The Purloined Letter Summary and Analysis

Summary
This is another story based on the detective C. Auguste Dupin, however this tends to jump straight into the story as there is an assumption that we already know of Dupin’s analytical skills and we don’t need to reinforce these. We get an idea that the police once again are unable to solve the crime, however they deny this instead saying that they just tell Dupin about it as it is an excessively odd case.
The case is based around a government official who allegedly steals a letter from the royal apartments. Apparently the letter would ruin the reputation of a woman of high standing, the government official realised that this was an important letter and decided to steal it. He switches the letter for one of his own and leaves the apartment.
The government official uses the letter to blackmail the lady and she turns to the police to help her out.
The police ransack the apartment to try to find the letter all to no avail and believe that the minister is keeping the letter at another location. Dupin believes that the letter is still at the ministers apartment as he would need it to hand in order to blackmail the lady.
Dupin tells the police to search the apartment again and it seems he only does this to make them see silly when they fail to find the letter.
Dupin supposes that the minister is storing the letter in plain sight and visits the ministers apartment and notices the letter in the letter rack, he decides not to take the letter as it would arouse suspicion so he decides to go back to the apartment again and this time swap the letter for another letter.
Apparently the minister had done something bad to Dupin in the past and Dupin was at last able to have his revenge and wrote this inside his replacement letter.
Analysis
Once again this story does appear a little clichéd but does build up some tension in the reader in order for them to try to work out the solution to the crime. It has an intelligent detective who uses cold logic in order to work out the solution to the crime, but also use some intuition in order to work out the solution. It does appear to be an overly simplistic crime and the ending to me seems a little contrived and disappointing. It certainly doesn’t seem as gruesome as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Poe seems to have wanted to create a more intelligent type of crime which really demonstrates Dupin’s skills.