by Robert Laurence
With all the attention given to King Kong recently, another great ape of American fiction is often forgotten.
He can be found in any complete edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. There resides the Poe tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841-42), the first of all detective stories, the first of a new genre. What does this have to do with apes you ask? Read on good reader.
In Paris lives C. Auguste Dupin, a French genius of unsurpassed intellectual prowess.
Dupin chances to read an account of the brutal murders of Mme L’Espanaye and her daughter Camille in their fourth story apartment in the Rue Morgue.
The police are unable to solve this bloody crime, but Dupin puts his genius to the task.
After considering the murderer’s brutal strength, his unintelligible voice, his great climbing agility, and his lack of motive, Dupin deduces that the murderer must be an ape!
Sure enough, a sailor visits Dupin,
responding to an advertisement he places in the papers.
The sailor had brought an
orangutan to Paris, hoping to sell it and the ape had escaped and
committed the murders.
The ape is at last
captured and the first tale of ratiocination is done.