First, I wrote:
If you are interested in early mysteries, I recommend Early
German and Austrian Detective Fiction: An Anthology,
translated and edited by Mary Tannert and Henry Kratz
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999).
************ Then, Miker wrote:
Well that's interesting. I might have a go at that. We're
talking private detectives, right? Not police
detectives.
************
My response: In the 1828 novella "The Caliber," the detective
is translated as being an "investigative magistrate,"
whatever that means.
In the 1839 story "The Dead Man of St. Anne's Chapel," (In my
previous email message, I mistakenly stated that it was
published in 1840. Actually, in 1840, an English translation
of this story was published in Blackwood's Magazine.) the
investigator is not one person, but the defense attorney, the
prosecuting attorney, etc., beginning with the discovery of
the crime, following different people through their
investigations, all the way through the trial and the
verdict--more like an early version of the Law & Order TV
series.
So Poe may still hold the throne as having created the first
fictional private detective. But certainly not the first
mystery.
Vince Emery
Vince Emery Productions Publisher:
- LOST STORIES by Dashiell Hammett
- DISCOVERING THE MALTESE FALCON AND
SAM SPADE edited by Richard Layman
www.emerybooks.com Box 460279, San Francisco, CA 94146 USA
vince@emery.com Phone
1.415.337.6000
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