Edgar Allan Poe's detective
As we discussed Edgar Allan Poe, and in the aftermath of the Bouchercon conference, I went back to read his detective mysteries. Poe is credited with creating the detective story with his character C. Auguste Dupin, an amateur sleuth who lives in Paris and is featured in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter" and "The Mystery of Marie Roget."
As others have noted, many characteristics of today's fictional detectives can be found here: a sidekick/straight man, short-sighted police, and seemingly airtight cases exploded through deductive reasoning.
"The Mystery of Marie Roget" is a particularly good example, and my favorite of the three. It deals with a believable and straightforward case of a missing woman, but there are feints and blind alleys to be dealt with. Dupin's unraveling of newspaper reports -- and of each piece of physical evidence -- is remarkable.
But I confess that I enjoyed the Dupin stories in the way that I might fondly recall a rotary dial, party line telephone -- as an artifact that led to something infinitely better (my BlackBerry). Poe and Dupin are partial to lengthy, tedious flights of erudition such as the opening of Rue Morgue. ...
The stories also lack action; each is little more than a recital by Dupin from some drawing room, with a few bits of gratuitous dialogue. We never see witnesses interviewed, or hunches fall flat. And Poe obviously was hampered by not having visited Paris; there are few telling descriptions of the city and its people.
Still, not a bad start for the genre. And it's a remarkable tribute to Poe that his story-telling devices live on today -- like the final scene in which the wily detective unravels the case in front of amazed bystanders.
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Comments
I'm surprised you liked Marie Roget best. That one is usually awarded the "tedious, but curious" tag. I like Murder and Letter best. Murder for its introduction of Dupin and the horrific crime. Letter for its terseness and banter.
Daniel Stashower's The Beautiful Cigar Girl is a wonderful book about how Poe came to write Marie Roget.
Another thing I've always found interesting about Roget is its provenance: a story set in Paris, based on a New York murder, written in Philadelphia. Poe's mind was international.
Posted by: Ed Pettit | October 23, 2008 3:34 PM