Years ago I lost a trivia round because I insisted that the “Father of the Mystery Novel” could not be Edgar Allen Poe. On what planet could that not be Arthur Conan Doyle, inventor of Sherlock Holmes!? This turned into me having more beers and ranting that it makes sense for Poe to be the father of horror, but not mystery. At the time I’d read The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher, Cask of Amantillado, and Masque of the Red Death. Well, it turns out that if I’d read Murders in the Rue Morgue I wouldn’t have been so obstinate.
This is the original gentleman detective story. Charles August Dupin uses deduction, fact, and the idea of eliminating the impossible to determine the implausible but correct in exactly the same way as y’boy Holmes. There is Poirot on display here as well, but all of it came decades after Dupin. While the story is insane and a little unbelievable, at this point I can’t help but be impressed by just, everything Poe did (apart from marry his cousin). He is responsible for inspiring Arthur Conan Doyle, HP Lovecraft, Jules Verne, Herman Melville, and Agatha Christie. The number of brilliant authors on Poe’s downline is just insane.
I was inspired to read this story by the Netflix Fall of the House of Usher series. If I’m being brutally honest, Rue Morgue was fine, but the real thing to recommend remains House of Usher. You can find the text for Rue Morgue just about anywhere for free, so give it a read and marvel that this story came out before the American Civil War.