DeTecTivEs

           When Edgar Allan Pole wrote his detective stories, he started one of the most popular types of story of all time. After Poe’s stories were published, other authors started to follow what he had done. Readers all over the world still love to be presented with a mysterious crime and have a great detective solve it.

         Without knowing it, Poe had invented the basic elements needed to produce a good detective story. These elements have become the six unofficial rules of detective stories. When other writers created their own great detectives, they started to follow these rules. Even today, modern detective stories still stick to most of these rules:

1.       The great detective is clever. Each has a special and mysterious technique for solving the mystery

2.       The great detective usually has a helper who is not clever as the detective. This friend often tells the story. When the detective explains the clues to the helper, they have also been explained to the reader

3.       There is often a member of the police force who cannot solve the crime or who arrests the wrong person. The police tend to dislike the great detectives, because the detective is smarter than they are and always prove them wrong

4.       There are many puzzling clues in the story, which often mislead the police and the reader. Some these clues are meant to point in the wrong direction. These are the called ‘red herrings’. Only the great detective (and perhaps the clever reader)  can make sense of all these confusing clues

5.       The solution to the mystery is surprising and unexpected. After all, readers will be bored if they guess the solution in the first chapter right?

6.       At the end of the story, the great detective gathers everyone together, often including the criminals, and reveals the truth