The Murders in the Rue Morgue - Edgar Allan Poe

All I knew of Poe was that he had written a poem called the Raven (possibly in an unusual metre?) and that his stories were admired by goths. He was someone I could afford to put off. Then the Waterstone’s summer sale, responsible for so much these last couple of months, pushed me into picking up his crime stories.

According to the blurb, “in just five stories, Edgar Allan Poe laid down most of the conventions of detective fiction.” I have no reason not to believe that; but he also seems to have laid down most of the conventions of bad detective fiction at the same time - ludicrous coincidences, unbelievable motivations, contrived situations, shoddy characterisation...

The first three stories are probably the most famous, and concern the prototype for Sherlock Holmes, Auguste Dupin, narrated by a proto-Watson, on hand to show his amazement at his friend’s genius, and ask the important expository, “but how did you know?” Now this Sherlock Holmes thing: it might be fashionable to give Poe the credit, but those who do forget an important point - Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories are well constructed, charming and suspenseful. Holmes sprinkles his deductions throughout, and we have at least a chance of keeping up with him. Each of these five Poe stories follows one template: first there is a mysterious occurrence; then the mystery is explained in its totality by Dupin or his substitute, using clues that have not been made available to the reader. They are puzzles rather than stories, puzzles you are not given enough information to work out yourself.

Nevertheless, all the stories have their moments, and there’s much fun to be had in the overblown gothic. For a closing taste, here’s the narrator’s description of his early days with Dupin. Who could fail to enjoy it?

At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the massy shutters of our old building; lighted a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams- reading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we sallied forth into the streets, arm and arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.