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This book establishes the genealogy of a subgenre of crime fiction that Antoine Dechêne calls the metacognitive mystery tale. It delineates a corpus of texts presenting 'unreadable' mysteries which, under the deceptively monolithic appearance of subverting traditional detective story conventions, offer a multiplicity of motifs – the overwhelming presence of chance, the unfulfilled quest for knowledge, the urban stroller lost in a labyrinthine text – that generate a vast array of epistemological and ontological uncertainties. Analysing the works of a wide variety of authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Henry James, this book is vital reading for scholars of detective fiction. .

Detective and mystery stories --- Fiction --- Metaphysics in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Literature, Modern-20th century. --- America-Literatures. --- British literature. --- European literature. --- Twentieth-Century Literature. --- Contemporary Literature. --- North American Literature. --- British and Irish Literature. --- European Literature. --- European literature --- Literature, Modern—20th century. --- Literature, Modern—21st century. --- America—Literatures.