Detectives Before Holmes
Detective fiction published before A Study in Scarlet in 1887, including Poe's Dupin stories and the Gaboriau novels Holmes dismissed.
Holds the three Dupin stories of the 1840s, beginning with 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' usually counted as the first detective story.
- You get the whole mystery told by different narrators who keep giving themselves away, and Betteredge, the old butler who treats Robinson Crusoe like scripture, is worth the price alone. It's long and takes its time, but the puzzle itself plays completely fair with you.
- You get an early detective novel that is more tangled and melodramatic than sleek, but its pleasure lies in watching Lecoq work a muddy crime scene while Monsieur Daburon struggles with the case’s personal pressures. It’s a good fit if you enjoy patient clues, shabby Parisian settings, and secrets that unfold by accumulation.
- You’ll like this if you enjoy detective stories that linger over footprints, locked rooms, and the logic of a crime scene. Lecoq’s investigation at the château of Orcival is methodical and melodramatic, with enough old-fashioned atmosphere to reward patience, though it takes a while to find its stride.
- If you like tracing detective fiction back before Holmes, this earns your patience: a murder unravels from a letter found in the Dead Letter Office, and Mr. Burton's sleuthing leans, oddly, on his clairvoyant daughter. It's melodramatic and slow by modern standards, but genuinely curious.
- You’ll enjoy this if you like your mysteries formal, twisty, and a little creaky around the edges. A wealthy man is found murdered in his library, and Ebenezer Gryce works through the household’s secrets while young lawyer Everett Raymond narrates with appealing uncertainty.
- If you like watching a detective actually work, Lecoq (in disguise for most of it) picking apart a bank robbery clue by clue is a real pleasure, though Gaboriau does detour into a long family backstory mid-book, so bring some patience for the melodrama.
- If you want to see detective fiction before Sherlock Holmes existed, here's Lecoq crawling around a snowy murder scene reading footprints, matching wits with a prisoner who won't crack. Fair warning: halfway through it swerves into a long family backstory, so patience helps.
Inspector Bucket, one of the first police detectives in an English novel, works the murder at its center.
Robert Audley, an idle barrister, turns amateur detective to find out what became of his missing friend.
- You get Count Fosco, a villain so charming you catch yourself liking him, and Marian Halcombe, who's braver than any of the men. It's long and Victorian, sure, but the moonlit road meeting hooks you early and the plotting stays sharp all the way through.
- Valeria finds out her new husband was once tried for poisoning his first wife, verdict Not Proven, and decides to solve it herself when everyone tells her to drop it. She's stubborn in a way that's genuinely satisfying, and wait until you meet Miserrimus Dexter.
Dickens died halfway through, and the mystery was never solved.
- Q, the young detective who tells this one, is good company, quick with a disguise and a little vain about it, and watching him worry at why a sewing girl vanished from a rich man's house is half the fun. Expect Victorian melodrama under the sleuthing, and enjoy it anyway.
- Victorian Melbourne makes an oddly great crime scene, all gaslit slums and champagne society, and watching the rival detectives Gorby and Kilsip work the same murder from opposite ends is half the fun. Expect some period melodrama, but the puzzle itself holds up nicely.