Here again, Edgar Allen Poe is the obvious grandfather to Derleth's Judge Peck mysteries. Like many of his predecessors, Derleth borrowed from Poe the use of an assistant/narrator, the importance of ratiocination to crime solving, the retired person who solves crimes as a hobby, and so on. A more recent predecessor in the mystery genre to which the Judge Peck stories belong is John Dickson Carr with his Gideon Fell series; and, of course, Judge Peck was a contemporary of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Peck would seem to be a cross between those two, borrowing the universal respect and ratiocination from Poirot, and the intimate and gossipy knowledge of a small geographic region from Marple.