It’s only appropriate that the first story on my list is considered the first modern detective story. In Poe’s tale, he introduces his brilliantly analytical detective, C. Auguste Dupin, and Dupin’s trusted friend, who acts as the story’s narrator. Their relationship and Dupin’s methods and cool demeanor have come to serve as inspiration for legions of mystery writers,
On Paris’ Rue Morgue at 3 AM, a mother and daughter are brutally and inhumanely slaughtered in their heavily locked-down fourth-floor apartment. Neighbors heard their shrieks but also two additional voices coming from within the apartment, one identified as male and French, the other as shrill and foreign. When the neighbors break into the apartment, they find only the daughter inside, dead and stuffed feet-first up the chimney in a show of superhuman strength, while her mother lay decapitated on the ground, four unscalable stories below a still locked window. Though newspapers call it an impossible crime to solve, and the police remain baffled, a man known to Dupin is accused of the murders. Through the application of his “ratiocination” investigatory methods that do not ask “what has occurred,” but rather, “what has occurred that has never occurred before,” Dupin determines what transpired and frees an innocent man, establishing in the process an enduring classic formula for mystery writing.
It’s only appropriate that the first story on my list is considered the first modern detective story. In Poe’s tale, he introduces his brilliantly analytical detective, C. Auguste Dupin, and Dupin’s trusted friend, who acts as the story’s narrator. Their relationship and Dupin’s methods and cool demeanor have come to serve as inspiration for legions of mystery writers,
On Paris’ Rue Morgue at 3 AM, a mother and daughter are brutally and inhumanely slaughtered in their heavily locked-down fourth-floor apartment. Neighbors heard their shrieks but also two additional voices coming from within the apartment, one identified as male and French, the other as shrill and foreign. When the neighbors break into the apartment, they find only the daughter inside, dead and stuffed feet-first up the chimney in a show of superhuman strength, while her mother lay decapitated on the ground, four unscalable stories below a still locked window. Though newspapers call it an impossible crime to solve, and the police remain baffled, a man known to Dupin is accused of the murders. Through the application of his “ratiocination” investigatory methods that do not ask “what has occurred,” but rather, “what has occurred that has never occurred before,” Dupin determines what transpired and frees an innocent man, establishing in the process an enduring classic formula for mystery writing.
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