The Purloined Letter

Undeniably it is the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes - first person narration by close friend (an anonymous person), intelligent detective who is constantly smoking using pipe (meerschaum) - Augustine Dupin.

This novel has three steps:

1. problem,
   
2. solution,
   
3. reason
   

- a typical detective novel.

The reasoning is awesome just as a mathematician would do. The analogies are brilliant - "Even and Odd", "Game of puzzles in a map".

But the astuteness of the detective is unacceptable sometimes. For instance Dupin's reasoning about the minister is as follows:

"As a poet and a mathematician he would reason well. But as a mere mathematician he could not have reasoned at all"

And there is again a reasoning for this statement too.

"The odds are that every popular idea, every accepted convention is a nonsense because it has suited the majority" - Chamfort

And from the novel, I feel that Edgar Allen Poe seems to have grudge on the Parisian Police. The statement "Even a school boy is a better reasoner than he" proves it. The story is about Dupin's knowledge of the robber's knowledge of the loser's knowledge of the robber.