The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe: book review

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1841, this edition 2012) is a collection of 19 short stories.

American author Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is best known for his macabre tales of horror, madness, violence, superstition, and the dark forces.

The title of this collection comes from one of his most well-known stories The Murders in the Rue Morgue about the ‘brutal, bloody, and baffling’ murder of Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter Camille in their home in the Montmartre district of Paris.

Another story is The Tell-Tale Heart that begins: ‘True! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will you say that I am mad?’ The Black Cat is also good.

The Cask of Amontillado is included in the collection too: ‘The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.’

However, the collection doesn’t include the 1844 story The Premature Burial which was one of the first Poe tales I read in my youth – and loved the fact that I was so scared by it.

All stories are narrated in the first person, with a twist in the tale. While most of the stories were already known to me, it was great to enjoy them again later in life.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009). She lives in Paris.

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