From Edgar Allan Poe to Now

There’s nothing quite like hunkering down with a good crime thriller and a steaming cup of coffee—or, depending on your preference, perhaps a glass of wine, a stout bourbon, or a sherry.

Your crime thriller may be a relatively new author or an established writer going back decadesperhaps even centuries. I’m a big fan of crime thrillers written in years gone by. I enjoy a story typically set at the end of the 19th century and into the 1940’s.

A First Encounter with Mystery: Edgar Allan Poe

My introduction to the genre came in high school literature class, where I first encountered Edgar Allan Poe, often referred to as the father of the detective story. In 1841, he published what we now recognize as the first modern detective fiction: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, featuring the brilliant (and fictional) detective C. Auguste Dupin.

Poe’s story set the foundation for the detective genre, introducing a protagonist with exceptional analytical skills, tasked with unraveling a seemingly impossible crime. Without revealing too much, I’ll simply say that Dupin’s ability to think beyond conventional suspects laid the groundwork for future literary detectives—including one of the most famous of all time: Sherlock Holmes.

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