The origins of detective fiction can be dated back to as early as the 8th century in the Arabian Nights. Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin is widely considered to be one of the first fictional detectives, at least in English literature. In France, it was Emile Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq. And then along came Arthur Conan Doyle, inspired by both Poe and Gaboriau, with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, and the rest, as they say, is history. While it’s true that several literary geniuses and screenwriters have tried to do their own take on the Holmes-Watson dynamic, to varying degrees of success, nothing has quite surpassed the worldwide appeal of Doyle’s work. And one of the major reasons why I think that’s the case is because modern detective fiction is convoluted for the sake of being convoluted, with no satisfying payoff at the end of the ordeal.
- 5/29/2025
- by Pramit Chatterjee
- DMT
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