Dupin’s Descendants in Print and on Screen

Edgar Allan Poe envisions detection as competition, staging contests between characters, constructing plots so as to outwit readers, and in effect competing with himself in the two sequels to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” By striving to outdo what he has already done, Poe weaves authorial competition into the fabric of detection, inspiring a diverse range of writers to bring innovations to the form. He would likely be amazed to find that the descendants of Auguste Dupin have come in an array of shapes, sizes, nationalities, genders, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, subject positions, and ethnic and racial backgrounds. Moreover, even his vivid imagination could not have conceived of detection’s impact on various print and nonprint media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including comic books, graphic novels, animation, computer games, television, and film.