Paul Kane, Charles Prepolec (editors)
Beyond Rue Morgue: Further Tales of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1st Detective
INTRODUCTION
THE FIRST DETECTIVE
Given the popularity and fame of Sherlock Holmes, many might be forgiven for thinking that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth was the first fictional detective to make his mark. However, long before Holmes and Watson were tackling Moriarty or chasing a spectral hound across Dartmoor, Edgar Allan Poe’s creation C. Auguste Dupin was solving cases on the gritty streets of his native Paris. In fact, Poe wrote his stories before the word “detective” was even coined, laying the foundations for the mystery stories that followed, and single-handedly defining the dominant tropes of the detective genre that are still very much in evidence today.
Poe cleverly established the concept of the eccentric genius who relies on deductive reasoning, the sidekick/narrator who serves as the reader’s proxy, and shifted focus from the puzzle to how it is unraveled. Indeed, the impact of Poe’s Dupin cannot be underestimated and the influence is readily apparent in almost every amateur sleuth from the Golden Age of Christie (Hercule Poirot), Allingham (Albert Campion), and Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey), right through to the latest slew of television detectives on shows such as Castle and The Mentalist, as well as the reinvented Sherlock Holmes in both the BBC’s Sherlock and CBS’s Elementary.
Dupin, and his nameless narrator, first appeared in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) — published in Graham’s Magazine and reprinted in this anthology — and then featured in two more stories: “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (first published in Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion in three installments between November 1842 and February 1843) and “The Purloined Letter” (which was originally included in the literary annual The Gift for 1845 in 1844). Sadly, in spite of the impact Dupin would have on the world of the fictional crime-buster, between then and now he has become somewhat overlooked by the general readership.
A series of seven new short stories featuring Dupin were written by Michael Harrison for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the 1960s and collected as The Exploits of the Chevalier Dupin (1968), with a further five stories added to the later UK edition. These capture the methodology of Dupin, but lack many of Poe’s more outré elements; Poe having been known for his horror and fantasy tales, as well. Dupin also cropped up in publications such as The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe (1997), with author George Egon Hatvary calling on him as a narrator, Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999), and bizarrely, Edgar Allan Poe on Mars (2007) by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier.
His cinematic existence, compared with that of Holmes, also falls a little short. He featured in movies such as Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Mystery of Marie Roget (1942)— both Universal productions, starring Leon Ames then Patric Knowles as Dupin (Dr. Paul Dupin in the latter, a character who would again turn up as a professor in 1954’s Phantom of the Rue Morgue, played by Steve Forrest). And though “…Rue Morgue” itself was adapted quite a number of times, the results often bore little resemblance to the original story: Gordon Hessler’s 1971 film, for example, starring Herbert Lom. Either that, or it distorted the character of Dupin so completely as to be nearly unrecognizable. Closest to the mark might be George C. Scott’s portrayal of the detective, alongside Rebecca De Mornay and Ian McShane, in the 1986 TV version.
In putting together an anthology celebrating Dupin we wanted to redress the balance a bit: simultaneously paying homage to Poe’s creation and adding to the canon in a way we hope the author might have been proud of. We’ve gathered together a talented and diverse group of writers for this project, all giving Dupin their personal and unique interpretation. Some have set their tales around the same time as his previous stories, while others have explored later incarnations and descendants. Some are straight crime, while others blend mystery with horror or fantasy. All are fascinating and thoroughly entertaining, we can assure you.
So, without further ado, we encourage you to rekindle your love for Dupin, and are delighted to introduce him to others who may not know him so well. You’re in for a treat, either way.
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the grand original, the master of ratiocination, the first detective: the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin!
Paul Kane & Charles Prepolec
January 2013
THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
By
EDGAR ALLAN POE
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture.
The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talents into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition. The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract — Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.