Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction in which a detective (or detectives), either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder. Commonly in detective fiction, the investigator has some source of income other than detective work and some undesirable eccentricities or striking characteristics. He or she frequently has a less able assistant  who acts as an audience surrogate for the explanation of the mystery at the end of the story.

 

Detective fiction is more often considered to have begun in 1841 with the publication of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" itself,  featuring "the first fictional detective, the eccentric and brilliant C. Auguste Dupin". Poe followed with further Auguste Dupin tales: "The Mystery of Marie Roget" in 1843, and "The Purloined Letter" in 1844. Poe referred to his stories as "tales of ratiocination". In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is through a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference. The style of the analysis, with its attention to forensic detail, makes "The mystery of Marie Roget" a precursor for the stories about the most famous of all fictional detectives, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, Holmes mentions the Poe story in the first Conan Doyle novel.

 

Among detectives:

 

Nancy Drew - Edward Stratemeyer

Father Brown – G. K. Chesterton

C. Auguste Dupin – Edgar Allan Poe

Miss Marple – Dame Agatha Christie

Tommy and Tuppence – Dame Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot – Dame Agatha Christie

Perry Mason – Erle Stanley Gardner

Max Carrados (the blind detective) – Ernest Bramah

Albert Campion – Margery Allingham

John Thorndyke – R. Austin Freeman

Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Philip Marlowe – Raymond Chandler

Nero Wolfe – Rex Stout

Charlie Chan – Earl Derr Biggers

Brother Cadfael –  Edith Pargeter