![]() ![]() Journalist Wolfe Kaufman claimed that he coined the word "whodunit" around 1935 while working for Variety magazine. History Īccording to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the term "WhoDunIt" was coined by News Of Books reviewer Donald Gordon in 1930, in his review of the detective novel " Half-Mast Murder" written by Milward Kennedy. This narrative development has been seen as a form of comedy, in which order is restored to a threatened social calm. ![]() Such certainty pertains to the crime and not to the identity of the culprit, who the reader must anticipate as part of the unknown future. ![]() According to Tzvetan Todorov, in terms of temporal logic, the whodunit narrative is considered a paradigm for fiction in general because the story unfolds in relation not to a future event but one that is already known and merely lying in wait. The whodunit goes backward as it goes forward, reconstructing the timeline of both crime and investigation, the thriller coincides with the action in a single story. The double narrative is cited as a main distinguishing element between the whodunit and the thriller. This discourse of explanation constitutes the second narrative besides the primary story relating to the crime. This process, however, also involves on the part of the detective the production of a hypothesis that could withstand scrutiny, including the crafting of findings about cause and motive as well as crime and its intended consequences. For instance, in a detective novel, solving a mystery entails the reconstruction of the criminal events. Here, the diegesis or the way the characters live on the inquiry level creates the phantom narration where the objects, bodies, and words become signs for both the detective and the reader to interpret and draw their conclusions from. The two tales coexist and interweave with the first tale focusing on the crime itself, what led to it, and the investigation to solve it while the second story is all about the reconstruction of the crime. The double narrative has a deep structure but is specific, particularly when it comes to time and a split gaze on the narrative itself. The former involves the narrative presented to the reader by the author or the actual story as it happened in chronological order while the latter focuses on the underlying substance or material of the narrative. This feature has been associated with the Russian literary terms syuzhet and fabula. Here, one narrative is hidden and gradually revealed while the other is the open narrative, which often transpires in the present time of the story. Ī defining feature of the whodunit narrative is the so-called double narrative. This engages the readers so that they strive to compete with or outguess the expert investigator. In a whodunit, however, the audience is given the opportunity to engage in the same process of deduction as the protagonist throughout the investigation of a crime. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric, amateur, or semi-professional detective.Ī whodunit follows the paradigm of the classical detective story in the sense that it presents crime as a puzzle to be solved through a chain of questions that the detective poses. The reader or viewer is provided with the clues to the case, from which the identity of the perpetrator may be deduced before the story provides the revelation itself at its climax. In The Adventure of the Abbey Grange (1904), Sherlock Holmes investigates the murder of Eustace BrackenstallĪ whodunit or whodunnit (a colloquial elision of "Who done it?") is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus.
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