Codes and Ciphers, by Robert C. S. Adey.

Codes and Ciphers by Robert C. S. Adey. Originally published in The Mystery Lover’s Newsletter, 1969. Vol II No. 6, pp. 10/11: Like so many other things, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe started it all, though this time the illustrious forerunner was not the much-cited “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, but instead that equally fine quintessence of its form, “The Gold-Bug.” Published in 1843 and yet, today, still as readable as ever, it is the first detective story where the major detection was not that of a crime or of a criminal, but of a vital message contained in a cipher. And then in the highest tradition of the detective story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle followed on from Poe, and produced his Sherlock Holmes masterpiece, “The Adventure of the Dancing Men”. This time the cipher concealed (amongst other things) a sinister warning to a victim rather than the clue to a lost treasure. However, both stories contain the same basic element, a secret message put before the reader in its clandestine form…