RARA-AVIS: locked room mystery

e j m duggan (ejmd@cwcom.net)
Sun, 02 May 1999 10:48:12 +0000 On Sat, 1 May 1999, "Joe Hoffman" <ljhoffman@worldnet.att.net> who is
really Anita, wrote:

> Although I am sure I will probably garner more rotton eggs for
> elaborating, (maybe not), Edgar Allen Poes "Murder in the Rue
> Morgue", was the first impossible-crime locked room
> detective story.

Unless, like Dot Sayers, one tries to push the detective genre back to
classical and biblical times (makes it respectable, see?). Accepting
that 'detective fiction' can exist prior to 'the detective' one might
then allow the biblical Daniel to be the solver of the first locked room
mystery in Bel and the Dragon [from the apocrypha].

There's a version of it interested parties can check out up at
<http://www.ejmd.mcmail.com/beldragn.htm>

ED

PS & BTW, there are, I think, echoes of the locked room in a couple of
Hammett stories: at least _The Dain Curse_ and probably another Op story
too, the title of which I don't recall at the moment.

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