Inverted detective story

An inverted detective story, also known as a "howcatchem", is a murder mystery fiction structure in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator. The story then describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery. There may also be subsidiary puzzles, such as why the crime was committed, that are cleared up along the way. This format is the polar opposite of the more typical "whodunit," where all of the details of the crime and the perpetrator are not revealed until the story's climax.

R. Austin Freeman claimed to have invented the inverted detective story in his 1912 collection of short stories The Singing Bone. "Some years ago I devised, as an experiment, an inverted detective story in two parts. The first part was a minute and detailed description of a crime, setting forth the antecedents, motives, and all attendant circumstances. The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell, but I calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter."^[1]

One early and prominent example of this sub-genre is Malice Aforethought, written in 1931 by Anthony Berkeley Cox writing as Francis Iles.

The 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film Dial M for Murder is another classic example, this time for the screen (and for the stage, in the ealier Frederick Knott play.) Tony Wendice (played by Ray Milland) outlines his plans to murder his wife Margot (Grace Kelly) in the opening scenes, leaving the viewer with no questions about perpetrator or motive, only with how the situation will be resolved.

The short stories written by Roy Vickers about the Department of Dead Ends are nearly all of the inverted type. They deal with the eccentric methods used by Inspector Rason, who is in charge of the department, to solve crimes where more conventional methods have failed.

Several of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels, such as "Unnatural Death" and "Strong Poison", come near to inclusion in this category. In both books, there is from the start only one real suspect, whose guilt is more or less taken for granted already by the middle of the book and who indeed turns out to be the murderer. In both books - as in some other Sayers detective novel - the mystery to be solved is mainly the "why did this person have any motive to commit this murder" and "how did he or she do it" (which makes this format more similar to the majority of actual police investigations).

The term "howcatchem" was coined only much later, by TV Guide in the 1970s after the television series Columbo popularized the format.

The 1989 theatrical play Over My Dead Body, by Michael Sutton and Anthony Fingleton, depicts three elderly detective story writers committing a real-life locked room murder in Rube Goldbergian fashion, which the audience is in on every step of the way. In a variation of the typical inverted form, in this case the miscreants want to be caught and made to pay their price to society.

In the 1990s, some episodes of Diagnosis Murder were presented in the howcatchem format, usually when featuring a "big name" (or at least recognizable) guest star. Presently, the TV shows Monk and Law & Order: Criminal Intent are frequently structured as howcatchems, with the viewer typically witnessing the killer commit the crime, and then watching as the detectives attempt to solve it (and, in some cases, prove that it has even been committed). However, both series also use the whodunit format at times.

The popular Japanese anime and manga series Death Note is essentially a howcatchem.

See also

• Furuhata Ninzaburo, a howcatchem detective series from Japan.

References

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