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Poe is generally considered the father of the modern detective story. Like Robert Louis Stevenson, often cited as the godfather of Tartan Noir, Poe was a versatile writer, but his importance to the crime genre lies in a handful of short fictions. An orphan, a failed soldier, an alcoholic and a bankrupt gambler dead by the age of 40, Poe had enough darkness in his own life to draw on. Dark, compulsive and obsessive, some of his short stories deal with the psychological implications of murderous guilt, but it is a trio of stories featuring the detective Auguste Dupin that pave the way for sleuths who rely on observation, logic and deduction to solve murders. Poe created the locked-room mystery, the cerebral detective and the idea that knowing the victim is the key to finding the killer. The fertility of his imagination opened up the possibilities of crime as a genre.

One to read: The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842)

The Poe Museum, Virginia, USA

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