The Purloined Letter is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844. It follows the story of a Parisian police prefect, C. Auguste Dupin, as he attempts to solve a mysterious case involving a stolen letter. The letter in question is a political document of great importance, stolen from the Minister D— by a rival minister, the Minister of the Interior. The police have been unable to locate the letter, and the Minister D— is desperate to have it recovered. Dupin takes on the case and, using his powers of deduction, discovers that the letter is hidden in plain sight in the Minister of the Interior's own apartment. Dupin explains that the thief had assumed that the police would never think to look for the letter in such an obvious place. The story is a classic example of the use of deductive reasoning in detective fiction, and is considered to be one of Poe's best works. It is also an early example of the locked-room mystery genre.
By Edgar Allan Poe · First published 1845 · Genre: Mystery, Detective Fiction, Crime Fiction