Talk:Whodunit
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Neither this page nor Detective fiction establishes the difference between a "whodunit" and a "detective novel". Could someone explain, or should the pages be merged? -- Tarquin 10:24 Sep 16, 2002 (UTC)
I would imagine that the vast majority of detective novels are Whodunits. The main essence of these is that the reader sees the evidence at the same time as the detective, and so part of the reading experience is trying to "solve" the crime as you read. There are some detective stories that start out by describing the crime (usually with a very clever criminal trying to cover their tracks), then shows how the detectives solve it. There are also stories that may (or may not) be classed as detective novels, where the prime thread of the story is the detective and relationships within the team etc. These are now whodunits either. -- Chris Q 10:39 Sep 16, 2002 (UTC)
- What may perhaps be the key in distinguishing a Whodunit from the broader class of detective fiction is that all the important clues are provided to the reader over the course of the story before he gets to the point where all is revealed. Solving the mystery is not a question of guesswork, and does not depend on undescribed outside information such as the properties of some obscure poison. Eclecticology 19:06 Sep 16, 2002 (UTC)
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- Wow! less than 21 hours since my intial comment! The speed of wikipedia is impressive! :-) -- Tarquin
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- This page is risibly discursive and unfocussed. I deleted two whole paragraphs in which nothing was said about Whodunnits. So the page needs work. Nevertheless, it's worth preserving. The whodunnit is distinct from detective fiction in that it refers to mystery novels of a certain type written during the 1920s through 1940s, the so-called "Golden Age." I should add that the whodunnit, as opposed to detective fiction generally, was of great interest to the structuralist school of litrerary criticism. The best definition I've found of "Golden Age Mystery" is from the page on John Dickson Carr: "complex, plot-driven stories in which the puzzle is paramount." I'm going to add this def. to the article. Bds yahoo 22:58, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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What is missing in the description, and what is to me an essential if not the most important part of the Whodunit, is the aspect that all possible suspects are present right from the start; the detective (and the reader) just needs to figure out which one actually did it -- hence "Who done it?". What is revealed, is a number of clues, unknown relations between the characters and possible motives. Often the entire group of people is somehow confined to the location. Taking examples from the works of Agatha Christie, in The Mousetrap they're snowed in, in Death on the Nile they're on a boat, in Death in the Clouds they're on an airplane, in Murder on the Orient Express they're on a train and so on. This in my opinion the biggest distinction between Whodunits and 'regular' detective stories. In the latter, often the detective has to find out more about the background of the victim and finds possible suspects from that background, while, as stated, all possible suspects are already present in the former. (Should we mention the movie The Usual Suspects?)
Also, I'd like to propose to add the movie Clue to the list of spoofs. Perhaps we should mention the game as well.--Aalbert (20051027)
I haven't read Kinky Friedman's Road Kill, but, as it was published in 1997, shouldn't it be quoted among the "recent additions" (maybe in a new list?) rather than the Golden Age whodunnits? --KF 16:52 Jan 5, 2003 (UTC)
Just wanted to say that this is a great article, written in a fun, casuall, marvelously non-encyclopedic style that perfectly captures the fun behind whodunnits. Hats off to all the key writers. Fishal 19:57, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Problem is this is an encyclopedia with certain conventions that need to be followed, like concision and relevancy. Some of the additions here tend to the digressive. Bds yahoo 23:32, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The paragraph about English v. American writers is messy and should probably go. Why is only the "early" (!) Ellery Queen American? (Note that Ellery Queen is not even a person, but a pen name used by at least three different actual writers, all Americans.) John Dickson Carr is American-born, but lived in England for most of his writing career. What does "American" style mean vis a vis "English" style? The whodunit was really a transatlantic genre and these lines that are being drawn are pretty tenuous. Lots of assumptions about Englishness or whatever in that paragraph, but not much actual information or analysis. Bds yahoo 22:38, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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This article has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2006 press source article for details.
The citation is in: "It's a mystery: 'Whodunnit' this time?" (2006-08-02). Tahlequah Daily Press. [1]. |
