Our Dear Edgar, as you know, to an extent invented detective fiction with his August Dupin stories, The Murders on the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined letter. He created the literary conceit of the genius detective solving crimes with an everyman sidekick who takes the position of narrator, cheer leader, and tells us of their astoundment when the detective reveals how he solved the crime.

Without Poe’s Dupin there is no Sherlock Holmes, at least not in the form we are familiar with. Poe invented the Sherlock architype, but also the Doctor Watson type everyman who tells us the stories. Holmes and Watson in turn inspired Agatha Christie’s Poirot and inspector Japp among many others.

As a archetype for detective stories the three Dupin’s are hard to dismiss. They were not however the only detective stories Poe wrote, this story ‘Thou Art the Man’ is another example. It is however something of a failed experiment of a story if you compared to his other detective stories, or as he termed them, tales of ratiocination, because this tale is told to us by the detective himself, and loses the mystery element in the process.

This is not to dismiss the story, which is in its own way inventive and well constructed. It is quite a fun little read as well, with more humour on display than Poe’s other detective tales. This is not to say the tale is told for laughs but it has a certain baroqueness to the names and characters that brings a rye smile. It centers around the murder of Barnabas Shuttleworthy, a fellow of some wealth in the town on Rattlebrough. While no one can find the corpse Shuttleworthys nephew is accused of his murder, the narrator, who is also the detective, however believes there is another villain afoot. Charles Goodfellow, the dead mans best friend.

A elaborate ploy is used by our detective to unmask the villain involving the corpse of Shuttleworthy a case of win and ventriloquism. But here in lays the problem, because we are told the tale by the detective themselves the tension is lacking. the big reveal is more of an ‘I told you so’ and it all falls a bit flat in the end.

There are of course plenty of detective stories told rom the point of view of the detective, Raymond Chandlers, Philp Marlowe stories, for example. But those employ a very different way of telling a story. . . generally with a touch of down at the heel alcoholism and ‘then she walked in, the dame that done me wrong…’ With twists and turns, betrayals and backstabbing , that the detective fails to anticipate. Such stories work because it involves a flawed detective struggling against the machinations of others. There is none of that in Poe’s story, instead this is a tale of a clever detective using his cleverness to unmask a villain and that is essence is why it is something of a meh of a story. There is no suspense, no reveal beyond how the culprit is revealed.

Clever detectives need flaws, and those flaws need someone who will reveal them , it why Holmes needs Watson to tell his story. Holmes would be a terrible narrator, and that is exactly what we have in this tale. A clever detective just being clever, without any real charm. Its not a bad story, it has fun within itself and its not a bad read, it just feels flat, or perhaps just too one dimensional to really inspire the reader. And experiment with the detective genre that doesn’t work.

THREE RAVENS THAT ARE NOT ALL THAT SURE THERE SHOULD NOT BE LESS OF THEM.

Should you read it: There is no reason not to, but there isn’t really a reason to do so either…

Blaggers fact: The line the corpse speaks, ‘Thou art the Man’ is most likely refences Samuel 12:7, in which King David is accused of laying the way for his marriage to Bathsheba by arranging for the death of her first husband Uriah.

Or alternatively it may be based on a line in ‘the Great Moon Hoax’ articles, of 1835, which claimed Sir John Herschel had discovered a civilization of Vespertilio-homo on the moon, or for those without a working knowledge of Latin… Batmen. Yes Batmen on the moon…