Ratiocination Roots

myth:ratiocination_roots

Long before the genre, there were tales of truth read from small signs: Daniel cross-questioning the elders to clear Susanna, the princes of Serendip describing a camel they had never seen from the traces on the road, and Voltaire's Zadig reading the king's horse and the queen's dog from their tracks alone. The deep root of the detective's art — and the source of the very word 'serendipity'. — genre history