The Dupin Stories

Review: No quibbles at all about the latest related release from Naxos AudioBooks. Kerry Shale makes a lovely job of reading Poe’s three tales of the Chevalier C Auguste Dupin. In ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’ and ‘The Purloined Letter’ Poe created the detective story - or tale of ratiocination, as he called it. Sherlock Holmes was very dismissive of Dupin and Poe, but Arthur Conan Doyle freely acknowledged his debt to character and author, a fact missed by David Timson in his otherwise admirable notes. Whether or not you’ve read Dupin lately, I urge you to listen to these grand readings. You’ll discover again the remarkable achievement of Poe, and realise perhaps for the first time how much Conan Doyle improved on his model. The Dupin Stories is a near-essential companion to David Timson’s continuing series of superb readings of the Sherlock Holmes stories for Naxos AudioBooks.

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 227, 2002]