Crime fascinates us. Before crime fiction existed there had been an increasing demand for cheaply produced sensational material. In lawless London appeared illustrated accounts of crime that prepared the way for the creation of a proper police force.

François Vidocq’s memoirs, a former criminal, had a great effect on the writers of crime fiction in his own time and after.

Crime fiction as we know it appears for the first time in the works of Poe. In three of his stories The Murders in the Rue Morgue,The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter he created the first detective in fiction, Auguste Dupin, who solves crimes by observation and reason and whose predilection for a nocturnal existence has entered our consciousness.