Explore "The Technique of the Mystery Story" by Carolyn Wells on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
[The appearance of the detective is always of interest and each author in turn endeavors to make his marvelous-minded creature look as physically unlike other fiction detectives as possible. And especially does he aim to have him totally different in his effects from the popular conception of the conventional detective. In fact the average detective of fiction is always declared to look absolutely unlike the average detective of fiction.]
M. Dupin is not described physically, as Poe's marvelous economy of attention made him omit every possible bit of material extraneous to his actual story. But, beginning let us say, with Lecoq, all seem to be diametrically opposed to the conventional detective.