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) woman he loved. The book was nominated for the John Creasey Memorial Dagger for the best first crime novel of 1991 (the winner being Walter Mosley). The first seven novels appeared between 1991 and 1999. Harry Devlin returned in 2008 in Waterloo Sunset, a novel which reflects the changes in his life and in his native Liverpool during the intervening years. 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