ZINE: The Painting of the Empty Bed

An Apocryphal Tale of C. Auguste Dupin

Before Sherlock Holmes stalked the streets of London, C. Auguste Dupin languished homosexually in his decaying chambers in the Faubourg Saint-Germain of Paris. After “a variety of untoward events” have reduced Dupin to poverty, he now only goes out at night. He meets the narrator of Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue in an “obscure library,” and this newfound companion writes how, after meeting Dupin, he felt his “soul enkindled within me by the wild fervour, and the vivid freshness of his imagination. Seeking in Paris the objects I then sought, I felt that the society of such a man would be to see a treasure beyond price; and this feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city.”

Contending with media sensationalism and homicidal orangoutangs in the course of his investigations, Edgar Allan Poe’s creation secured his place as the first modern detective story.

Picking up where Poe left off, MJ Lyons explores an apocryphal tale of the languorous intellectual and his hapless companion in an erotic mystery. After the seductive subject of an infamous painting disappears from the very frame that once held him, Dupin and his companion go searching for answers that will take them through the cruising grounds of the Tuileries and among Paris’ boy prostitutes and hygienic baths to a final, climatic conclusion.

Who is Hyacinth? Join proto-Sherlockian C. Auguste Dupin and his beloved companion on this sexy, sex-filled mystery.