Skip to content
Home/ First Detective
First Detective

First Detective

No customer reviews yet ISBN 9780942208153

Edgar Allan Poe invented and perfected the model for modern detective fiction, including Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and many others. The formula: an extremely intelligent amateur sleuth out-thinks the official police, with a story often narrated by his not-so-bright companion. In Poe's case, he set the scene in Paris, with French characters. His three stories - The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, and The Purloined Letter were set as a series, each succeeding one referring to the previous. But, despite the immediate popularity of the genre, Poe moved on to other fiction and poetry experiments. The three stories together elaborate on the psychological analysis that Poe saw as relevant to human life. If everybody believes something, he concluded, it must be wrong. He goes into a trait that distinguishes humans from all other animals -- the ability to see into the minds of others, anticipating their motives and actions. The introduction by Sasha Newborn is peppered with comments from critics and psychologists alike as to the meaning of Poe's contribution. This unique genre has lasted over a hundred and fifty years and occupies a large section in most bookstores; the appetite for such fascinating stories seems to be unending. Another novel that highlights the reach, or overreach, of reason, is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (www.createspace.com/3683197. Three characters, the captain, Victor Frankenstein, and the Creature himself all seek to know or to do more than is considered possible.

About the author

Product details

Pub dateFeb 27, 2013
ISBN-100942208153
ISBN-139780942208153
LanguageEnglish
Last updated 2026-09-02 04:19
$6.33 $6.95 8% off
You save $0.62 · list price $6.95
In stock — ships in 24 hours with free tracking
Delivery by Monday, September 14, 2026
Qty
Sign in to Add to Saved list
Free delivery on orders over $35.
15-day returns. Any reason.
Secure checkout. We never store card details.

Readers who bought this also bought

More from Mystery & Detective - Collections & Anthologies
See all
Bodies from the Library 3: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and Othe
<p>This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together eighteen tales from the golden age of detective fiction for the first time in audiobook form.</p><p>The golden age of detective fiction had begun inauspiciously with the publication of E. C. Bentley's schismatic Trent's Last Case in 1913, but it hit its stride in 1920 when both Agatha Christie and Freeman Wills Crofts--later crowned queen and king of the genre--had crime novels published for the first time. They ushered in two decades of exemplary mystery writing, the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime. and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.</p><p>This new volume in the Bodies from the Library series features the work of eighteen prolific authors who, like Christie and Crofts, saw their popularity soar during the golden age. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction--stories, serials and plays--and although most of them have been collected in books over the last 100 years, here are the ones that got away.</p><p>In this audiobook you will encounter classic series detectives including Colonel Gore, Roger Sheringham, Hildegarde Withers, and Henri Bencolin&#x3b; Hercule Poirot solves "The Incident of the Dog's Ball&#x3b;" and Dorothy L. Sayers' chilling "The House of the Poplars" is published for the first time.</p><p>With a full-length novella by John Dickson Carr, this diverse collection concludes with some early "flash fiction" commissioned by Collins' Crime Club in 1938. Each mini story had to feature an orange, resulting in six very different tales from Peter Cheyney, Ethel Lina White, David Hume, Nicholas Blake, John Rhode, and--in his only foray into writing detective fiction--the publisher himself, William Collins.</p>
$32.06