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. Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. ... In crime fiction, a locked room mystery (or cosy) is a particular kind of mystery story, where a murder is apparently committed under impossible circumstances: no one could have entered or left the scene of the crime, and it could not have been a suicide. ...

The whodunit flourished during the so-called "Golden Age" of detective fiction, during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, when it was the predominant mode of crime writing. Many of the best writers of whodunits in this period were British -- notably Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey, Michael Innes, Nicholas Blake, Christianna Brand and Edmund Crispin. Others -- S. S. Van Dine, John Dickson Carr, and Ellery Queen -- were American, but imitated the "English" style. Still others, such as Rex Stout, Clayton Rawson, and Earl Derr Biggers, aimed for a more "American" style. The Golden Age by Pietro da Cortona. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Social issues of the 1920s. ... This article or section is missing references or citation of sources. ... // Events and trends World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrination, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atomic bomb. ... Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (September 15, 1890 – January 12, 1976), was an English crime fiction writer. ... Dorothy Leigh Sayers (Oxford, 13 June 1893 – Witham, 17 December 1957) was a renowned British author, translator, student of classical and modern languages, and Christian humanist. ... Josephine Tey was a pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896-February 13, 1952), a Scottish author best known for her mystery novels. ... Michael Innes was the pseudonym of an Oxford academic, J. I. M. Stewart (1906–1994), under which name he wrote about forty crime novels between 1936 and 1986. ... Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis) (27th April 1904-22nd May 1972) was a British poet. ... Born in Malaya, Mary Christianna Lewis (a. ... Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery (October 2, 1921—September 15, 1978) an English crime writer and composer. ... S. S. Van Dine was the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (October 15, 1888 - April 11, 1939), a U.S. art critic and author. ... The Four False Weapons (1948), 1961 Pan paperback edition. ... Ellery Queen stamp issued by San Marino. ... Rex Todhunter Stout (December 1, 1886 - October 27, 1975) was an American writer best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe. ... Clayton Rawson (1906 - 1971) was a mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. ... Earl Derr Biggers (August 24, 1884 - April 5, 1933) was an American novelist and playwright best known through adaptations of his novels, especially those featuring the Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan. ...

Over time, certain conventions and clichés developed that limited any surprises on the part of the reader to the twists and turns within the plot and of course to the identity of the murderer. Several authors excelled, after successfully leading their readers on the wrong track, in convincingly revealing to them the least likely suspect as the real villain of the story. What is more, they had a predilection for certain casts of characters and settings, with the secluded English country house at the top of the list. For the Blur single, see Country House (song). ...

A U.S. reaction to the cozy conventionality of British murder mysteries was the American hard-boiled school of crime writing of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Mickey Spillane, among others. Hardboiled crime fiction is a uniquely American style pioneered by Dashiell Hammett, refined by Raymond Chandler, and endlessly imitated since by writers such as Mickey Spillane. ... Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an Anglo-American author of crime stories and novels. ... Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 – January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. ... Frank Morrison Spillane (born March 9, 1918), better known as Mickey Spillane, is an American author of crime novels. ...

Some representative examples of whodunits in chronological order

• Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868), widely regarded as one of the first true whodunits
• Anna Katharine Green's Initials Only (1911) Initials Only, available freely at Project Gutenberg
• E. C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913) Trent's Last Case, available freely at Project Gutenberg
• Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), introduces Hercule Poirot. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, available freely at Project Gutenberg
• A. A. Milne's The Red House Mystery (1922), a famous whodunit by the author of the Winnie the Pooh books. The Red House Mystery, available freely at Project Gutenberg
• 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 Hollow Man (1935, U.S. title The Three Coffins) -- 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). Wilkie Collins William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 – 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and writer of short stories. ... The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is a 19th-century epistolary novel, generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. ... Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 in Brooklyn, New York - April 11, 1935 in Buffalo) was an American author. ... 1911 (MCMXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... Project Gutenberg (often abbreviated as PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ... E. C. Bentley (July 10, 1875 – March 30, 1956), was a popular English novelist and humorist of the early twentieth century, and the inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics. ... Wikisource has original text related to this article: Trents Last Case Trents Last Case is a detective novel (1913) by E. C. Bentley; a 1920 silent movie based on the book and directed by Richard Garrick; a 1929 silent movie adapted to the screen from the book by... 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... Project Gutenberg (often abbreviated as PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ... Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (September 15, 1890 – January 12, 1976), was an English crime fiction writer. ... Cover of a paperback version The Mysterious Affair at Styles (written and published in 1920) is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie. ... 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 3 - Babe Ruth is traded by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees for $125,000, the largest sum ever paid for a player at that time. ... David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in The Dream Hercule Poirot (pronounced ) is a fictional character, the protagonist of many of Agatha Christies detective novels, a good number of which have been adapted into films, television series, radio dramas, and stage shows. ... Project Gutenberg (often abbreviated as PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ... A.A. Milne. ... The Red House Mystery is a mystery novel by A. A. Milne, published in 1921. ... 1922 (MCMXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional bear created by A. A. Milne. ... Project Gutenberg (often abbreviated as PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works. ... Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (September 15, 1890 – January 12, 1976), was an English crime fiction writer. ... The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (published in 1926) is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. ... 1926 (MCMXXVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in The Dream Hercule Poirot (pronounced ) is a fictional character, the protagonist of many of Agatha Christies detective novels, a good number of which have been adapted into films, television series, radio dramas, and stage shows. ... In literature and film, an unreliable narrator (a term coined by Wayne C. Booth in his 1961 book The Rhetoric of Fiction [1]) is a literary device in which the credibility of the narrator, either first-person or third-person, is seriously compromised. ... Dorothy Leigh Sayers (Oxford, 13 June 1893 – Witham, 17 December 1957) was a renowned British author, translator, student of classical and modern languages, and Christian humanist. ... Unnatural death is a category used by coroners and vital statistics specialists for classifying all human deaths not properly describable as death by natural causes. ... 1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. ... S. S. Van Dine was the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (October 15, 1888 - April 11, 1939), a U.S. art critic and author. ... The Greene Murder Case is a 1928 mystery novel by S. S. Van Dine. ... 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) was an English theologian and crime writer. ... 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Anthony Berkeley Cox (July 5, 1893 - 1971) was a British crime fiction author, born in Watford, England. ... The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) is a detective novel by Anthony Berkeley set in 1920s London in which a group of armchair detectives, who have founded the Crimes Circle, formulate theories on a recent murder case Scotland Yard has been unable to solve. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Ellery Queen stamp issued by San Marino. ... 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... C. P. Snow, born Charles Percy Snow, (1905-1980) was a scientist and novelist. ... 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... Mainstream is, generally, the common current of thought of the majority. ... Rex Todhunter Stout (December 1, 1886 - October 27, 1975) was an American writer best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe. ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Nero Wolfe is a fictional detective created by American author Rex Stout in the 1930s and featured in dozens of novels and novellas for more than 40 years. ... The Four False Weapons (1948), 1961 Pan paperback edition. ... The Hollow Man (written in 1935) is a famous locked room mystery novel by John Dickson Carr (1906 - 1977). ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Hollow Man (written in 1935) is a famous locked room mystery novel by John Dickson Carr (1906 - 1977). ... A locked room mystery in crime fiction is a story in which the reader is presented with a puzzle and encouraged to solve it before finishing the story and being told the solution. ... Doctor Gideon Fell is a fictional detective created by John Dickson Carr. ... Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis) (27th April 1904-22nd May 1972) was a British poet. ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A locked room mystery in crime fiction is a story in which the reader is presented with a puzzle and encouraged to solve it before finishing the story and being told the solution. ... Josephine Tey was a pseudonym of Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896-February 13, 1952), a Scottish author best known for her mystery novels. ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was a British film director and producer, a master of the suspense thriller genre. ... 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Young and Innocent (U.S. title: The Girl Was Young) is a British film (1937) by Alfred Hitchcock starring Nova Pilbeam, Derrick De Marney and John Longden. ... Ethel Lina White (1876 - 1944) was a British crime writer. ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Lady Vanishes is a 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder from the novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. ... 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Clayton Rawson (1906 - 1971) was a mystery writer, editor, and amateur magician. ... Categories: Stub ... A locked room mystery in crime fiction is a story in which the reader is presented with a puzzle and encouraged to solve it before finishing the story and being told the solution. ... Michael Innes was the pseudonym of an Oxford academic, J. I. M. Stewart (1906–1994), under which name he wrote about forty crime novels between 1936 and 1986. ... Cyril Hare (1900 - 1958) has written Tenant for Death, German edition rororo thriller 2046: Ruhige Wohnung mit eigener Leiche. Categories: 1900 births | 1958 deaths | Writer stubs ... This article is about the year. ... This article is about the year. ... Born in Malaya, Mary Christianna Lewis (a. ... Green for Danger was a 1944 detective novel by Christianna Brand, praised for its clever plot, interesting characters, and military hospital setting. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ... 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery (October 2, 1921—September 15, 1978) an English crime writer and composer. ... 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Simon Brett (b. ... John Thomas Sladek (December 15, 1937 - March 10, 2000) was an American science-fiction author. ... Lawrence Block (born June 24, 1938) is an acclaimed contemporary American crime writer best known for two long-running New York-set series, about recovering-alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, respectively. ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... For the Blur single, see Country House (song). ... Kinky Friedman Richard S. Kinky Friedman, (born October 31, 1944) is an American singer, songwriter, and novelist, who is currently an independent candidate for the office of Governor of Texas. ... Road fauna or roadkill are animals ridden over by vehicles on roads and freeways. ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Benjamin Charles Elton (born May 3, 1959) is an English comedian and writer. ... Dead Famous (2001, Bantam Press, ISBN 0552999458) is a whodunit novel by Ben Elton in which ratings for a Big Brother-like reality television programme rocket when a housemate dies. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey. ...

• 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). The historical whodunnit is a sub-genre of the historical novel, in which the central plot involves a crime (almost always a murder) and the setting is historical. ... DVD cover of Columbo - The Complete First Season. ... R(ichard) Austin Freeman (1862-1943) was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr Thorndyke. ... Malice Aforethought is a 1931 murder mystery novel written by Anthony Berkeley Cox, using the name Francis Iles. ... Anthony Berkeley Cox (July 5, 1893 - 1971) was a British crime fiction author, born in Watford, England. ... Anthony Berkeley Cox (July 5, 1893 - 1971) was a British crime fiction author, born in Watford, England. ... Before the Fact is a 1932 novel by Anthony Berkeley writing as Francis Iles. ... 1932 (MCMXXXII) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link will take you to a full 1932 calendar). ... Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was a British film director and producer, a master of the suspense thriller genre. ... Suspicion DVD cover Suspicion (1941) is a film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine as a married couple. ... Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 - February 4, 1995) was an American novelist who is known mainly for her psychological crime thrillers. ... This Sweet Sickness is a 1961 novel by Patricia Highsmith about a young man who fancies a girl and is convinced that they are going to be married in the near future. ... 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... Simon Brett (b. ... A Shock to the System is: a novel by British author Simon Brett, first published in 1984. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Stephen Dobyns is an American poet and novelist. ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Humour in whodunits

Whodunits -- no matter what their content or when, where and by whom they were written -- are never completely serious. Even if their authors refuse to admit it, they are games: games played between author and reader, or even between different authors. How else can one accept murder and mayhem without shedding a tear? How else could one react in a pleasantly thrilled way to violent death most cruelly executed? How else could he be made to read on?

In whodunits, the humorous element is sometimes there, coming in different shapes and sizes. In some whodunits, it is a Watson clumsily deducing the wrong things; in hard-boiled fiction, it is usually the one-liners delivered by a wisecracking private eye; in more recent novels, it may be the complicated love life of a lesbian sleuth. Dr. John H. Watson is a fictional character, the sidekick of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional 19th century detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle. ... There are several meanings for the word deduction: Natural deduction Deductive reasoning Deductions in terms of taxation, such as Itemized deductions Standard deduction See also: Logic Venn diagram Inductive reasoning Both statistics and the scientific method rely on both induction and deduction. ... A lesbian is a female who is aesthetically, sexually, or romantically attracted to other females. ...

The humour displayed in many crime novels can be best described as tongue-in-cheek. Nothing is ever meant absolutely seriously, there is always a slightly humorous undercurrent suggesting to the reader that what they are doing just now is having a good time. Through this kind of humour, the reader is constantly reminded that it is a fictional world he is reading about, a world that has little in common with the real world outside his own doorstep.

Parody and spoof

In addition to standard humor, parody, spoof, and pastiche have had a long tradition within the field of crime fiction. (A pastiche is a piece of writing in which the style is patterned completely upon the original work and no humor is involved. Examples are the Sherlock Holmes stories written by John Dickson Carr and Adrian Conan Doyle, and hundreds of similar works by such authors as E. B. Greenwood.) As for parody, the first Sherlock Holmes spoofs appeared shortly after Conan Doyle had published his first stories. Similarly, there have been innumerable Agatha Christie send-ups. The idea is to exaggerate and mock the most noticeable features of the original and, by doing so, amuse especially those readers who are also familiar with that original. In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... The neutrality of this article is disputed. ... Sherlock Holmes as imagined by the seminal Holmesian artist, Sidney Edward Paget, in The Strand magazine. ... In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... Image:Sir Conan doyle. ...

One of the earliest parodies of the whodunit genre in general is Englishman E.C. Bentley's (1875 - 1956) novel Trent's Last Case (1913), which introduced Philip Trent, a detective who gets everything wrong right from the start: Assigned to investigate the murder of English millionaire Sigsbee Manderson, who is found shot in the library of his country house, Trent makes his first major mistake when he falls head over heels in love with the main suspect. In the course of his investigation he jumps at the wrong clues, in his reasoning he carefully eliminates the wrong suspects, and finally he arrives at a conclusion concerning the identity of Manderson's murderer which turns out to be completely wrong. At the end of the novel, the real perpetrator casually informs him during dinner that he/she has shot Manderson. These are Trent's final words to the murderer: E. C. Bentley (July 10, 1875 – March 30, 1956), was a popular English novelist and humorist of the early twentieth century, and the inventor of the clerihew, an irregular form of humorous verse on biographical topics. ... 1875 (MDCCCLXXV) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Wikisource has original text related to this article: Trents Last Case Trents Last Case is a detective novel (1913) by E. C. Bentley; a 1920 silent movie based on the book and directed by Richard Garrick; a 1929 silent movie adapted to the screen from the book by... 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ...

'[...] I'm cured. I will never touch a crime-mystery again. The Manderson affair shall be Philip Trent's last case. His high-blown pride at length breaks under him.' Trent's smile suddenly returned. 'I could have borne everything but that last revelation of the impotence of human reason. [...] I have absolutely nothing left to say, except this: you have beaten me. I drink your health in a spirit of self-abasement. And you shall pay for the dinner.'

A more recent example of a spoof, which at the same time shows that the borderline between "serious" mystery (if there is any such thing) and its parody is necessarily blurred, is U.S. mystery writer Lawrence Block's (born 1938) novel The Burglar in the Library (1997). The burglar of the title is Bernie Rhodenbarr, who has booked a weekend at an English-style country house just to steal a signed, and therefore very valuable, first edition of Chandler's The Big Sleep which he knows has been sitting there on one of the shelves for more than half a century. But, alas, immediately after his arrival a dead body turns up in the library, the room is sealed off, and Rhodenbarr has to track down the murderer before he can enter the library again and start hunting for the precious book. Lawrence Block (born June 24, 1938) is an acclaimed contemporary American crime writer best known for two long-running New York-set series, about recovering-alcoholic P.I. Matthew Scudder and gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, respectively. ... 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an Anglo-American author of crime stories and novels. ... The Big Sleep is a 1939 novel by Raymond Chandler, with two film versions, one filmed in 1946, and one filmed in 1978. ...

Murder by Death is Neil Simon's spoof of many of the best-known whodunit sleuths. In the 1976 film, Sam Spade (from The Maltese Falcon) becomes Sam Diamond, Hercule Poirot becomes Milo Perrier, etc. The film makes particular fun of the relationship between each detective and his or her sidekick. The characters are all gathered in a large country house, given meaningless clues, and all of them fail to solve the mystery. Murder by Death is a 1976 ensemble comedy movie, written by Neil Simon and directed by Robert Moore. ... Marvin Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City), is an American playwright and screenwriter. ... Poster of the 1941 Warner Brothers film version of The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Huston Sam Spade is a hard-boiled private detective and the leading character in the novel and movie The Maltese Falcon (first released in 1931). ... Actors Bogart, Lorre, Astor and Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon (1941) The Maltese Falcon (1930) is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett that has been adapted several times for the cinema. ... Don Quixote and Sancho Panza unsuccessfully confront windmills. ...

Another example is the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett. Despite their fantasy fiction setting, they are "straight" whodunits. However the names of many of the supporting characters are puns, suggesting Garrett's friends, or the lead characters in other detective stories. Often, the personality of the character also reflects this. Lord Darcy is a detective in an alternate history. ... Randall Garrett (December 16, 1927 - December 31, 1987) was a prolific writer for Astounding and other science fiction magazines in the 1950s. ... For other definitions of fantasy see fantasy (psychology). ... It has been suggested that dajare be merged into this article or section. ...

See also

• Detective fiction for an overview.
• Crime fiction
• Mystery fiction
• List of crime writers

Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. ... Sherlock Holmes, pipe-puffing hero of crime fiction, confers with his colleague Dr. Watson; together these characters popularized the genre. ... Mystery fiction is a distinct subgenre of detective fiction that entails the occurrence of an unknown event which requires the protagonist to make known (or solve). ... Crime writers may include the authors of any sub-genre of crime fiction, including Detective fiction, Mystery fiction, or hard-boiled fiction. ...

External resources

• Detective Fiction Books
• Golden Age Mysteries Discussion Board
• A John Dickson Carr Page
• Ellery Queen: A Website on Deduction