Detective fiction

Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centres upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. It is closely related to mystery fiction but generally contains more of a puzzle element that must be solved, generally by a single protagonist, either male or female.

Whodunit?

The most widespread subgenre of the detective novel is the whodunit (or whodunnit), where great ingenuity may be exercised in narrating the events of the crime and of the subsequent investigation in such a manner as to conceal the identity of the criminal from the reader until the end of the book, when the method and culprit are revealed.

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Early archetypes of these stories were the three Auguste Dupin tales by Edgar Allan Poe: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", "The Mystery of Marie Roget", and "The Purloined Letter". Poe's detective stories have been described as ratiocinative tales. In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is through a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference. As a consequence, the crime itself sometimes becomes secondary to the efforts taken to solve it. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" is particularly interesting, as it is a barely fictionalized analysis of the circumstances of the real-life discovery of the body of a young woman named Mary Cecilia Rogers, in which Poe expounds his theory of what actually happened. The style of the analysis, with its attention to forensic detail, makes it a precursor if not the inspiration of the stories about the most famous of all fictional detectives, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who in turn set the style for many others in later years, including Holmesian pastiches such as August Derleth's Solar Pons.

Related Topics:
Edgar Allan Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue - The Mystery of Marie Roget - The Purloined Letter - Forensic - Arthur Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes - Pastiche - August Derleth - Solar Pons

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Another early archetype of the whodunit is found as a sub-plot in the vast novel Bleak House (1853) by Charles Dickens. The conniving lawyer Tulkinghorn is killed in his office late one night, and the crime is investigated by Inspector Bucket of the Metropolitan force. Numerous characters appeared on the staircase leading to Tulkinghorn's office that night, some of them in disguise, and Inspector Bucket must penetrate these mysteries to identify the culprit.

Related Topics:
Bleak House - Charles Dickens

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Dickens's protégé, Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), is credited with the first great mystery novel, The Woman in White. He is sometimes referred to as the "grandfather of English detective fiction." His novel The Moonstone (1868) was described by T. S. Eliot as "the first and greatest of English detective novels" and by Dorothy L. Sayers as "probably the very finest detective story ever written". Although technically preceded by Charles Felix's The Notting Hill Mystery (1865), The Moonstone can claim to have established the genre with several classic features of the twentieth-century detective story:

Related Topics:
Wilkie Collins - 1824 - 1889 - The Woman in White - The Moonstone - T. S. Eliot - Dorothy L. Sayers - Charles Felix - The Notting Hill Mystery - 1865

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• A country house robbery
• An 'inside job'
• A celebrated investigator
• Bungling local constabulary
• Detective enquiries
• False suspects
• The 'least likely suspect'
• A rudimentary 'locked room' murder
• A reconstruction of the crime
• A final twist in the plot

Some readers have suggested even earlier prototypes for the whodunit, most notably the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders (Daniel 13; in the Protestant Bible this story is found in the apocrypha) and the story of the dog and the horse related in the third chapter of Voltaire's Zadig (1747). However, popularity of this genre has only grown in time and even has made it into the online community.

Related Topics:
Susanna and the Elders - Protestant - Bible - Apocrypha - Voltaire - Zadig

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