The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
This story opens with a mother and daughter found brutally murdered inside a locked room in an upstairs apartment on a street in Paris. The police are baffled by both the ferocity of the crime and the lack of clues. Neighbors give conflicting evidence. Two friends are intrigued by the entire situation as reported in the newspapers. They decide to do a little investigating on their own. What they come up with is one of the most shocking and strangest of conclusions. The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the first modern detective tale, though similar stories by Voltaire and ETA Hoffman did appear a few decades earlier. It was published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. One of the interesting aspects of Poe's story is that it sets the tone for future detective stories. Many of the elements found in Rue Morgue... went on to become the established canon of detective fiction. For instance, the idea of a “locked room” was taken up by other writers to include long-dist...
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