First ever crime fiction book?

[TaxiGirl]

How Encyclopedia Brown!

 

[Dan G]

There was something about reading Nancy Drew as a child that made me want to hit her.

How could you wanna hit Nancy Drew?!? Dang!!

You know those kids in the Narnia books? They had a beat down in store in my mind...

 

[Novella]

Anybody else here was in a detective club as a child?

Not a detective club, but a spy club of sorts. We all had 00 numbers and went on missions defusing "bombs" we planted, tracking the enemy, and other stuff like that. Can't tell you more, or I'd have to kill you.

 

[Wesne]

I think you hit the proverbial nail's head, Polka Dot! :eusa_clap

Now that you mention Vidocq, it would be interesting to know if Poe
might have read his memoir before penning The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
I recall hearing somewhere that Poe had been influenced
by an actual European detective's investigative method.
Perhaps this influence was Vidocq.

There was a piece about this in a recent issue of Harper's, which credits Poe with inventing the whole detective fiction genre as we know it. Apparently Poe was familiar with Vidocq, and had his detective, Dupin, give a little tip of the hat to Vidocq in one of his stories, saying something to the effect that Vidocq was a "good guesser" but got too emotionally involved in his cases. Arthur Conan Doyle later carried on this tradition by having Sherlock Holmes make a similar remark about Dupin.

 

[Dan G]

Not a detective club, but a spy club of sorts. We all had 00 numbers and went on missions defusing "bombs" we planted, tracking the enemy, and other stuff like that. Can't tell you more, or I'd have to kill you.

Oh yes. The spy club... We had one of those too! In fact we dug this giant hole in the woods behind our house that we used for a hideout. We were all kind of afraid of heights so no treehouse. This hole was HUGE! (we were little) It was something like five by ten feet and easy every bit of seven feet deep. Then we covered it with sticks, branches, and finally the neighboring golf course's sod. Oh it was beautiful. Now there's houses there. They were in for a suprise when they found that thing!!lol

 

[Harp]

There was a piece about this in a recent issue of Harper's, which credits Poe with inventing the whole detective fiction genre as we know it. Apparently Poe was familiar with Vidocq, and had his detective, Dupin, give a little tip of the hat to Vidocq in one of his stories, saying something to the effect that Vidocq was a "good guesser" but got too emotionally involved in his cases. Arthur Conan Doyle later carried on this tradition by having Sherlock Holmes make a similar remark about Dupin.

Hmmm. Elementary my dear Wesne. Holmes, himself, certainly seemed susceptible to emotional involvement in a case where a certain woman was concerned. Whereas Vidocq had the excuse of being French.

Poe may have further developed the genre, but Vidocq's earlier memoir,
penned while Poe was still in school, in a literary sense may lay a better
claim for the genre.

 

[rockyj]

Beau Geste

I think of it as somewhat of a crime story. It's start with the Beau stealing the "BLUE WATER"

 

[Helen Troy]

We are four kids, all in different detective clubs. There were so many little detectives crawling around the house, that my mother wrote one of her first books: The detectives handbook. (A wonderful, useful guide for detective clubs.)

Nancy Drew made an imprint in my soul. First, because i worshiped her as a detective idol. Then, I started hating her for being so goodie two-shoes perfect. Then, I just marveled at the stupid plots I had ever read.

 

[TaxiGirl]

How could you wanna hit Nancy Drew?!? Dang!!

As Helen said... too "goodie two-shoes perfect". And things would just be given to her -- things like CARS. And when she did things that were unsafe and/or ridiculous (stowing away in a truck being used to steal furniture, or whatever) she never got in trouble afterwards. I just wanted to see someone yell at her for trespassing, and have her get charged with a misdemeanor, and have her get grounded, and all of that.

I also could not figure out why she was 16 years old and not in school.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I was about seven, the gal next door and I teamed up to solve "The Mystery Of The Blood Stained Curtain." There was an abandoned gas station at the end of my street, that all the neighborhood kids insisted was haunted -- the guy who'd run it for years and years, Mr. Grant, just disappeared one day, we'd heard, and nobody knew where he'd gone or why. One day we got up the nerve to go up there and peek thru a crack in one of the windows -- where we saw A BLOODY CURTAIN hanging on an opposite wall.

Immediately we realized that crime was afoot. Mr. Grant had been *done in* by parties unknown, and no doubt his bones still lingered at the bottom of the grease pit. It was up to us to investigate, and find the clues that would solve the mystery that had haunted Norris Street for as long as we could remember.

We set to work. Digging around in the dirt behind the gas station we found a pile of empty Narragansett beer cans. *Obviously* the killer fortified himself for the deed by knocking off a few tall-boys first. And over there in the corner behind those barrels -- a lug wrench. The *actual murder weapon,* no doubt discarded as the desperate killer fled the scene. And then, on the ground -- the ultimate clue. A rusty cigarette lighter, with the initials FKB. Could it be -- Mr. Brackett from across the street? Kindly old Mr. Brackett, who gave out Mallomars every Halloween and always waved when we rode by on our bikes? Could *he* have brought that lug wrench down upon the fragile skull of poor old Mr. Grant??

We had to know. We knew there was only one way to find the truth -- we had to go *inside* and investigate the ACTUAL CRIME SCENE.

All the doors were locked, but we knew we couldn't stop now, not after getting this far, not after coming so close. We ran home and got a flashlight and a hammer, and pried off the cracked boards covering the window where we'd seen the BLOOD STAINED CURTAIN. With a rock we smashed the glass, reached thru the hole, and pushed up the sash -- and with deep breaths we plunged into the unknown.

It was dark and damp and stank of death and Valvoline as we picked thru the rubble inside. Broken bottles, fallen plaster, rust and ruin surrounded us -- but we ignored them as we stepped thru a doorway and into the grease room. The pit yawned before us, dark and gaping as the killer's soul. We didn't dare to look, not yet. We had to check the curtain, the monstrous blood-stained curtain.

It hung from the opposite window, and we had to crunch thru unspeakable horrors on the floor before we finally got a close look. It wasn't a curtain at all. It was a grease rag, a tattered old tan-colored towel flecked with the remnants of endless lube-jobs past -- an ordinary scrap of gas-station detrius but for the terrible red stain. We flashed the beam from our light across it -- and realization washed over both of us like the tide coming in.

"It's paint," I whispered. "PAINT!"

It all made sense now. Mr Grant wasn't murdered at all -- he'd died accidentally, from inhaling paint fumes! He'd set out to do some painting, to freshen up his dreary surroundings, but without opening his windows first, he was overcome by the deadly vapors and toppled into the open pit. We took the rag off its nail and without peering down into that dreadful blackness we tossed it reverently into the gaping hole.

Let poor Mr. Grant rest in peace -- it was time for supper. Case closed.

 

[Helen Troy]

Thank you for the marvelous real-life story, LizzieMain. Wonderful!
It reminds me o a similar experience when I was a child- we investigated an old, abandoned house in the neighborhood, convinced it was the head quarters of a kidnapping gang. We snuck in to investigate, and found all kinds of clues. Since the place also was uses by night by local teenagers as a party place, (I have later deducted,) some of the clues were beer bottles and picture magazines of a certain nature. That scared us so much, we never went back. Guess we were not exactly hard boiled detectives....

 

[mysterygal]

Patricia Cornwells book on Jack the ripper

 

[52Styleline]

Since the original question was with regard to crime fiction, I support Poe as well. Wikipedia says: There were three Auguste Dupin tales by Edgar Allan Poe: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1843), and "The Purloined Letter" (1844). Poe's detective stories have been described as ratiocinative tales.[1]In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is through a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference. As a consequence, the crime itself sometimes becomes secondary to the efforts taken to solve it. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" is particularly interesting because it is a barely fictionalized account that describes Poe's theory of what really happened to the real-life Mary Cecilia Rogers. The style of the analysis, with its attention to forensic detail, makes it a precursor and perhaps inspiration for the stories about the most famous of all fictional detectives, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who in turn set the style for many others in later years, including Holmesian pastiches such as August Derleth's Solar Pons.

Of course, Ugnh, the Caveman may well have come up with an earlier claim. Although, I haven't seen a stone carved copy of "Death at Cro-Magnon Cave" in quite some time.

 

[Helen Troy]

I agree with your definition of the genre, 50Styleline. But, according to that, "The murder of machinbuilder Roolfsen" still bits Poes books by a year. I wonder if there are any earlier books fitting the definition?

 

[Dan G]

As Helen said... too "goodie two-shoes perfect". And things would just be given to her -- things like CARS. And when she did things that were unsafe and/or ridiculous (stowing away in a truck being used to steal furniture, or whatever) she never got in trouble afterwards. I just wanted to see someone yell at her for trespassing, and have her get charged with a misdemeanor, and have her get grounded, and all of that.

I also could not figure out why she was 16 years old and not in school.

Oh yes, it all comes together now. My Nancy Drew days were early so I thought it was cool when she got stuff. Now that I think about it, I see your reasoning...