SOURCE: Merivale, Patricia. “Gumshoe Gothics: ‘The Man of the Crowd’ and His Followers.” In Narrative Ironies, edited by Raymond A. Prier and Gerald Gillespie, pp. 163-79. Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1997.
In the following essay, Merivale examines Edgar Allan Poe's “The Man of the Crowd” as a precursor to metaphysical, or postmodern, detective fiction.