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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/23549
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Honestly, I think you might be overthinking it and trying to use improper abstraction to understand detective fiction. So instead of explaining conflict in typical detective fiction, I'll use an abstraction I find more convenient, which should be broadly applicable to understanding the conflict if you wish. Hope it helps.

## thesis

The society we live in is ordered. When things that blatantly violate the accepted order, there is some agent of chaos that breaks the accepted rules of society causing it.

## antithesis

A blatant violation of social order, a crime, has happened, but no agent responsible for it is known. This leaves the order incomplete and threatens with descent to chaos and anarchy.

## synthesis

The responsibility for the violation of order is properly assigned, natural order is reaffirmed by completing the cause and effect, chaos and anarchy staved off.

## what it means

The main conflict of a typical detective fiction is essentially the compound of three separate but closely related conflicts. Explains why it can be difficult to explain as a single main conflict.

## thesis - antithesis

We want to believe that the society is ordered and secure, but crimes that endanger the order and security happen. Society wants order and that rules are followed, but some will wish to break the rules, set themselves above the rules, which violates natural order. There is unsolved crime.

## antithesis - synthesis

The conflict between powers that threaten order and ones that seek to restore it. Assigning responsibility and avoiding responsibility. It is more difficult to write detective fiction unless there at least appears to be someone who tries to avoid responsibility.

## thesis - synthesis

We want to believe that society is naturally ordered, but in fact constant effort is required to stave off chaos. Great detectives are generally deeply committed to order, but their function is to reaffirm the rules after they were broken, not to follow them. So there is often a degree of creative interpretation of the rules, of seeing beyond the rules to their actual purpose.

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