Features of the detective story 

·         A mysterious MURDER......it must be significant

·         A professional DETECTIVE ....he is clever,eccentric, he is a bit out of ordinary

·         A DETECTIVE Friend......he usually helps the detective,but he is usually slower than him

·         All the suspects are present early in the story.

·         There are false suspects and false clues

·         The criminal must be a worthy opponent. As the detective must show off his great skills, he must match wit with adversaries of equal cleverness

·         An inefficient Police force

·         All clues discovered by the detective must be made available to the reader, he must get the clues as the detective

·         A DETECTIVE story is a jigsaw puzzle, the true detective story challenges the reader to a mental contest to solve the crime along with the characters in the story

·         The solutions must be logical

·         An unexpected final twist

·         A detailed reconstruction of the crime 

The first detective story is considered to ne Edgar Allan Poe The Murders in the Rue Morgue 1841

Another example  is The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins published in 1868.

The most famous fictional detective following in Poe footsteps was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In 1887 he published A Study in scarlet, the first of four novels about Holmes and Dr Watson. In addition, Doyle wrote over fifty short stories featuring the famous detective. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of detective story

Why the detective story?

• ·         The 19th century was characterized by the birth of slums having problems  of poverty and crime
• ·         The press was particularly interested in crime news 
• ·         Police forces were reorganised.