November 25 2007

 Yesterday, I offered the letters teralbay and asked you to unscramble them into an English word. 

For those of you who haven't solved the puzzle already, the original word is betrayal.

Here's a question for you.

Many people consider the American writer Edgar Alan Poe to be the inventor of the modern detective story, with such works as The Mystery Of Marie Roget, The Murders In The Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter.  Certainly, Poe seems to have laid out the template for mystery writers who came after him:  The baffling crime.  The brilliant and usually eccentric detective.  The deductive reasoning used to sort it all out. The surprise ending.  You can see a direct line from Poe to Arthur Conan Doyle, then to Agatha Christie.  

Do you know of any mystery writer who came before Poe?  If so, who was he or she?  

George