Detective Fiction

Roles: detective, suspect, victim, clue, red-herring, alibi, motive, crime-scene

The narrative framework of mystery and crime fiction, where a detective reconstructs past events from fragmentary evidence. The frame structures inquiry as a contest between the detective’s reasoning and the criminal’s concealment, with clues and red herrings as the primary currency. Transferred to any domain where truth must be reconstructed from incomplete or deliberately obscured evidence.

Applied To This Frame (1)