EVERMORE

Another literary/historical tee-hee in the Seven Per-cent Solution tradition--offering Edgar Allan Poe unraveling the Mayerling affaire. Ah, you say that was in 1889, 40 years after Poe's death--but here Poe is alive (barely) in Paris and using the name Henri Le Rennet, having had to fake a death in 1849 Baltimore to escape assassination (""I was marked for death by the Whigs""). His Watson is Wilmot Griswold from Baltimore, the European representative for Bob's Oil, a likable provincial ass who finds everything ""bizarre"" and, visiting the salon of poet MallarmÉ, suggests, ""Now who among you shall string the lyre in praise of Commerce?"" With such an undependable assistant, it takes Poe/Le Rennet quite a while to figure out that Crown Prince Rudolf never really died at Mayerling; along the way, Dr. Krafft-Ebbing delivers the scoop on Rudy's sex life, Poe and Wilmot are abducted and caged with rats, and various Mittel-Europa types slink around furtively or seductively. Wilmot's Baltimore bumpkin routine is fairly amusing, but the gimmick palls before the curtain falls.