An inverted detective story, also known as a "howdhecatchem", is a murder mystery fiction structure in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator. The story then describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery. There may also be subsidiary puzzles, such as why the crime was committed, that are cleared up along the way. This format is the opposite of the more typical "whodunit", where all of the details of the crime and the perpetrator are not revealed until the story's climax.
R. Austin Freeman claimed to have invented the inverted detective story in his 1912 collection of short stories The Singing Bone. "Some years ago I devised, as an experiment, an inverted detective story in two parts. The first part was a minute and detailed description of a crime, setting forth the antecedents, motives, and all attendant circumstances. The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell, but I calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter."
One early and prominent example of this sub-genre is Malice Aforethought, written in 1931 by Anthony Berkeley Cox writing as Francis Iles. Freeman Wills Crofts's The 12:30 from Croydon is another important instance.
The 1952 BBC television play Dial M for Murder by Frederick Knott (later adapted for the stage and then adapted again in 1954 as a theatrical film by Alfred Hitchcock) is another example. Tony Wendice outlines his plans to murder his wife Margot in the opening scenes, leaving the viewer with no questions about perpetrator or motive, only with how the situation will be resolved. In Alfred Bester's 1953 novel The Demolished Man, the reader learns in the first chapter that Ben Reich plans to murder a man; the rest of the novel is concerned with whether he will get away with it.
The short stories written by Roy Vickers about the Department of Dead Ends are nearly all of the inverted type. They deal with the eccentric methods used by Inspector Rason, a detective in a fictional division of Scotland Yard assigned to investigate cold cases, to solve crimes where more conventional methods have failed.
Several of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels, such as Unnatural Death and Strong Poison, come near to inclusion in this category. In both books, there is from the start only one real suspect, whose guilt is more or less taken for granted already by the middle of the book and who indeed turns out to be the murderer. In both books - as in some other Sayers detective novel - the mystery to be solved is mainly the "why did this person have any motive to commit this murder" and "how did he or she do it" (which makes this format more similar to the majority of actual police investigations). Also, the short story The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers, had the villain not only discovered, but dead at the beginning, and Lord Wimsey explaining his investigation in detail, right down to when the villain stumbled into a vat of molten glass.
The term "howcatchem" was coined only much later, by TV Guide in the 1970s after the television series Columbo popularized the format.
The 1989 theatrical play Over My Dead Body, by Michael Sutton and Anthony Fingleton, depicts three elderly detective story writers committing a real-life locked room murder in Rube Goldbergian fashion, which the audience is in on every step of the way. In a variation of the typical inverted form, in this case the miscreants want to be caught and made to pay their debt to society.
In the 1990s, some episodes of Diagnosis: Murder were presented in the howcatchem format, usually when featuring a "big name" (or at least recognizable) guest star. The recent TV shows Monk and Law & Order: Criminal Intent had episodes structured as howcatchems, with the viewer typically witnessing the killer commit the crime, and then watching as the detectives attempt to solve it (and, in the case of at least one Monk episode, prove that it has even been committed). However, both series also used the whodunit format at times. The British television crime series Luther also makes regular use of the inverted detective story structure.
Famous quotes containing the words detective story, inverted, detective and/or story:
“Bolkenstein, a Minister, was speaking on the Dutch programme from London, and he said that they ought to make a collection of diaries and letters after the war. Of course, they all made a rush at my diary immediately. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a romance of the “Secret Annexe.” The title alone would be enough to make people think it was a detective story.”
—Anne Frank (1929–1945)
“Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Everybody thinks detectives do nothing but ask questions. But detectives have souls the same as anyone else.... You know, Mrs. Beragon, being a detective is like, well, like making an automobile. You just take all the pieces and put them together one by one. First thing you know you’ve got an automobile. Or a murderer.”
—Ranald MacDougall (1915–1973)
“A gorgeous example of denial is the story about the little girl who was notified that a baby brother or sister was on the way. She listened in thoughtful silence, then raised her gaze from her mother’s belly to her eyes and said, “Yes, but who will be the new baby’s mommy?””
—Judith Viorst (20th century)