It can be sadly said that no one who knew him at the time would have guessed that Edgar Allan Poe, the author of some of the darkest tales of the macabre, the hideous, and the frightening--those emotional products of an obviously disturbed and unfettered mind--could possibly have spawned a field of literature of which clear-headed thinking, ratiocination, the carefully analysis of cause and effect, and the creation and solution of puzzles are the hallmarks and essence--the detective story.