Everyone knows Edgar Allan Poe. The author's influence hangs over the gloomier end of culture like marsh gas over a swamp.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue is Dupin's most famous case and the best. The deaths are good and grisly - an old lady decapitated, a corpse shoved up a chimney - and the clues involving window shutters, unusual hair and an unidentified language are brilliantly explained.
The Pit and the Pendulum, about a man imprisoned during the Spanish Inquisition, is ...