C. Auguste Dupin implies "duping" or deception, a skill Dupin shows off in "The Purloined Letter." Detective fiction, however, had no real precedent and the word "detective" had not yet been coined when Poe first introduced Dupin. The closest example in fiction is Voltaire's "Zadig" (1748), in which the main character performs similar feats of analysis, themselves borrowed from "The Three Princes of Serendip", an Italian rendition of Amir Khusrau's Hasht Bihisht. In writing the series of Dupin tales, Poe capitalized on contemporary popular interest. His use of an orangutan in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was inspired by the popular reaction
Harry Devlin (fictional detective) Harry Devlin (fictional detective) Harry Devlin is a fictional detective created by the British crime writer Martin Edwards. He has appeared in eight novels and eight short stories, and was described by Marcel Berlins in ‘The Guardian’ as ‘a charming but down-at-heel Liverpool solicitor with bruised emotions, a nice line in self-deprecation, and a penchant for Mersey low life.’ The series has received consistently good reviews. In "All the Lonely People", the book which introduced Harry Devlin, his estranged wife Liz is murdered, and he is the prime suspect. Harry needs to clear his name and find who killed the