The first works of the detective genre are rightfully considered to be Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, but elements of detective fiction were used by many authors even before him. For example, in William Godwin’s novel “The Adventures of Caleb Williams,” one of the central characters is an amateur detective. Another major influence on the development of detective literature were E. Vidocq’s “Memoirs.” However, it was Edgar Allan Poe who created the first Great Detective — the amateur sleuth Dupin — from the story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Dupin later gave rise to Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, and Lecoq. Russian writers also didn’t stay on the sidelines with this genre so popular with their Western colleagues. And you can easily confirm this by listening to the audio versions of the gripping detective stories included in this collection.
Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky “The Corpse-Murderer”
Pavel Alexandrovich Krushevan “A Terrible Crime”
Vlas Mikhailovich Doroshevich “The Case of Cannibalism”
Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev “Bergamot and Garashka”
Pyotr Petrovich Orlovets “The Secret of the Nizhny Novgorod Main House”
Roman Luchich Antropov “The Kiss of the Bronze Maiden”
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Popov “A Bribe”