crumpled, and torn; it does not conform to the specifications offered by the Prefect. It

also looks rather common, not something that would involve a royal personage, and

therefore for Dupin it is "'suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of

the worthlessness of the document"' (221). What Dupin finds most intriguing is that it

does not ostensibly resemble the original purloined letter, for Minister D- has succeeded

in hiding the letter in plain view of every visitor by having "'turned [it], as a glove, inside

out, re-directed and re-sealed"' (221). The detective recovers the letter by stealthily

replacing it with a facsimile of the purloined letter, appropriately turned inside out. Dupin

succeeds where the Parisian police have failed precisely by not making their fatal error of

equating truth with depth and eschewing all that seems superficial. As James Verner

correctly notes, "If, as Dupin points out, truth is not always found 'in a well,' but is

frequently discovered on the 'surface' of a situation, then the ability only to plumb the

'profound' and 'deep' detail of an event's intricate 'recesses' amounts to blindness, no

matter how adept the viewer is at this type of scrutiny" (15). Thus, the detective's method

of investigation entails inverting the clues, or turning them inside out, such that exploring

simplicity itself becomes his (complex) strategy.

 In an interesting analogy in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Dupin discusses his

method by likening it to gazing at a star. He proposes that the way to look at a star is "'by

glances ... by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of

feeble impressions of light than the interior)"' (153; original emphasis). Arguing that

"truth" is often discovered in the frivolous, he suggests that looking at a star

"superficially" enhances our perception of it. "'By undue profundity,"' Dupin maintains,