I.

Introduction

Detective Story, type of mystery story that features a detective or a police officer as the prime solver of a crime—usually a murder case. The detective is the main protagonist, through whom the story is told either as a first-person narrator or in the third person as portrayed by the author. The detective interrogates the suspects, ferrets out the clues, and tracks down the murderer. The detective shares all the clues with the reader but withholds their significance until the end.

The thrust of the detective’s investigation is based on motive, opportunity, and means, and he or she arrives at the solution by eliminating those suspects who do not fulfil these criteria. To make the case difficult for the detective and interesting to the reader, the author places complications in the detective’s way: several suspects, additional murders, red herrings, and, often, threats of violence. Only at the end does the detective unmask the culprit and explain how the case was solved. W. H. Auden described the plot of a typical detective story as “a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies”.

The detective story, often called a “whodunit”, did not spring into being in this form. Rather, it evolved, early in the 20th century, from stories about detectives in which the reader was not a participant, but a witness, so to speak, looking over the detective’s shoulder.