Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely ...
Fictional detectives are characters in detective fiction. 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).
Sherlock Holmes (foreground) oversees the arrest of a criminal; this hero of crime fiction popularized the genre.. Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, crime novel, 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]
The psychological novel has a rich past in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works of Mme de Lafayette, the Abbé Prévost, Samuel Richardson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many others, but it goes on being disinvented by ideologues and reinvented by their opponents because the subtleties of psychology defy most ideologies. [3]
Some mystery books are non-fiction. Mystery fiction can be detective stories in which the emphasis is on the puzzle or suspense element and its logical solution such as a whodunit. Mystery fiction can be contrasted with hardboiled detective stories, which focus on action and gritty realism.
Crime novels that have within them an investigation procedure including a detective or detectives. See also Category:Mystery novels that may also contain detectives but add an element of " whodunit ".
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.
[14] Common elements may include stock characters, such as a hardboiled detective and serial killer, involved in a cat and mouse game. [15] Sensation novels , examples of early psychological thrillers, were considered to be socially irresponsible due to their themes of sex and violence.