The detective stories featuring Mr Dupin, e.g. Rue de Morgue, stand out for their brilliant dialogues and deductive analysis. ( )

Edgar Allan lived a short life but was a prolific writer, known for his brilliant scary works as well as mysteries and for early science fiction. The stories in this volume are representative of these types. My favorites were The Gold Bug, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Oval Portrait. In addition, I also liked The Mystery of Marie Roget, although it isn't as famous as the others. There are two having to do with flights in hot air balloons (pre-Jules Verne, who was influenced by Poe). One, interestingly enough, was published as a "journalist hoax!" Fake news is, apparently, an old concept!

In this volume are: The Unparalled Adventures of one Hans Pfaal, The Gold Bug, Four Beasts in One, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Balloon-Hoax, MS. Found in a Bottle, The Oval Portrait ( )

Here we have some weird tales, some silly fancy and some mystery. Gold Bug is bizarre, but boils down to mystery. The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Rogêt are straight-up mystery, with some of the (sometimes annoyingly) overly-introspective thinking that seems to characterise Poe's work (I mean, the intro to Rue Morgue, with its theories about the mind, &c. could be totally skipped). With The Balloon Hoax and MS. Found in a Bottle we begin to see the delightfully sarcastic skewering of genre that I found to be underlying theme in much of his writing. ( )