In the mid-19th Century, the 3-volume novel, which only the rich could afford, gave way to weekly and monthly magazines for the growing middle class in England, a middle class made possible by the industrial revolution.
Charles Dickens owned a couple of magazines in his day, "Household Words" and "All the Year Round." Serialized stories were a regular feature, as they had been in newspapers earlier. The stories were released as books after the series had run.
Dickens, like other Victorian writers, was sensitive to the Victorian taste for sentimentality, sensation, surprises, coincidences, reversals, and melodrama. Thus, many of their stories dealt with mysterious crimes that are at last explained, criminals who are at last punished, and family secrets at last revealed. "Sensation" fiction, like "Gothic" fiction, stirred up emotions with sentimental portraits of virtue, victims, and villains, featuring characters with names like Miss Fairly and Mr. Heartright.
"Oliver Twist" (1837) presents a whole community of criminals, including Fagin the gang leader and Bill Sikes, a pro burglar. Dickens' re-enactment of Sikes' brutal murder of Nancy in his public readings caused a sensation with his energetic realism. But Dickens did not really have a strong interest in police work, pretty much ignoring the Bow Street Runners, a security force formed in the late 18th Century, and the more recently formed "metropolitan police force" called "the bobbies", begun by the passing of Sir Robert Peel's Metro Police Act of 1829, which led to Scotland Yard's investigative department in 1842.
In "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1844), Dickens attempts a detective plot, sort of. Through most of the story, Dickens leads us to believe that Jonas Chuzzlewit murdered his father. He behaves guiltily, is being blackmailed, and has access to poison. We expect -- as good Victorians -- an exposure of the villain and his getting his just desserts. But Dickens pulls a fast one and reveals that the father died of a broken heart when he realized Jonas intended to poison him. Jonas is still guilty -- but he did not kill his father.
In the 1840s, Dickens took a boyish interest in England's policemen and wrote police 'anecdotes' for Household Words. These sketches respected cops and emphasized observation, deductive reasoning, and detection techniques. Dickens, the former Parliamentary journalist and court reporter (discouraged by the miscarriage of justice there), had begun to hang out at police stations for stories (and maybe for his safety as he walked restlessly through London at night).
Dickens came to realize that readers were becoming more interested in police than in convict-heroes like Vidocq. The growing middle class, it seems, had turned its support toward the police, wanting personal protection and the preservation of an ordered and stratified society.
In "Barnaby Rudge", serialized in 1841, he had the plot revolve loosely around a crime. As noted in the previous posting, Poe studied the first two installments and figure out the end, to Dickens' great consternation ("He must be the very devil!" Dickens exclaimed). Poe criticized the novel for not focusing on the murder itself as the main driving force of the plot. But Dickens hadn't yet learned to tightly control his plots to a pre-determined outcome. His stories wandered and followed multiple dramas like soap operas do. And Dickens never wrote a tale solely to solve a crime -- not even "Our Mutual Friend", his last full novel, which begins with the discovery of a dead body in the Thames, or "Drood," with the mysterious disappearance of Edwin. Even with Dickens' sympathetic portrayal of cops in his magazine anecdotes, police are absent from "Drood".
However, in "Bleak House" (1853), Dickens may have created the first police detective hero, Inspector Bucket of the Detective Force, who solves a murder mystery after an innocent suspect has been arrested based on circumstantial evidence. Bucket comes across as efficient and authoritative. He quietly goes about his business until he reveals the solution in the presence of all concerned who have been gathered to hear it. This 'clearing up' chapter sets a precedent for all drawing-room mysteries to follow.
Bucket is almost surely inspired by a real London detective, Charles Frederick Field, who he profiled in a Household Words sketch two years earlier in 1851, "On Duty with Inspector Field". Dickens, already given to long walks in the city by night, goes on a walk-around with Field into some of the most gritty parts of town where the detective confronts tough customers with equal toughness and some humor.
Another item of note in "Bleak House" is the way Bucket's beloved wife fearlessly assists him, who finds a pad of paper on which threatening notes are written and who follows a suspect to a lake and sees the person throw the murder weapon into the water, which Bucket later recovers. So here is a precedent for the husband-wife partnerships evident later in Dash Hammett's "The Thin Man" and Christie's Tommy and Tuppence stories.
So: Bucket is calm, confident, tenacious, and proud to be a policeman. He is a thick-set man of tact and sensitivity dressed in respectable clothes, not unlike PD James' Adam Dalgliesh. Bucket makes a big impression on the Victorians, who pride themselves on their efficiency, organization, neatness, and good taste. It is, after all, an age of Empire and order.
But it is important to say that Bleak House is not a detective story. Once the murder is cleared up, there are many pages devoted to pleasant descriptions of family events. Like in his other books, the most important question concerns the parentage of the heroine.
Finally, Drood.
Dickens had adapted stories of murders and criminal trials for articles in his magazines in the 1850s, and in his second visit to America in 1868 he made a special trip to a murder scene at Harvard where a professor had killed a rival and disposed of the body in a lab furnace. When he returned to England, Dickens began "Drood".
Dickens died in the middle of it. It was to be 12 installments in "All The Year Round" beginning in April 1870. Three parts appeared before Dickens' death in June 1870. Three more were published after his death. So we know that Drood is half-finished, not even close to the end. The cover design has limited value as evidence of Dickens' intentions; he often changed his mind in the course of drafting.
Four attempts to end it appeared before the end of 1870, and a stage play purporting to finish it appeared in 1871. Dickens' friend, Wilkie Collins, also known for his mystery writing, was asked to complete it. He refused.
Many others have tried, or at least offered explanations. The unfinished mystery is still one of literature's great mysteries.
Was Ed murdered? If so, by whom? How? Where's the body? Was he kidnapped? Did he run away? Why? Where? Is the perp really Jasper, as many suppose? Is it actually obvious, and Dickens' intention was not to write a whodunnit but to explore the great mystery of the human heart, namely Jasper's? And who is Dick Datchery, that curious (disguised?) figure who spies on Jasper? And what about that opium lady?
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Thursday, June 18, 2020
Poe: Part 2
There is so much material on Poe elsewhere online and I don't propose to add much here. I did, however, want to summarize some of Poe's contributions to the detective genre which prefigured much of this category thereafter.
THE PURLOINED LETTER
In case you forgot the story: an unscrupulous and powerful politician, Minister D, has by trick gained possession of a compromising letter and is blackmailing the owner, a charming member of the royal family, who has brought her problem to the police. Their search is fruitless, and Dupin is unhelpful to Prefect G. A month later, the Prefect is more depressed than ever, and Dupin asks if he'd truly pay 50,000 francs to anyone who could get the letter. G says yes; Dupin asks for the check, and hands him the letter! The Prefect, overcome with joy, departs. The rest of the story is Dupin's explanation to his companion. The letter had been left in full view in a letter rack, turned inside out and torn, as though of no importance. The obvious was overlooked, a truism often employed in later detective fiction.
Dupin is no longer an abstract logician. He is more rounded. He is capable of humor. No longer the odd recluse of the Rue Morgue, he now has the stature to know Minister D, and is rich enough to own a gold snuff box and fill it. This is all adding to Dupin's development as a character. But this is the last Dupin story from Poe.
THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET
This was the real 'sequel' to 'Rue Morgue' and far less successful. The outstanding feature of this tale is that it was based on a real crime, the 1841 killing of Mary Rogers, a popular and pretty cigar girl in New York, who disappeared only to return a few days later after a secret elopement with a naval officer. But three years later, she disappeared again, and her body was found in the Hudson. The sensational story lingered in the newspapers for a long time, until a few months later her lover was found dead with a sad note and a bottle of poison by his side, an apparent suicide.
Poe transfers the details to Paris. Thus, Dupin and his narrating sidekick take interest in the murder of a perfume shop clerk, Marie Roget, whose body is found in the Seine. The newspapers are full of juicy details and speculation; Dupin says the papers want to "create a sensation instead of furthering the cause of truth." Even so, he uses the newspaper reports alone to solve the crime from his armchair in a very long and, frankly, tedious narrative where he employs his 'calculus of probabilities'.
Dupin takes pains to disprove the common theory that a gang did it, deciding that a single person involved with Roget in a forbidden romance did it, probably an upper-rank sailor of color with knowledge of ropes and boats -- a boat with a particular feature, which, when found, would find the killer. The narrator abruptly says that this is what happened.
Critics say it's more of an essay than a story. One might say it's all telling, with no showing. But in Dupin's long monologue, we get a summarized view of the details of much future detective fiction. We have the confirmation of the body's ID in the morgue based on clothing and the forensics of 'floaters', the establishment of a timeline (based partly on witnesses and partly on the science of bodily decomposition in water), the testing of theories and disposal of illogical ones, retracing the movements of the victim, the interpretation of clues, and the reconstruction of the crime. Still, while short, it's a laborious read.
THE GOLD BUG
The year before he wrote "Rue Morgue," Poe had a contest in a New York newspaper, "Alexander's Messenger," promising to decipher any code readers could invent. Four months after "Rue Morgue" was published, Poe wrote an article on codes and ciphers for "Graham's Magazine." This story reveals his interest in deductive reasoning, or 'ratiocination,' as he called it, and recalls a time in 1829 when Poe served in the army at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island off the South Carolina coast. Again, the hero is French. LeGrand is like Dupin: from a noble family, but poor and a recluse. In the story, Poe continues some features of detective stories: detection based on observation and the use of analysis, a puzzling title (the bug is incidental), an assistant kept in the dark until the end, an admiring narrator.
IN CLOSING...
Not only did Poe establish the basic rules for the detective story, he also set patterns for the different types of detective stories we have today: "Rue Morgue" is a sensational crime story with a brilliant and quirky amateur who out-thinks the cops. "Marie Roget" is an armchair-detective story and based on a true crime, a 'ripped-from-the-headlines' story. "Letter" is a kind of secret agent story, with a theft in diplomatic circles, a missing document, a blackmail, a beautiful woman in trouble, and police trying to avoid a politically dangerous scandal. "Gold Bug" is the prototype cryptogram story.
Poe once acted a a detective himself -- sort of -- when he wrote an essay on Charles Dickens. In it, he revealed that from the first 2 installments of "Barnaby Rudge" he had accurately deduced the rest of the plot. When Dickens saw this, he said, "He must be the very devil!"
Poe's horror stories, with their portrayal of psychological states of mind, contrast strongly with the logic and rationality of his detective tales. The first Dupin story, really, is a long illustration of Poe's principles of ratiocination (analytical reasoning), which serves as a prologue to the story (a part which many editors cut off). Critic Joesph Wood Crutch once said, "Poe invented the detective story in order that he might not go mad."
Do you agree?
THE PURLOINED LETTER
In case you forgot the story: an unscrupulous and powerful politician, Minister D, has by trick gained possession of a compromising letter and is blackmailing the owner, a charming member of the royal family, who has brought her problem to the police. Their search is fruitless, and Dupin is unhelpful to Prefect G. A month later, the Prefect is more depressed than ever, and Dupin asks if he'd truly pay 50,000 francs to anyone who could get the letter. G says yes; Dupin asks for the check, and hands him the letter! The Prefect, overcome with joy, departs. The rest of the story is Dupin's explanation to his companion. The letter had been left in full view in a letter rack, turned inside out and torn, as though of no importance. The obvious was overlooked, a truism often employed in later detective fiction.
Dupin is no longer an abstract logician. He is more rounded. He is capable of humor. No longer the odd recluse of the Rue Morgue, he now has the stature to know Minister D, and is rich enough to own a gold snuff box and fill it. This is all adding to Dupin's development as a character. But this is the last Dupin story from Poe.
THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET
This was the real 'sequel' to 'Rue Morgue' and far less successful. The outstanding feature of this tale is that it was based on a real crime, the 1841 killing of Mary Rogers, a popular and pretty cigar girl in New York, who disappeared only to return a few days later after a secret elopement with a naval officer. But three years later, she disappeared again, and her body was found in the Hudson. The sensational story lingered in the newspapers for a long time, until a few months later her lover was found dead with a sad note and a bottle of poison by his side, an apparent suicide.
Poe transfers the details to Paris. Thus, Dupin and his narrating sidekick take interest in the murder of a perfume shop clerk, Marie Roget, whose body is found in the Seine. The newspapers are full of juicy details and speculation; Dupin says the papers want to "create a sensation instead of furthering the cause of truth." Even so, he uses the newspaper reports alone to solve the crime from his armchair in a very long and, frankly, tedious narrative where he employs his 'calculus of probabilities'.
Dupin takes pains to disprove the common theory that a gang did it, deciding that a single person involved with Roget in a forbidden romance did it, probably an upper-rank sailor of color with knowledge of ropes and boats -- a boat with a particular feature, which, when found, would find the killer. The narrator abruptly says that this is what happened.
Critics say it's more of an essay than a story. One might say it's all telling, with no showing. But in Dupin's long monologue, we get a summarized view of the details of much future detective fiction. We have the confirmation of the body's ID in the morgue based on clothing and the forensics of 'floaters', the establishment of a timeline (based partly on witnesses and partly on the science of bodily decomposition in water), the testing of theories and disposal of illogical ones, retracing the movements of the victim, the interpretation of clues, and the reconstruction of the crime. Still, while short, it's a laborious read.
THE GOLD BUG
The year before he wrote "Rue Morgue," Poe had a contest in a New York newspaper, "Alexander's Messenger," promising to decipher any code readers could invent. Four months after "Rue Morgue" was published, Poe wrote an article on codes and ciphers for "Graham's Magazine." This story reveals his interest in deductive reasoning, or 'ratiocination,' as he called it, and recalls a time in 1829 when Poe served in the army at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island off the South Carolina coast. Again, the hero is French. LeGrand is like Dupin: from a noble family, but poor and a recluse. In the story, Poe continues some features of detective stories: detection based on observation and the use of analysis, a puzzling title (the bug is incidental), an assistant kept in the dark until the end, an admiring narrator.
IN CLOSING...
Not only did Poe establish the basic rules for the detective story, he also set patterns for the different types of detective stories we have today: "Rue Morgue" is a sensational crime story with a brilliant and quirky amateur who out-thinks the cops. "Marie Roget" is an armchair-detective story and based on a true crime, a 'ripped-from-the-headlines' story. "Letter" is a kind of secret agent story, with a theft in diplomatic circles, a missing document, a blackmail, a beautiful woman in trouble, and police trying to avoid a politically dangerous scandal. "Gold Bug" is the prototype cryptogram story.
Poe once acted a a detective himself -- sort of -- when he wrote an essay on Charles Dickens. In it, he revealed that from the first 2 installments of "Barnaby Rudge" he had accurately deduced the rest of the plot. When Dickens saw this, he said, "He must be the very devil!"
Poe's horror stories, with their portrayal of psychological states of mind, contrast strongly with the logic and rationality of his detective tales. The first Dupin story, really, is a long illustration of Poe's principles of ratiocination (analytical reasoning), which serves as a prologue to the story (a part which many editors cut off). Critic Joesph Wood Crutch once said, "Poe invented the detective story in order that he might not go mad."
Do you agree?
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Poe: Inventor of the Detective Story? Part 1
Many readers become familiar with Edgar Allan Poe's tales of the macabre as teenagers. But Poe also produced science-fiction stories and the first recognizable detective stories that introduced features of the genre for everyone who followed.
MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
Gotta love the tongue-in-cheek title. Anyway, the outstanding feature of Poe's first detective story is his mysterious hero, Auguste Dupin, who is shadowy, eccentric, larger-than-life, brilliant -- and, of course, French. Dupin, from a noble French family, has a good address in Paris, and he discusses intellectual topics like the theater with his journalist sidekick -- the narrator -- with ease. He reads the reviews in "Musee" and he knows the gossip about the ambition and handicaps of a failed actor (like Poe's own father). He consumes the daily newspapers "Gazette Des Tribuneaux" and "Le Monde". He rounds off his little lectures with quotes from French authors. Dupin is a man of culture, familiar with the classics and mathematics. The sidekick narrator is awed by Dupin's huge intellect and serves him a bit dim-wittedly, like Holmes' Watson and Poirot's Hastings.
Dupin investigates by observing details, as Vidocq did. He takes tufts of hair from the rigid fingers of Madame L'Espanaye, unobserved by the cops. Some may argue this is not 'fair play' since later detective fiction said a detective may not remove evidence which is not provided the reader until the end. But hey -- Poe is practically inventing the genre as he goes along; give the man a break.
The hair and finger impressions on the strangled woman convince Dupin (SPOILER ALERT) that an ape did it. He happens to have a volume of Cuvier (a French naturalist) on his shelves to consult about ourang-outangs. The reconstruction of the event is merely confirmed by the sailor who responds to a newspaper ad (EVERYONE read newspapers in those days).
The prefect's jealousy, and Dupin's low opinion of gendarmes, reflects the rivalry between Vidocq and the French police. At the time of the story's publication, the police had taken Vidocq to court, saying his work jeopardized real police work. The court ruled in Vidocq's favor, greatly enhancing his reputation.
Poe's principles became important for the genre. He wrote separate, self-contained stories around the same detective, that is, a series, with an admiring and dim-witted narrator-companion, and a rival cop. The story is conceived backwards: Poe thought of the ape and murder before the clues. They seem obvious to us now: orange hair, non-human fingermarks, brute strength, a sailor ribbon, a broken window nail. But he arranges it is a way to heighten our impression of Dupin's genius. Like most detective stories, it does not proceed as Aristotle said - beginning, middle, end. It proceeds from the middle -- finding the bodies -- to the end (the ape did it), to the beginning. And all in one sitting. Poe, practically the inventor of the short story as a literary form, noted this was important, to create a unified, singe 'effect', in his famous essay on short story writing called 'The Laws of Composition."
In Part 2, I'll offer a few reflections on Poe's other tales of detection (or, as he called it, 'ratiocination'), "The Purloined Letter," "The Gold Bug," and "The Mystery of Marie Roget."
MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
Gotta love the tongue-in-cheek title. Anyway, the outstanding feature of Poe's first detective story is his mysterious hero, Auguste Dupin, who is shadowy, eccentric, larger-than-life, brilliant -- and, of course, French. Dupin, from a noble French family, has a good address in Paris, and he discusses intellectual topics like the theater with his journalist sidekick -- the narrator -- with ease. He reads the reviews in "Musee" and he knows the gossip about the ambition and handicaps of a failed actor (like Poe's own father). He consumes the daily newspapers "Gazette Des Tribuneaux" and "Le Monde". He rounds off his little lectures with quotes from French authors. Dupin is a man of culture, familiar with the classics and mathematics. The sidekick narrator is awed by Dupin's huge intellect and serves him a bit dim-wittedly, like Holmes' Watson and Poirot's Hastings.
Dupin investigates by observing details, as Vidocq did. He takes tufts of hair from the rigid fingers of Madame L'Espanaye, unobserved by the cops. Some may argue this is not 'fair play' since later detective fiction said a detective may not remove evidence which is not provided the reader until the end. But hey -- Poe is practically inventing the genre as he goes along; give the man a break.
The hair and finger impressions on the strangled woman convince Dupin (SPOILER ALERT) that an ape did it. He happens to have a volume of Cuvier (a French naturalist) on his shelves to consult about ourang-outangs. The reconstruction of the event is merely confirmed by the sailor who responds to a newspaper ad (EVERYONE read newspapers in those days).
The prefect's jealousy, and Dupin's low opinion of gendarmes, reflects the rivalry between Vidocq and the French police. At the time of the story's publication, the police had taken Vidocq to court, saying his work jeopardized real police work. The court ruled in Vidocq's favor, greatly enhancing his reputation.
Poe's principles became important for the genre. He wrote separate, self-contained stories around the same detective, that is, a series, with an admiring and dim-witted narrator-companion, and a rival cop. The story is conceived backwards: Poe thought of the ape and murder before the clues. They seem obvious to us now: orange hair, non-human fingermarks, brute strength, a sailor ribbon, a broken window nail. But he arranges it is a way to heighten our impression of Dupin's genius. Like most detective stories, it does not proceed as Aristotle said - beginning, middle, end. It proceeds from the middle -- finding the bodies -- to the end (the ape did it), to the beginning. And all in one sitting. Poe, practically the inventor of the short story as a literary form, noted this was important, to create a unified, singe 'effect', in his famous essay on short story writing called 'The Laws of Composition."
In Part 2, I'll offer a few reflections on Poe's other tales of detection (or, as he called it, 'ratiocination'), "The Purloined Letter," "The Gold Bug," and "The Mystery of Marie Roget."
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Vidocq, the first detective
The first real-life professional detective emerged in the early 1800s: Eugene Francois Vidocq. In his memoirs, published in France in 1828, his stories of hunting down criminals single-handedly excited the public (you can find them online here https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memoirs_of_Vidocq). An ex-convict, he founded the Surete, a plain-clothes security and investigation unit in Paris. The French had no love for their police force, but they loved Vidocq's flamboyant style of detection. It was likened to hunting, like American Indians stalking foes in James Fennimore Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans" which was popular in France at the time. It was just a matter of changing scenes, from the wild woods of the New World to the wild streets of urban Europe.
Vidocq is a real person, not a fictional character. After a decadent youth and poor army career, he was sent to prison at age 21. He often escaped but was captured each time. As a result, he became familiar with the ways of convicts and police. Vidocq offered his services to the head of the Paris police and was accepted.
At the time, in 1810, Paris was divided into districts, each with its own police chief. Since there was no central control, criminals moved among districts easily.
But Vidocq organized and led a group of agents, The Surete (The Security Force), to track down escaped convicts and to investigate robberies and other crimes. The regular police were resentful and suspicious about his power to make arrests, and jealous of his relationship to the chief.
His memoirs give details about how he investigated crimes. He was an acute observer of details. He understood how criminals think and talk, and he was able to masterfully disguise himself as a criminal, infiltrate their organizations and hide-outs and win their confidence. He often went weeks living with cons until he could make an arrest, recover the loot, and present enough evidence for trial. Many of his cases were later embellished by admirers and editors who explained all the steps of deduction.
He had a flair for publicity, built a strong reputation internationally for efficiency and elegance (well, he was French), and kept an opulent office nicer than any police station.
At age 50, he left the Surete to form his own agency, taking business clients for an annual fee. He was a frequent guest at fancy dinners, and famous people like Balzac came to call on him. The fact that the police disliked him and attacked him merely increased his popularity, for the public had disliked the police for generations.
He was popular in England, too. A play based on his life appeared in London in 1829, "Vidocq: The French Police Spy." In 1849, Vidocq opened a museum in London celebrating himself, with many items from his famous 'cases' on display. He would often appear in disguise to entertain visitors, then reveal himself, stripping away his masks, crying out, "I am Vidocq!" just like in his memoirs.
Vidocq established in the public mind the 'ideal detective' who was patient, enduring, skilled in disguise, with insight into the criminal mind, a unique intelligence, a devotion to detection as his sole occupation, a reputation for inevitable success with apparently un-solvable problems, and having grand moments of triumph over foes (and over the inept police, who resent a gifted amateur without whose aid they would not otherwise solve the case). These ideal qualities persisted in detective fiction even to the day when PIs and cops had a better working partnership in fiction, such as Ellery Queen and Lord Peter Whimsey.
Vidocq's writings also exposed terrible conditions in French prisons, giving the public added sympathy for him as a former convict, and high regard for him as the champion of the falsely accused.
Poe, a lover of all things French, read Vidocq. So it is no surprise that his character Auguste Dupin is inspired by Vidocq. Not surprisingly, a view persisted for a long time that 'detective fiction' was a French form. After all, crime and detection 'serial novels' had appeared in French newspapers through the 1840s, and Balzac had detectives in several of his novels. Even Alexander Dumas had D'Artagnan the Musketeer conduct a ballistics investigation to reconstruct a shooting.
Thus it is that the alleged father of the form, Edgar A. Poe,
gave his hero a strong French background. More on him another day.
Vidocq is a real person, not a fictional character. After a decadent youth and poor army career, he was sent to prison at age 21. He often escaped but was captured each time. As a result, he became familiar with the ways of convicts and police. Vidocq offered his services to the head of the Paris police and was accepted.
At the time, in 1810, Paris was divided into districts, each with its own police chief. Since there was no central control, criminals moved among districts easily.
But Vidocq organized and led a group of agents, The Surete (The Security Force), to track down escaped convicts and to investigate robberies and other crimes. The regular police were resentful and suspicious about his power to make arrests, and jealous of his relationship to the chief.
His memoirs give details about how he investigated crimes. He was an acute observer of details. He understood how criminals think and talk, and he was able to masterfully disguise himself as a criminal, infiltrate their organizations and hide-outs and win their confidence. He often went weeks living with cons until he could make an arrest, recover the loot, and present enough evidence for trial. Many of his cases were later embellished by admirers and editors who explained all the steps of deduction.
He had a flair for publicity, built a strong reputation internationally for efficiency and elegance (well, he was French), and kept an opulent office nicer than any police station.
At age 50, he left the Surete to form his own agency, taking business clients for an annual fee. He was a frequent guest at fancy dinners, and famous people like Balzac came to call on him. The fact that the police disliked him and attacked him merely increased his popularity, for the public had disliked the police for generations.
He was popular in England, too. A play based on his life appeared in London in 1829, "Vidocq: The French Police Spy." In 1849, Vidocq opened a museum in London celebrating himself, with many items from his famous 'cases' on display. He would often appear in disguise to entertain visitors, then reveal himself, stripping away his masks, crying out, "I am Vidocq!" just like in his memoirs.
Vidocq established in the public mind the 'ideal detective' who was patient, enduring, skilled in disguise, with insight into the criminal mind, a unique intelligence, a devotion to detection as his sole occupation, a reputation for inevitable success with apparently un-solvable problems, and having grand moments of triumph over foes (and over the inept police, who resent a gifted amateur without whose aid they would not otherwise solve the case). These ideal qualities persisted in detective fiction even to the day when PIs and cops had a better working partnership in fiction, such as Ellery Queen and Lord Peter Whimsey.
Vidocq's writings also exposed terrible conditions in French prisons, giving the public added sympathy for him as a former convict, and high regard for him as the champion of the falsely accused.
Poe, a lover of all things French, read Vidocq. So it is no surprise that his character Auguste Dupin is inspired by Vidocq. Not surprisingly, a view persisted for a long time that 'detective fiction' was a French form. After all, crime and detection 'serial novels' had appeared in French newspapers through the 1840s, and Balzac had detectives in several of his novels. Even Alexander Dumas had D'Artagnan the Musketeer conduct a ballistics investigation to reconstruct a shooting.
Thus it is that the alleged father of the form, Edgar A. Poe,
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