The First Detective

Every time I read these stories, I tell myself, “THIS is the time I’m going to enjoy them.” It is never true.

I appreciate their historical significance, I really do, and Rue Morgue is enjoyable and grotesquely titillating (I really enjoy the interviews with the witnesses in which they all make their best guess as to what language the murderer was speaking). But Marie Rogêt is just amazingly boring and overlong, and The Purloined Letter - while an improvement - always loses me about halfway through.

Even so, this edition with all of them together was a nice idea.

Every time I read these stories, I tell myself, “THIS is the time I’m going to enjoy them.” It is never true.

I appreciate their historical significance, I really do, and Rue Morgue is enjoyable and grotesquely titillating (I really enjoy the interviews with the witnesses in which they all make their best guess as to what language the murderer was speaking). But Marie Rogêt is just amazingly boring and overlong, and The Purloined Letter - while an improvement - always loses me about halfway through.

Even so, this edition with all of them together was a nice idea.