Edgar Allan Poe: Inventor of the Detective Story
Newport, Rhode Island
The 20th Century
In the Twentieth Century, the world was introduced to Alex Cross in James Patterson’s Along Came A Spider. The Alex Cross books, of which there are more than 30, have become the best selling detective series of all time. The main protagonist used powers of empathy along with scientific analysis to reach conclusions about crimes.
On his website, Patterson described Alex Cross as follows:
Alex Cross is six foot three, weighs 200 pounds, and is athletic. He still lives on Fifth Street in D.C., with wife, Brianna (Bree) Stone, Nana Mama, Ali and Jannie, and Rosie the cat. Damon is away at prep school in Massachusetts. He drives a Mercedes Benz R 350.
Education
PH.D. in psychology from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Special concentration in the field of abnormal psychology and forensic psychology.
Upon graduation Cross worked as a migrant farm worker for a year.
The detective story existed long before James Patterson, however.
The 19th Century
In the Nineteenth Century, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes. Holmes also used powers of empathy coupled with analysis to reach conclusions about crimes.
Doyle did not create the detective story either.
The man who created the detective story, to which all successors to the genre owe a debt, was none other than Edgar Allan Poe. The following biography attested to this little known fact,
“In the April 1841 issue of Graham’s, its surprising title commanding attention amid verse on ‘An April Day’ and music to ‘Oh! Gentle Love,’ appeared Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ inaugurating one of the most popular and entertaining forms of fiction ever conceived (Silverman 171).
Other students of Poe have come to similar conclusions:
So, Poe’s fingerprints can be found all over the later detective stories that will feature Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. When Doyle met with reporters in New York during an 1894 visist to America, he was asked by a journalist, “Now, weren’t you influenced by Edgar Allan Poe when you wrote Sherlock Holmes?” A hush fell over the room, but, if the members of the press were anticipating an indignant outburst from Doyle, they were to be disappointed. He was, in fact, eager to acknowledge his debt to Poe. “Oh, immensely!” he replied. “His detective is the best detective in fiction” (Dawidziak 134).
In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Man with a Cloak, and The Purloined Letter, Poe’s character combined empathy and an analysis of physical evidence to reach solutions to cases. Poe described this ability himself:
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 talent 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 præternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.
Poe described his creating as follows:
Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18 — , I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young gentleman was of an excellent — indeed of an illustrious family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the world, or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes. By courtesy of his creditors, there still remained in his possession a small remnant of his patrimony; and, upon the income arising from this, he managed, by means of a rigorous economy, to procure the necessaries of life, without troubling himself about its superfluities. Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris these are easily obtained.
It is interesting to compare this description to the one which James Patterson gave of Alex Cross. James Patterson’s annual salary is reputadly $90 million (zacjohnson.com); Edgar Allan Poe’s max annual salary was $800 (Dawidziak 133). It is ironic that James Patterson has become the most financially successful writer in history via his detective novels while the creator of the genre lived and died in poverty.
Conclusion
Inspector Dupin served as the prototype for Sherlock Homes, Inspector Poirot, and Alex Cross. Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and James Patterson, perhaps unknowingly, owe much to Edgar Allan Poe. It is fascinating to contemplate if the genre would have ever been developed without him.
Works Cited
Dawidziak, Mark. A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe. St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2023.
Patterson, James. https://www.jamespatterson.com/landing-page/james-patterson-books-alex-cross/
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Murders in the Rue Morgue. https://poestories.com/read/murders
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. Harper Collins Publishers, 1991.
