The honour of founding the modern detective story belongs to an American
writer. Such tales as "The Purloined Letter" and "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue" still stand unrivalled.
We in America no more than the world of letters at large, did not
readily realize what Poe had done when he created Auguste Dupin--the
prototype of Sherlock Holmes _et genus omnes_, up to the present hour.
On Poe's work is built the whole school of French detective story
writers. Conan Doyle derived his inspiration from them in turn, and our
American writers of to-day are helped from both French and English
sources. It is rare enough to find the detective in fiction even to-day,
however, who is not lacking in one supreme quality,--scientific
imagination. Auguste Dupin had it. Dickens, had he lived a short time
longer, might have turned his genius in this direction. The last thing
he wrote was the "Mystery of Edwin Drood," the mystery of which is still
unravelled. I have heard the opinion expressed by an eminent living
writer that had Dickens' life been prolonged he would probably have
become the greatest master of the detective story, except Poe.
The detective story heretofore has been based upon one of two methods:
analysis or deduction. The former was Poe's, to take the typical
example; the latter is Conan Doyle's. Of late the discoveries of science
have been brought into play in this field of fiction with notable
results. The most prominent of such innovators, indeed the first one, is
Arthur Reeve, an American writer, whose "Black Hand" will be found in
this collection; which has endeavoured within its limited space to cover
the field from the start--the detective story--wholly the outgrowth of
the more highly developed police methods which have sprung into being
within little more than half a century, being only so old.