that might lead them to the original dispatch, the criminal and the letter are in fact hiding

in plain sight. Having seemingly exhausted all possibilities, they approach a private

detective. A month later, the detective has already recovered the letter by stealing it back

from the original thief. He claims that the reason the police could not find it is because it

was hidden in the most obvious place. Of course, the letter is then returned to its original

author, and the blackmail, we assume, promptly ends.

 The detective I am referring to is, of course, C. Auguste Dupin, who solves the

mystery of that infamous purloined letter. Along with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

and "The Mystery of Marie Rog6t," Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter" is usually

seen as inaugurating the detective genre. Indeed, Poe himself is credited with authorizing

the modem detective, an intuitive intellectual who examines evidence and resolves

mysteries using a process that is quite different from the standard practice employed by

the police.20 In that sense, Poe's detective story is a reflection on method. As Dana Brand

notes, the detective is "a new urban spectator" who invents "new models for reading and

consuming the modern city" (79). What Poe invents with the detective story, then, is an

alternative manner of investigation.

 Consider, for instance, how Dupin recovers the purloined letter. The tale begins

with Monsieur G-, the Prefect of the Parisian police, visiting Dupin with a specific

problem that has him "a good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles

[them] altogether" (209; original emphasis). The Prefect's problem is that a letter of

utmost importance has been stolen from the queen's quarters, in her presence, by

Minister D-, who has now acquired undue political power and is using it to blackmail

the queen. During the course of his investigation, the Prefect claims that he has searched