHER was written. The connection was made by McEvoy to a similar suicide case in Chicago where a detective’s last words written on a pad were ‘Through the pale door’ taken from an Edgar Allen Poe story titled â€Å"The Fall of the House of Usher† in which the main character is Rodrick Usher. As McEvoy used this information about RUSHER, he also related his brother’s line ‘Out of Space out of Time’ to a Edgar Allen Poe poem called â€Å"Dream-Land.† Sean McEvoy was deeply involved with the investiga... ... the shower. Also, Backus’ former bride to be stated that he would make her shower immediately before and after making love. Another insight into how Backus worked was the letter the FBI received from The Poet written to Bob Backus. Clearly acknowledging that there were two separate individuals within Backus. Backus also must have thought that he was smarter than everyone to think he could commit these crimes and not get caught. McEvoy’s theory of why he thought Rachel was The Poet could also lead to an understanding of why Backus possibly did what he did. He knew Rachel and Backus interviewed Horace and Gladden in prison and the killing could have started because he was punishing Beltran for creating Gladden. The questions of location of the crimes, and of manner of the crimes can be theorized that Backus was very learned in crime scene investigation and he was making the incident look like a suicide, while still sexually and emotionally gratifying himself with each of the victims. All the while covering his back with Gladden as his scapegoat. A very smart and controlled man covered a very disturbed individual’s fantasies to the point when he couldn’t not act on them.