Despite appearing in a mere three short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe, C. Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged as the first detective in fiction, and the prototype for the likes of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle and Hercule Poirot by Agatha Christie. many tropes that would later become commonplace in detective fiction first appeared in Poe's stories: the eccentric but brilliant detective; the bumbling police; the first-person narration by a friend. Poe's Dupin stories also are the first where the detective announces his solution and then explains the reasoning leading to it.Read all three stories free online:
"The Murders in The Rue Morgue" (1841)
"The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842)
"The Purloined Letter" (1844)
Note: The book The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder
details how author Poe wrote "The Mystery of Marie Roget" as an attempt to solve a real-life unsolved crime.Further Reading:
The Complete Stories (Everyman's Library) by Edgar Allan Poe
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
More detectives:
CHARLIE CHAN by Earl Derr Biggers
PHILO VANCE by S.S. Van Dine
ALBERT CAMPION by Margery Allingham
DR. GIDEON FELL by John Dickson Carr
NERO WOLFE and ARCHIE GOODWIN by Rex Stout
150 Mystery Series: 1841-2010
Murderous Beginnings: 40 Detective Fiction Firsts
1 comments:
As something of a bonus, he also wrote a story called "'Thou Art the Man!'" which has often been called the first parody of the detective story.
That's Poe for you.
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