Introduction to Zadig the Babylonian

⁠​​​‌​​​​‌‌​​‌​‌​​​‌‌​‌‌​​​‌​‌​​‌​​​​‌‌‌​​​‌‌‌‌​​‌​​‌‌​‌‌‌‌​​​​​​⁠A work (says the author) which performs more than it promises.

Voltaire never heard of a "detective story"; and yet he wrote the first in modern literature, so clever as to be a model for all the others that followed.

He describes his hero Zadig thus: "His chief talent consisted in discovering the truth,"—in making swift, yet marvelous deductions, worthy of Sherlock Holmes or any other of the ingeni