No Future for Luana | Literary Precedents

No Future for Luana Literary Precedents

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.