Poe and Faylayev

Poe as our prototype of what a Detective Story should be, this is how I think Ariel Faylayev’s “Prison” measures up. (I will preface by saying I really enjoyed the story, hence my choosing it for the blog.)
The easiest place to begin is to turn to the crimes as featured in both stories. Obviously both stage a crime, the solution to which, on initial viewing, points us in a certain incorrect direction. Poe presents to his readers the bare facts of the case anti-climactically, second hand through a newspaper article. Poe, through his unnamed narrator, recounts several witness accounts, although their versions of the crime differ. Furthermore, Poe not only points the reader towards the incorrect solution, but also even reports an arrest; “Adolphe Le Bon has been arrested and imprisoned”. Conversely, Faylayev (admittedly, we were not responsible for creating completed short stories, but anyway) places the reader in the middle of the action. He recreates the aftermath of the scene of the crime instead of relaying it secondhand. He too attempts to mislead his reader and incriminate the Economist by smearing the victim’s blood on his shirt. Interesting note about both Poe and Faylayev, they both assumed anonymity for their characters; Poe’s narrator is unnamed, just as Faylayev’s characters are identified only by their ‘profession’.
The solutions, or denouements, are achieved through very different means. For our present task of assessing how these elements differ from the Poe tradition of detective stories, I think these differences are critical. Poe prefaces his story with a lengthy mussing on the importance of an analytical mind. Not merely capable of ‘calculation’, his ideal detective is an “analyst [who] throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.” Poe’s Detective Dupin is one such analytical genius (the two qualities inseperable) who solves the crime, which confounded authorities, using his ingenuity. Conversely, Faylayev’s detective was not privy to these remarkable skills that Poe grants his own crime buster. Instead, technology, the capturing of the crime on videotape, implicates the true criminal.
Both stories offer a satisfying ending. The culprit delivered, with clues strewed along the way for the reader himself to exercise the mind. It seems Poe’s detective stories, although tampered with, are alive and well.