Why read The Murders in the Rue Morgue?

Book cover of The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Book description

Edited and with an Introduction by Matthew Pearl
Includes “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” and “The Purloined Letter”

Between 1841 and 1844, Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre of detective fiction with three mesmerizing stories of a young French eccentric named C. Auguste Dupin.…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Murders in the Rue Morgue as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Neal W. Fandek

Author

I know, this is a short story and hence cheating, but how can you make lists of detective stories without including the granddaddy of them all? Poe’s short story preceded Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes by four decades and has all the main ingredients. You have an ice-cold supremely rational detective, C. Auguste Dupin. You have a loyal sidekick. You have a bumbling cop. You have two extremely gory murders. You have a locked room. You have conflicting witnesses. You have a bizarre conclusion. You know what? Don’t read my No. 1. Read the Master first.

From Neal's list on hard-boiled PIs.