I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you at the heart of mystery, murder, and mayhem. Some episodes will be my own stories, others will be classics that helped shape the mystery genre we know today. These are arrangements, which means instead of word-for-word readings, you get a performance meant to be heard. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes (unless it's really bad)
This is Season 2. This season contains adaptations of stories published in the 1800s. These stories are some of the first considered to be mysteries. For that reason, this season is called The Originators.
Today’s story is about separating the improbable from the impossible and not messing with nature. This is The Thinking Man, and adaptation of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe. The story first appeared Graham’s Magazine in 1841.
Read the original: There are several places where you can find The Murders in the Rue Morgue at no cost. Gutenberg is one of them. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2147
Cast of Characters:
August Dupin: The detective, our thinking man
Narrator: The speaker doesn’t get a name. Let’s call him Poe.
Mrs. Catalan: One of the victims
Camille Catalan: Adult daughter of Mrs. Catalan, also a victim
Adolph LeBon: Clerk at Mrs. Catalan’s bank. Last to see the victim’s alive.
Teddy DeMuse: Constable on patrol the night of the murders
Henri Duval: Silversmith and neighbor
Dutch Marken: Restauranteur from Amsterdam
William Bird: Englishman living in Paris
Alfonzio Gario: Undertaker from Spain
Alberto Montani: Candymaker from Italy
How windows worked in the 1800s.
Sash window https://www.ventrolla.co.uk/knowledge/sash-window-anatomy/
Sash pins https://sashwindowspecialist.com/blog/balance-systems-for-sash-windows/
Really? An orangutan??
I’m not sure if I like the end or not. It feels like cheating to have a non-human murderer. Pros: original. Cons: really? An Orangutan??
Ending aside, I enjoyed Dupin and his way of figuring. If I have any complaints, it is that he didn’t share his ideas and observations with his friend, our narrator. I do concede that even if Dupin shared his findings of the window, I would not have gotten to a sailor harboring a Bornese orangutang with a penchant for shaving.
This is definitely the kind of classic, logical detection that brings to mind Sherlock Holmes and the list of book, movie, and television detective that followed. What is fascinating about Dupin is he pre-dated Holms by 46 years. With so many newer incarnations of this kind of detective, it’s easy to not be overly impress by Dupin when you first read the story. When you consider he was, truly, one of the first? Well, maybe I can get over the orangutan.
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