Who Invented the Consulting Detective?

It's not who you think.

These days you can hardly swing a giant Sumatran rat without hitting a movie or teevee show or novel about a brilliant, driven, emotionally-flawed sleuth whose methods and temperament

force him or her to operate partially or fully outside of the established order.

From "The X Files" to "Monk" to "House" to all 127 "CSI" franchises, the genre invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and populated by Sherlock Holmes -- the world's first and only Consulting Detective --

 

rolls on and on like the mighty Mississippi.

Except, of course, Conan Doyle did not invent the genre and Sherlock Holmes was not the world's first and only Consulting Detective. 

How do I know?

Because being a gentleman of staunch, Victorian manners, Conan Doyle not only said so repeatedly and publicly, but actually tells us so in print.  Right there, in the very first Sherlock Holmes story ever published, Conan Doyle tips his hat directly to the person who created the genre which will one day make Conan Doyle one of the wealthiest and and most renowned authors of his age.  From "A Study in Scarlet" (with emphasis added):

... 

"Well, I have a trade of my own. I suppose I am the only one in the world. I'm a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in London we have lots of Government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight. There is a strong family resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can't unravel the thousand and first. Lestrade is a well-known detective. He got himself into a fog recently over a forgery case, and that was what brought him here."

"And these other people?"

"They are mostly sent on by private inquiry agencies. They are all people who are in trouble about something, and want a little enlightening. I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee."

"But do you mean to say," I said, "that without leaving your room you can unravel some knot which other men can make nothing of, although they have seen every detail for themselves?"

"Quite so. I have a kind of intuition that way. Now and again a case turns up which is a little more complex. Then I have to bustle about and see things with my own eyes. You see I have a lot of special knowledge which I apply to the problem, and which facilitates matters wonderfully. Those rules of deduction laid down in that article which aroused your scorn, are invaluable to me in practical work. Observation with me is second nature. You appeared to be surprised when I told you, on our first meeting, that you had come from Afghanistan." "You were told, no doubt." "Nothing of the sort. I _knew_ you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, `Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished."

"It is simple enough as you explain it," I said, smiling. "You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories."

Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. "No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin," he observed. "Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine."
...

Without Sherlock Holmes there would never have been a Gregory House or Fox Mulder. May never have been been a Nero Wolfe, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot or Philip Marlowe. May never have been a Batman.

But without Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, there would be no Sherlock Holmes.

And now you know the rest of the story.