43 pages @350 wds/pg
First lines:
The analytical features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects.
Great lines:
"A madman," I said, "has done this deed—some raving maniac, escaped from a neighbouring Maison de Santé."
The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.
It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.
...our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no stamen. It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna—or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish.
Of the handful of adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe's seminal detective story, the 1986 television film is often called the best. Certainly better than the 1932 Bela.... more
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is often cited as the first detective story or the first modern murder mystery. It and the two sequels also featuring C. Auguste Dupin as an amateur sleuth, "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter", were instrumental in establishing the genre. Arthur Conan Doyle obviously patterned Sherlock Holmes on Dupin, borrowing not only the protagonist's famous logical method but details of personality and personal habits—not to mention the narrator who purports to be presenting the exploits of his brainy, withdrawn friend to the public.
Of Edgar Allan Poe's three detective stories, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is in some ways the least accomplished as a story. It's rather cerebral, with Dupin's philosophy on various topics being presented at length. Page after page is devoted to a verbatim reporting of the newspaper account of the bloody murders and then to Dupin's solving of the case, presented mainly through dialogue rather than action.
But in its time, the story must have appeared ingenious. It's the first locked-door mystery I can think of and the solution is so unusual that even a century and a half later it is hard to think of its equal. Also brilliant is Poe's handling of how the answer is delivered, keeping us guessing, making us think the killer is about to be unveiled and then revealing another twist. Old, old stuff perhaps for the generation of television police show viewers, but this is the story that first taught writers how to do it.
Dupin's method is probably what has seemed most exciting to generations of readers. It was supposedly a method of logical analysis, by which he could reach incredibly accurate conclusions about many things, including what someone else is thinking. Doyle appropriated this and called it deduction. Poe himself was skeptical, referring to the "air of method" in such stories.
In truth the approach presented in these stories is neither analytical nor deductive. At best it may be inductive reasoning, by which a person generalizes upon particulars. At worst, it's inspired guessing. From scanty information come big presumptions which in real life might or might not be true, but in the stories they always turn out to be correct.
What makes this exciting is not that a foolproof method has actually been found by which the mysteries of life can be unravelled, but rather that we enjoy thinking there could be someone, like Dupin or Holmes, who could perform this magic trick.
"The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1843) follows a similar pattern. The police prefect comes calling on Dupin to seek help with a puzzling murder case. The case is detailed in several newspaper accounts, which Dupin critiques to come up with a lead. It's a "far more intricate case" than Rue Morgue, he notes, and the reader easily gets lost. There's also a confusing parallel posed with a real case in New York that supposedly was the basis for this fictional one. It's the weakest story.
"The Purloined Letter" (1845) is very similar to Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia", preceding it by half a century. Here we have a classic armchair mystery, in which we don't see our hero do anything besides listen and think—and later reveal all to the astonished narrator. Dupin's only bit of sleuthing in the field is recalled by him after the fact. But the story is told less ponderously than the other two (although Poe/Dupin does go on a bit about mathematics) and the characters, established now, lock horns more entertainingly. My favourite of the three stories.
Poe also wrote non-Dupin stories that may be considered early mysteries, including "The Gold Bug", which introduced the kind of cipher-breaking that other writers, such as Conan Doyle, would also adopt for their detectives.
But it's the Dupin mysteries that practically established the mystery and detective genres, starting with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". It's interesting to note though that Poe's "detective" is a dilettante, solving the mystery without regard for monetary reward except for the entertainment it affords him and for the righting of a wrong (clearing a falsely accused man). That was also a hallmark in mysteries right into the twentieth century when professionalism became less frowned upon.
Talented amateurs (and later private investigators) who beat the official police at their own racket also became a staple of the field. For some reason we have often found it easier to identify with them.
— Eric
