Eureka: A Prose Poem Poe's fiction work, including attempts at breaking beyond the obstacle of death and specifically characters who return from death in stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia". Similar to his theories on a good short story, Poe believes the universe is a self-contained, closed system. In coming to his conclusions, Poe uses ratiocination as a literary device, through his character C. Auguste Dupin, as if Poe himself were a detective solving the mystery of the universe. "Eureka", then, is the culmination of Poe's interest in capturing truth through language, an extension of his interest in cryptography.
Jack Spratt (fictional detective) Jack Spratt (fictional detective) Jack Spratt is the protagonist in a series of alternate history science fiction fantasy novels by Jasper Fforde. He was named after the character from the English nursery rhyme. As revealed in "The Big Over Easy", for example, he hates eating fat, and was once married to a woman who ate nothing else (hence, she died). Spratt is an obvious satire on the general detective stereotype. Whereas famous detectives such as Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes have been portrayed as confident, successful, substance-abusing loners, Spratt does not have a substance abuse problem, and is