Whodunit

A whodunit or whodunnit (for "Who done it?" and sometimes referred to as a Golden Age Mystery novel) is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is paramount. The reader is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final pages of the book. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric amateur or semi-professional detective. The locked-room mystery is a specialized kind of a whodunit.

Some representative examples of whodunits in chronological order

• Anna Katharine Green's Initials Only (1911) (Project Gutenberg Etext #1857)
• E. C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913)
• A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery (1922), a famous whodunit by the author of the Winnie the Pooh books
• Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), featuring Christie's best-known character, Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, and in which the solution to the crime is related to the narrative technique of the novel (see unreliable narrator)
• Dorothy L. Sayers's Unnatural Death (1927), one of the first Lord Peter Wimsey novels
• S. S. Van Dine's The Greene Murder Case (1928)
• Ronald Knox's The Footsteps at the Lock (1928) -- though Knox is better remembered as the author of ten commandments for writing whodunits and for his short story "Solved by Inspection"
• Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), which features six different solutions to the murder (and is an expansion of Berkeley's classic short story, "The Avenging Chance")
• Ellery Queen'sThe Greek Coffin Mystery (1932), regarded by some as the best of his early novels in the Golden Age style
• C.P. Snow's Death Under Sail (1932) -- his first novel, after which he turned to mainstream fiction; it features unusually complex characters for a mystery of this period
• Rex Stout's The League of Frightened Men (1935), the second Nero Wolfe novel
• John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins (1935) -- usually considered the quintessential locked-room mystery, replete with a tongue-in-cheek philosophical disquisition on the subject by the detective, Dr. Gideon Fell
• Nicholas Blake's Thou Shell of Death (1935), a locked-room mystery
• Josephine Tey's A Shilling for Candles (1936) -- which became the basis for Alfred Hitchcock´s 1937 film Young and Innocent
• Ethel Lina White's The Wheel Spins (1936) -- which was filmed by Hitchcock as The Lady Vanishes (1938) (with a changed ending)
• Clayton Rawson's Death from a Top Hat, a locked-room mystery
• Michael Innes's Lament for a Maker
• Cyril Hare's Tragedy at Law (1942)
• Helen McCloy's Cue for Murder (1942) -- set in the Broadway district and featuring Dr. Basil Willing
• Christianna Brand's Green for Danger (1944) -- which was made into a celebrated film in (1946)
• Edmund Crispin's The Moving Toyshop (1946), a Golden Age mystery which also parodies certain conventions of the genre

Finally, recent additions to the subgenre of the whodunit include the novels of Simon Brett, the Thackery Phin novels of John Sladek, Lawrence Block's The Burglar in the Library (1997), which is a spoof set in the present in an English-style country house, Kinky Friedman's Road Kill (1997), and Ben Elton's Dead Famous (2001).

Related Topics:
Simon Brett - Thackery Phin - John Sladek - Lawrence Block - The Burglar in the Library - 1997 - Spoof - Country house - Kinky Friedman - Road Kill - Ben Elton - Dead Famous - 2001

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• See also Historical whodunnit.

An important variation on the whodunit is the inverted detective story (also referred to as "howshecatchem") where the guilty party and the crime are openly revealed to the reader/audience and the story follows the investigator's efforts to find out the truth while the criminal attempts to prevent it. The Columbo TV movie series is the classic example of this kind of detective story. This tradition dates back to the inverted detective stories of R. Austin Freeman, and reached an apotheosis of sorts in Malice Aforethought written by Francis Iles (a pseudonym of Anthony Berkeley). In the same vein is Iles' Before the Fact (1932), which became the Hitchcock movie Suspicion. Today, these novels are seen as the predecessors of the psychological suspense novel (Patricia Highsmith's This Sweet Sickness, 1960; Simon Brett's A Shock to the System, 1984; Stephen Dobyns's The Church of Dead Girls, 1997; and many more).

Related Topics:
Columbo - R. Austin Freeman - Malice Aforethought - Francis Iles - Anthony Berkeley - Before the Fact - 1932 - Hitchcock - Suspicion - Patricia Highsmith - This Sweet Sickness - 1960 - Simon Brett - A Shock to the System - 1984 - Stephen Dobyns - The Church of Dead Girls - 1997

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