The first three stories featuring the detective C. Auguste Dupin.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Dupin becomes interested in the unexplained (by the police) death of a Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter, Camille, in the Rue Morgue. Not just unexplained but brutal deaths.
It took a while to get into the writing style but an interesting mystery nevertheless.
The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
A story that is based on a real crime but this is the story of Marie Roget. Dupin investigates the case by reading and analysing all the newspaper reports to determine who may have committed the crime.
Unfortunately found it difficult to find his writing style interesting.
The Purloined Letter
Dupin is approached by Monsieur G-, the Perfect of the Parisian police. A letter has been purloined from the Royal apartments, and although the thief is known, a Minister D-, the letter has not been found even after a very thorough search. Dupin postulates that sometimes events are simplier then they seem.
This was an enjoyable mystery story
( )

Monsieur Chevalier Auguste Dupin. A character created by Edgar Allan Poe....the fictional amateur detective that started an entire genre and inspired authors like Arthur Conan Doyle to create other fictional detectives. Dupin is a complex, amazingly intelligent and observant man. It's a shame that Poe did not pen more stories about him!

This book contains three stories: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The mystery of Marie Roget, and The Purloined Letter. I love Poe's writing, so I have read these tales many times. And I enjoyed this chance to revisit them. I enjoyed having all of Dupin's investigations in one volume.

I definitely recommend these stories to any reader who loves detective fiction. The tales are written in that dark, chilling way that Poe mastered.

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Pushkin Vertigo. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.** ( )

Apart from "the Raven" and the "Tell-Tale Heart", I had not read anything else from Poe. I was acquainted with "The Murders of Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" but had read neither. I did enjoy these two, however, the second story, "the Mystery of Marie Rogers", I disliked only because it seemed to re-hash information time and again, dragging out the story to the point I just skipped through.

I would not really put these into the category of detective fiction as Dupin just has monologue after monologue, there is no real investigation.

I have done my due diligence and have read them, but not likely to again. ( )

There's absolutely no point in going over the plots of these three stories. You have a computer, or you wouldn't be reading this review. Google the plots if you're in any doubt about what these three tales have in store for you.

I'll tell you, instead of a book report, that I downloaded the Digital Review Copy of this book wondering what would make the edition "Deluxe." There's nothing like a critical essay included here; the DRC isn't really that exciting typographically speaking; the footnotes of then-commonly-understood Latin phrases are, I *think*, in the original texts. Many now-common terms like "tibia" and "acumen" are italicized (and still other words are italicized for emphasis, Poe makes the difference very obvious) after the fashion of the 1840s when they first appeared; as Poe was busily inventing the detective (a word not coined until after Poe's death)-centered mystery model, one is prepared to forgive the spelling of "clew."

It is a hardcover edition; it is, judging from the photo below


a truly lovely object to hold and behold. The only luxe touch that it lacks is the elegance of deckled edges on the book block.

The other worthy-of-mention luxury in this edition is learning from Chevalier Auguste Dupin the genesis of ratiocination as a basis for criminology. The idea of professional policing was *scarcely* a century old at this point; the Bow Street Runners in London forming the first ever paid professional police force under the Blind Beak, Sir John Fielding, under whose stern guidance the semi-thieving days of the watch were ended at last. Dupin, then, as a logical and observant man of Justice's retinue, would've been a rare bird indeed in a time when the Law caught whoever "everyone knew" had killed the deady and he was punished. Observation being the absolute key contribution of Dupin to detective fiction:

The history of human knowledge has so uninterruptedly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation.

So, if you ever wondered where the inspiration for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation came from, it's here. The presence of mildew (italics in original), the hiding of a body in a place it wasn't murdered but is calculated to be discovered in a particular manner and/or at a particular time...all that in 1840s Paris, via the imagination of M. Edgar Poe! And his creation Dupin predates the formal coining of the word "detective" by almost a decade, this honor going to Chuckles the Dick in 1850. Much as I hate to give ol' Chuckles any positive credit, this is an incontrovertible, evidence-based citation. Ick. It hurts to praise someone for inventing an excellent word when that someone is responsible for some of the lowest moments of one's reading life.

Still...there it is. Facts are, dammit anyway, facts. ( )