Poe's work as a whole is a series of haunting improvisations on themes from the macabre that are hard to categorise, dazzlingly original and posthumously influential on an extraordinary range of writers from Baudelaire and RL Stevenson to Yeats, Wilde and Borges

His work continues to enthral. His greatest tales (The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum) radiate a dark humour and mockery that strike an oddly modern note

If genius is an exceptional capacity for imaginative creation, Poe had it in spades

His reputation as a master of the grotesque and macabre has veiled the real cause of his fame: an astonishing mastery of language and literary technique which made Arthur Ransome, himself no mean story technician and a considerable literary critic, liken his stories to rare coloured goblets or fantastic metalwork

British Intelligence being sent up something rotten

The human story is warm and the satire made me laugh out loud

A great read ... crime fiction at its finest

A superior, deeply satisfying thriller

A fast-paced and unsettling story ... A compelling and fluid read

The writing is lean and mean, and the climax will blow you away

Compelling

a taut, mystical thriller and a thoughtful meditation on humanity

Burnside's story uses suggestion and ambiguity rather than explicit statement, but has the power that comes from leaving plenty of space in which the reader's imagination can go to work

remarkable, genre-defying...Glister is a remarkable book...a fusion of styles and genres, and it succeeds magnificently on those terms...powerfully imagines and beautifully written...A haunting tale, not as depressing as you might expect, and highly recommended

Writing 'this dreamy melange of gritty urbanism with poetic crime puzzler, will appeal to the right reader very highly

A dark fable

Burnside's writing conveys an almost palpable thrill of discovery, a delight in the play of his imagination over this bleak terrain, an irrepressible joy in cultivating metaphor after metaphor and seeing them all, improbably, bloom...The emotion this brilliant and disturbing novel leaves you with is like the spooked feeling Leonard experiences...It takes your breath away, but you don't know if that comes from awe or terror. The Glister" is that kind of story. It's terrifying, and it feels like a gift.

I'm a year late (quite punctual, for me) in recommending John Burnside's austerely poetic novel