The Murders in the Rue Morgue is considered the first detective story. Published in Graham’s Magazine in 1841, it is in Poe’s words a “tale of ratiocination” that displays the awesome powers of deduction possessed by the brilliant detective C. Auguste Dupin.  The narrator is a friend who lives with Dupin in seclusion. Dupin becomes intrigued by a double murder of a woman and her daughter in the Rue Morgue of Paris.  He offers his services to the prefect of police when a bank clerk is arrested despite a total lack of evidence.Examination of the bodies of the victims and evidence at the crime scene leads Dupin to a couple of quick deductions: first, no gold was taken, so the motive was not robbery, and, second, the superhuman strength required to stuff one body up a chimney and a strange tuft of hair suggest the killer was not human.  An ad placed in the newspaper regarding a missing orangutan gets a response from a sailor who has lost just such a creature. His account of the escape of the animal is sufficient to explain everything.  The story is a masterpiece that set the template for many tales to follow, featuring the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, accompanied by a narrator, and featuring a final revelation followed by an explication of the reasoning.

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