The Murders in the Rue Morgue

First published in 1841, this is the tale widely credited with inventing modern detective fiction. When two women are found brutally murdered behind bolted doors, the Paris police are helpless, and only Dupin's cool, deductive reasoning can unravel a mystery whose solution has startled readers for well over a century. Poe (1809 – 1849), the American master of the macabre and poet of The Raven, gave the genre its template: the brilliant amateur, the loyal narrator, the impossible crime, and the chain of logic that lays it bare. Every fictional detective who followed, from Sherlock Holmes onward, owes a debt to this founding story.