olves the mystery by means of deductive reasoning from facts known both to the character and the reader.Poe wrote five short narratives in which he originated almost every significant principle used by detective story writers for more than a century afterward. He called them "tales of ratiocination" (reasoning). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy L. Sayers have placed Poe at the beginning of the tradition of detective fiction. They believe he used numerous conventions of the genre, in particular the "armchair detective" and sidekick/narrator to serve as an intermediary between the detective and reader. (Peeples 123) These "tales of ratiocination," all written between 1840 and 1844 have raised many issues beyond the question of their "originary status." addressing such problems as "reading" the urban world of strangers, grasping the workings of the human mind, and collecting the rewards for intellectual effort. These tales, which make fascinating reading, begin with"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), which was the very first in a respected tradition of so-called locked room cases, where the crime takes place in a seemingly impossible location. "The Gold Bug" (1843) is the ancestor of hundreds of stories dependent on the solution of a coded message; and "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842-1843), an essay in armchair detection and considered a sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." They continue with "Thou Art the Man" (1844), which reveals the most unlikely person as the murderer and is the first comic detective story; and "The Purloined Letter" (1845), which successfully presents the theory that when all other possibilities have been discarded, the one remaining, however apparent improbable, must be correct. In these and similar tales, Poe's interest "centers on the processes of detection, leaving the moral issues of the crimes either largely unaddressed or curiously deflected." (Cleman 623)Poe's writings introduced C. Augus...
