Sherlock Holmes such that many have believed him to be not a fictional character but a real individual; numerous literary and fan societies have been founded that pretend to operate on this principle. Widely considered a British cultural icon, the character and stories have had a profound and lasting effect on mystery writing and popular culture as a whole, with the original tales as well as thousands written by authors other than Conan Doyle being adapted into stage and radio plays, television, films, video games, and other media for over one hundred years. Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin is generally acknowledged
Police procedural gathering evidence, search warrants, interrogation and adherence to legal restrictions and procedure. The roots of the police procedural have been traced to at least the mid-1880s. Wilkie Collins's novel "The Moonstone" (1868), a tale of a Scotland Yard detective investigating the theft of a valuable diamond, has been described as perhaps the earliest clear example of the genre. As detective fiction rose to worldwide popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many of the pioneering and most popular characters, at least in the English-speaking world, were private investigators or amateurs. See C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, Miss