[Susan Foreman]

Continuing 'The Complete Tales And Poems Of Edgar Allen Poe':

'MS. Found in a Bottle' (Adventure, first published Baltimore Saturday Visiter, October 1833) - An unnamed narrator sets sail as a passenger aboard a cargo ship. A few days into the voyage, the ship is first becalmed then hit by a hurricane, killing almost everyone on board. Later, it collides with a ghost ship which the narrator boards, before being blown south to the Antarctic and sinking in a giant whirlpool

This is the first story in the volume that I struggled to finish. I found it tedious and a chore to read

'A Descent Into The Maelstrom' (Adventure, first published Graham's Magazine, April 1841) - Another sea based adventure which could very easily be a continuation of the above tale. A story remembered by a person of a fishing trip he went on with his two brothers. The boat they are on is caught in a hurricane, and sucked into a whirlpool, resulting in the narrator being the only survivor

The writing of the story was very rushed, and Poe later admitted that the conclusion was imperfect

'The Murders In The Rue Morgue' (Detective, first published Graham's Magazine, April 1841) - Acknowledged as being the first modern detective story, this concerns the Frenchman C. Auguste Dupin who solves a grisly double murder of two women in a 'locked room mystery' by using logic, intellect and reasoning

The first filmed adaptation of this story was ironically a Sherlock Holmes story entitled 'Sherlock Holmes in the Great Murder Mystery' in 1909. This is now a lost film, and the director and cast are unknown. Further films followed, including Universal's 'Murders In The Rue Morgue' in 1932 with Bela Lugosi and Sidney Fox; 'The Phantom Of The Rue Morgue' in 1954 with Karl Malden; 'Murders In The Rue Morgue' in 1971 with Jason Robards and Herbert Lom; George C. Scott and Val Kilmer appeared in a 1986 film directed by Jeannot Szwarc; and Iron Maiden had a song with the same title on their second album

'The Mystery of Marie Roget' (Detective, first serialized in three parts in Snowden's Ladies Companion in November 1842, December 1842 and February 1843) - A Sequel to 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', this is the first murder mystery based on the details of a real crime. The narrative is based upon the actual unsolved murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers, whose body was found floating in the Hudson River on July 28, 1841. Relocating the story to Paris, and changing the name of the victim, C. Auguste Dupin once again used rationalization to solve the case

In 1942, Universal films released a film with the same title, directed by Phil Rosen and featuring Patric Knowles and Maria Montez

'The Purloined Letter' (Detective, first published in The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present in December 1844) - This is the third and final story featuring C. Auguste Dupin and it tells how he retrieves a stolen letter that contains information which could compromise an un-named woman

These three stories make up a loose trilogy, although they are not presented as such. As the first fictional detective, Dupin displays many traits which would became literary conventions (and even cliches) in subsequent fictional detectives - many later characters would follow the model of a brilliant but eccentric detective, his personal friend (who acts as a narrator), the bumbling constabulary and the final revelation being presented before the reasoning that leads up to it. Indeed, Conan-Doyle owes Poe a huge debt of gratitude when it comes to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries

Out of the three, I was least impressed with 'The Mystery of Marie Roget', but this is possibly because I am unfamiliar with the original case, and I don't know how factual Dupin's deductions are. It's an intriguing concept, however, and I am certain that, if Poe still been alive and writing in the late 1880's, Dupin would have been faced with unraveling the Jack The Ripper murders