This backward construction was an authorial slight of hand that Poe understood well. Pondering what he called tales of ratiocination - his own name for detective stories - Poe later remarked, People think them more ingenious than they are - on account of their method and air of method. In the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' for instance, where is the ingenuity of unravelling a web which you yourself {the author} have woven? The reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the suppositious Dupin with that of the writer of the story.
The quote from Paul Collins highlights a profound insight into Edgar Allan Poe's awareness and critique of the detective story format, especially as he himself contributed to its foundation with tales like 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue.' Poe recognizes a kind of meta-fictional transparency: the detective's brilliance is, in a sense, an illusion created by the writer's deliberate design. The so-called ingenuity belongs not just to the fictional detective but...
