Murders in the Rue Morgue, The The

First published in a 1841 edition of Graham's Magazine, The Murders in the Rue Morgue is often cited as the first modern detective story. The first of three stories to center around C. Auguste Dupin, Poe's fictional detective, The Murders in the Rue Morgue involves Dupin's investigation of the baffling murders of a mother and daughter. Witnesses report having heard two voices, one French and one unintelligible during the crime. At the murder scene, Dupin finds a hair that does not appear to be human. Establishing many of the tropes that would later become common to detective fiction, the story begins with an explanation of Dupin's theory of ratiocination, a concept which greatly influenced the creation of detective fiction itself and other great detectives like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.