A Singular Conspiracy (1974) by Barry Perowne is a fictional treatment of the unaccounted period in Edgar Allan Poe's life from January to May 1844. Poe visits Paris under an assumed name, having used travel papers belonging to a stranger he has seen wounded in a bar-room brawl in New York. He has the intention of parlaying his West Point training into a position in the Lafayette Circle, a group of volunteer soldiers about to aid Poland against its Russian occupiers. This inveigles Poe with a young Charles Baudelaire in a plot to expose Baudelaires' stepfather (who rejects Poe's application) to blackmail, to free up Baudelaires' patrimony.