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Scanning the boldfaced terms on this page, I have to laugh aloud because it makes me imagine a novel about a crime investigation without a crime! That would be a most intriguing book indeed – and I...
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#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:38:17Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24789 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T05:38:17Z (over 4 years ago)
Scanning the boldfaced terms on this page, I have to laugh aloud because it makes me imagine a novel about a crime investigation without a **crime**! That would be a most intriguing book indeed – and I think I will write it, right after my [book without an antagonist](https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2920/can-a-book-be-written-without-an-antagonist). But to answer your question, the most important thing for me in a crime investigation story are the **investigator** protagonist and his or her **investigation**. Crime investigation fiction is a story of a process and the character and the mind of the person who drives, or is driven, by it. Crime fiction, if done well, is psychological fiction. The crime investigation is a situation into which the protagonist is cast and which serves as some sort of psychological test that will **uncover his character**. That is maybe not the traditional way these novels are written. Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple do not actually have much of a character. But it is the way crime investigation fiction is done in tv and movies today. They are no longer about riddles being solved, but about inspectors facing their own inner demons as personified by a crime, or being broken or healed by their lives, of which the police work is merely a part.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2016-09-28T09:10:20Z (over 7 years ago)
Original score: 3