This article finds the kernel of Poe's detective fiction in his investigations into the construction of "gentlemanliness" that he began at Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. As precursors to Poe's tales of ratiocination, "The Man That Was Used Up" and "The Man of the Crowd" train the reader not to expect a satisfying conclusion to the mystery surrounding masculinity that the author has woven. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the homoerotic desire to apprehend an integral masculine subject ends in frustration bordering on the absurd. In thus undermining the American ideal of masculinity as unified, integral, impenetrable, and fraternal, Poe helps to create new discursive conditions for representing masculinity in multiple, queerly shifting configurations.