The Purloined Letter

The third of Poe's tales featuring the Parisian investigator C. Auguste Dupin. The Prefect of police calls on Dupin and his friend the narrator with a delicate problem: a compromising letter has been taken from a royal personage by a powerful minister, who now holds influence over her. The police have searched the minister's rooms with great care and found nothing. Dupin approaches the matter by thinking about the minds involved rather than only the hiding places. A short, clever story about reasoning and human nature, it has been much discussed by critics. It first appeared in 1844.