“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis.”

“The case was, beyond human comprehension — even for the Parisian police.”

“The extent to which reason can go in deducing the truth is rarely appreciated.”

“It is not sufficient that we should see — we must also think.”

“To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.”

Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue is widely considered the first modern detective story.It introduced C. Auguste Dupin, a brilliant thinker with a calm, rational mind, and laid the foundation for countless detectives to come.Sound familiar? Conan Doyle admitted Poe inspired Sherlock Holmes.

🧩 The Birth Of a Genre

At 3 AM, a mother and daughter are savagely murdered inside a locked fourth-floor apartment in Paris.A woman is found decapitated on the street, her daughter stuffed up a chimney.Neighbors heard two voices: one French male, one shrill and foreign. But no one else is found inside.It seems impossible — but Dupin sees what others cannot.

Dupin’s brilliance lies in “ratiocination”: a method of analytical reasoning.Instead of just asking what happened, he asks:“What has happened that has never happened before?”This logic helps him piece together the bizarre and seemingly inhuman clues.

🧠 Ratiocination — Thinking Differently

A man known to Dupin is arrested, though he’s clearly innocent.The media and police are baffled — but Dupin’s patient deduction reveals an unexpected truth.He proves not only the man’s innocence but exposes how narrow thinking leads to false conclusions.

🚫 A Wrongly Accused Man

Poe’s work started it all: the mystery genre, the detective sidekick, and the locked-room puzzle.If you love Sherlock, Agatha Christie, or Knives Out — it all began here.

Spoiler: the killer isn’t human. It’s an escaped orangutan mimicking violence it had seen.Poe’s twist was unheard of in 1841 — and showed the power of rational thought in untangling chaos.Rue Morgue didn’t just solve a crime — it redefined how stories could think.

🐒 The Shocking Solution

Long before Sherlock Holmes, there was C. Auguste Dupin. Edgar Allan Poe’s chilling 1841 tale didn’t just solve a brutal double murder — it invented the modern detective genre. Here’s what made it unforgettable.

Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue represents the beginning of crime fiction. The mystery was first published in Graham's Magazine in 1841 and has been recognized as the first detective story. Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". As the first fictional detective, Poe's Dupin displays many traits which became literary conventions in subsequent fictional detectives including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Many later characters, for example, follow Poe's model of the brilliant detective, his personal friend who serves as narrator, and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it. Dupin himself reappears in The Mystery of Marie Rogêt and The Purloined Letter.

EDGAR ALLEN POE

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