Quote:
Originally Posted by lmarie
To clarify: for many people here, "crime" has the connotation of "true crime", as in the Dewey Decimal classification of 364 (Crime). That is also the way Powell's classifies it. Public library spine labels for fiction genres here use the word "Mystery", not "Crime".
A classic "whodunit" is less about "crime" than about puzzle. Perhaps that is why we disagree. I never tell people I read "crime" -- I read mysteries!  |
Which is what I tell folks as well, and why "Crime" is misleading in the poll, because I think most people assume the poll refers to
fiction, and not "true crime".
Note that mysteries may extend far beyond "whodunit". In one of the later Nicholas Freeling "Henri Castang" mysteries, for instance,
who did it was established from the onset (though the waters were muddied by disbelief that the murderer
could have done it ). The book was a meditation on motive, as Castang pieced together not only
why the murderer committed the crime, but also why he freely
confessed to it, when he had an excellent chance of escaping penalty simply because of who he was.
______
Dennis