In just five stories, Edgar Allan Poe laid down most of the ground rules of detective fiction. In the three tales featuring Auguste Dupin (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter) he created the Great Detective, not to mention the locked-room mystery, the notion of armchair detection and the secret-service story, The Gold Bug revolved around the use of cyphers, and Thou Art the Man-made use of false clues and the least likely suspect.
