none. Ingenuity of a kind there is in Gaboriau's longer fictions, and
in those of Fortuné du Boisgobey, and in those of Wilkie Collins; but
this ingenuity is never so simply employed, and it is often artificial
and violent and mechanical. It exists for its own sake, with little
relation to the admitted characteristics of our common humanity. It
stands alone, and it is never accompanied by the apparent ease which
adds charm to Poe's handling of his puzzles.

Consider how often Gaboriau puts us off with a broken-backed narrative,
taking up his curtain on a promising problem, presenting it to us in
aspects of increasing difficulty, only at last to confess his impotence
by starting afresh and slowly detailing the explanatory episodes which
happened before the curtain rose. Consider how frequently Fortuné du
Boisgobey failed to play fair. Consider how juiceless was the
documentary method of Wilkie Collins, how mechanical and how arid, how
futilely complicated, how prolonged, and how fatiguing. Consider all the
minor members of the sorry brood hatched out of the same egg, how cheap
and how childish the most of them are. Consider all these; and we are
forced to the conclusion that if the writing of a good detective-story
is so rare and so difficult, if only one of Poe's imitators has been
able really to rival his achievement, if this single success has been
the result of an acceptance of Poe's formula and of a close adherence to
Poe's practise, then, what Poe wrought is really unique; and we must
give him the guerdon of praise due to an artist who has accomplished the
first time of trying that which others have failed to achieve even after
he had shown them how.

(1904.)