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Mystery and detective stories are such an enormous genre at this point it’s funny to think that a short story by Edgar Allan Poe is where it all began. We credit this American writer, best known for his moody and often supernatural horror, with its creation thanks to just three short stories, relatively minor works in his otherwise well-known canon. The first among these Poe wrote is “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” upon which we’ve based this radio play, recognized as western literature’s first example of a story built around an unsolved crime where a detective is working to find the solution.
Like most prototypes, Poe’s revolutionary three are pretty deeply flawed. He had yet to discover evidence-based deduction, and his protagonist is basically able to divine from his armchair the outlandish true perpetrator of the crime. Amusingly, Poe’s detective, Auguste Dupin, gets a mention for his ridiculous methods in a Sherlock Holmes story by his more famous literary descendant. This adaption for radio, which Jeremy Holstein very graciously invited me to work with him to create, attempts to manage some of those deficiencies, while still maintaining the spirit of the original story. We’ve also made Dupin and Edelle, and our version of Poe’s unnamed narrator, into women, to further freshen up Poe’s tale.
But even with the need for adaptation and updating, there’s something amazing in the sheer fact that one writer could create such an entire enduring and beloved literary genre just from a little experimenting outside his usual form. After all, from Dupin, think of everything else that grew— from Marple and Poirot, to Wimsey and Vane, to Spade and Marlowe, to Jessica Fletcher, Lennie Briscoe, Magnum, and Colombo, to Sherlock Holmes, who stars in the fabulous tale in the second half of our show, to my own Victoria Hawking. And as someone who spends quite a lot of time pondering the adventures of lady detectives in the 1800’s— you should ask me about Mrs. Hawking sometime —it makes me all the more delighted to pay tribute to where it all began. Except with more women, of course.
Like most prototypes, Poe’s revolutionary three are pretty deeply flawed. He had yet to discover evidence-based deduction, and his protagonist is basically able to divine from his armchair the outlandish true perpetrator of the crime. Amusingly, Poe’s detective, Auguste Dupin, gets a mention for his ridiculous methods in a Sherlock Holmes story by his more famous literary descendant. This adaption for radio, which Jeremy Holstein very graciously invited me to work with him to create, attempts to manage some of those deficiencies, while still maintaining the spirit of the original story. We’ve also made Dupin and Edelle, and our version of Poe’s unnamed narrator, into women, to further freshen up Poe’s tale.
But even with the need for adaptation and updating, there’s something amazing in the sheer fact that one writer could create such an entire enduring and beloved literary genre just from a little experimenting outside his usual form. After all, from Dupin, think of everything else that grew— from Marple and Poirot, to Wimsey and Vane, to Spade and Marlowe, to Jessica Fletcher, Lennie Briscoe, Magnum, and Colombo, to Sherlock Holmes, who stars in the fabulous tale in the second half of our show, to my own Victoria Hawking. And as someone who spends quite a lot of time pondering the adventures of lady detectives in the 1800’s— you should ask me about Mrs. Hawking sometime —it makes me all the more delighted to pay tribute to where it all began. Except with more women, of course.
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