Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes examines a suspect's boots in an illustration to the 1891 story "The Boscombe Valley Mystery". Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder.
A similar but more detailed list of prerequisites was prepared by S. S. Van Dine in an article entitled "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories", which appeared in The American Magazine in September 1928. [7] They are commonly referred to as Van Dine's Commandments. [8]
Sherlock Holmes (foreground) oversees the arrest of a criminal; this hero of crime fiction popularized the genre.. Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, often a murder. [1]
These individuals have long been a staple of detective mystery crime fiction, particularly in detective novels and short stories. Much of early detective fiction was written during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction" (1920s–1930s). These detectives include amateurs, private investigators and professional policemen. They are often ...
The detective story shares some similarities with mystery fiction in that it also has a mystery to be solved, clues, red herrings, some plot twists along the way and a detective denouement, but differs on several points. Most of the Sherlock Holmes stories feature no suspects at all, while mystery fiction, in contrast, features a large number ...
The closed circle of suspects is a common element of detective fiction, and the subgenre that employs it can be referred to as the closed circle mystery. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] Less precisely, this subgenre – works with the closed circle literary device – is simply known as the "classic", "traditional" or "cozy" detective fiction.
For authors who write genre stories in which a puzzle must be solved, in almost all cases involving a crime, see Category:American mystery writers. Most authors of hardboiled detective fiction , in which both action and puzzle-solving are central, are named as both "crime fiction" and "mystery" writers.
Crime Fiction came to be recognised as a distinct literary genre, with specialist writers and a devoted readership, in the 19th century.Earlier novels and stories were typically devoid of systematic attempts at detection: There was a detective, whether amateur or professional, trying to figure out how and by whom a particular crime was committed; there were no police trying to solve a case ...