What a shame it is that just as Poe was finally, finally finding a voice for his detective Dupin that he should abandon the character to history and leave other writers to take up the genre mantle! Without a shadow of a doubt, "The Purloined Letter" is the best of Poe's Tales of Ratiocination and the one where the detective genre feels most fully formed as Dupin involves himself in observation and subterfuge the likes of which would become staples of Doyle's much more well-known English detective, Sherlock Holmes. While the story is short, it improves upon its predecessors by not lingering too long on repetition of ideas to fill out the word count. This is one of Poe's best works and yet sadly never adapted into film, although it would be a difficult task to extend the plot into anything substantial. Absolutely worth a look.