Armchair detective an arm-chair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived." "The first example of armchair detecting can be found in the work of Edgar Allan Poe. In "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842), C. Auguste Dupin, working wholly from newspaper accounts, arrives at the correct explanation for a young woman's mysterious disappearance." Baroness Orczy's Old Man in the Corner sits in a restaurant and talks to an acquaintance about cases, almost always finishing by revealing that he has solved the crime. A more literal use of this term can be found in Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels
Louis Ellies Dupin the opening part of his second volume of "Remarques". Petit-Didier's observations often seem inspired by prejudices of his time. Thus Dupin had placed St. Macarius the Egyptian in the 4th century, to which indeed he rightly belongs. Having discovered Semipelagianism in this author's works, Petit-Didier concluded that Macarius should come after Pelagius and St. Augustine (II, 198). In reality similar ideas had been professed by many before St. Augustine's time. A more formidable enemy appeared in Bossuet, who, during a public thesis at the Collège de Navarre in 1692, condemned Dupin's audacity. Dupin answered him and Bossuet appealed to the