Detective fiction
Detective fiction is the fictional genre in which the author presents a mystery to the readers, usually in the form of the investigation of a murder. Great ingenuity is usually exercised in revealing the basic method of the murder in such a manner as to simultaneously conceal it from the readers, until the end of the book, when the method and culprit are revealed.
A common feature is that the investigator is usually unmarried, with some source of income other than a regular job, and frequently has an assistant, who is asked to make all kinds of apparently irrelevant inquiries, and acts as an audience for the explanation of the mystery at the end of the story.
An early archetype of these types of story were the three Auguste Dupin stories of Edgar Allan Poe: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, and The Mystery of Marie Roget. This last is particularly interesting, as it is a scarcely fictionalized analysis of the circumstances around the real-life discovery of the body of a young woman named Mary Rogers, in which Poe expounds his theory of what actually happened. The style of the analysis, with its attention to forensic detail, makes it a precursor of that most famous of all fictional detectives, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who set the style for many, many others in later years, including pastiches such as August Derleth's Solar Pons.
The full list of fictional detectives would be immense. The format is well suited to dramatic presentation, and so there are also a large number of television and film detectives, besides adaptation of novels in this genre.
Detectives generally fall within one of four domains: the amateur or dilettante detective (Holmes); the private investigator (Marlowe, Spade); the police detective (Ironside, Morse); and, more recently, the pathologist or forensic scientist (Quincy). There is also a subgenre of historical detectives.
Amateurs:
- Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Sherlock Holmes
- Dorothy L. Sayers – Lord Peter Wimsey
Private eyes:
Police detectives:
Pathologists/forensics:
[don't know]
Others:
- Erle Stanley Gardner – Perry Mason – lawyer
- Donald J. Sobol – Encyclopedia Brown – intended for younger readers
Historical:
- Lindsey Davis – Marcus Didius Falco – the Roman Empire of the 1st century A.D.
- Umberto Eco – Brother William of Baskerville (in The Name of the Rose) – 1327
- Robert van Gulik – Judge Dee – 18th century China
- Ellis Peters – Brother Cadfael – 11th century England and Wales
- Steven Saylor – Gordianus the Finder, the Roma sub rosa series – the Roman Republic of the 1st century B.C.
Then there are all those private eye stories, and police procedural stories that need to go here too...
Perhaps some mention is needed of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone as an early detective novel?