"The Purloined Letter"

Edgar Allan Poe's "Purloined Letter" is a fast-paced detective story. Poe was really the first author to introduce the detective genre, and this story is one of three short stories he wrote of this kind.

The story is about an important letter that gets stolen, and the Parisian detective who works to recover it. The police know that Minister D has taken the letter, and now is able to blackmail the woman whose note it is.

The detective protagonist, Dupin, and his police force search Minister D's hotel room and are unable to find the letter anywhere. After a month without finding it, the Prefect of the police department increases the reward. After the Prefect writes a check for the amount, Dupin immediately hands over the letter. He explains that he knew the Minister was hiding it in plain sight. Dupin had researched the room and switched the letter for a fake.

Dupin relates the hiding of the letter to a word map, commonly known as a word search. He talks about how the easiest words to find are the smallest ones; the words trying hard to be concealed. However, he says the largest, most drawn out words tend to be the hardest to find. He uses this deduction to find the letter, which was on the mantle of Minister D's hotel room.