The Oxford Companion to English Literature | detective fiction
detective fiction, Crime has been a staple of storytelling since its beginnings, and misdirection of the reader, for example about facts (
Tom Jones
's parentage), or emotions (in
Emma
or
Much Ado about Nothing
), has equally had its special position, leading to striking revelations at a late crisis point. The classic English detective novel marries the two elements. Its particular form owes its greatest debt to
E.
A.
Poe
, whose three or four detective stories written in the 1840s strikingly anticipate many of the genre's main features. In particular English writers followed him in creating detectives who were remote from the common herd, creatures of pure ratiocination, emotional hermits who observed but did not participate in the hurly-burly of life around them. The fact that the steely logic of Poe's detective Dupin often leads him to conclusions that border on the absurd does not seem to have worried most...
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