Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator (often a detective), either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.
Some scholars have suggested that some ancient and religious texts bear similarities to what would later be called detective fiction. In the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders (Daniel 13; in the Protestant Bible this story is found in the apocrypha), the ...
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Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator (often a detective), either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.
Some scholars have suggested that some ancient and religious texts bear similarities to what would later be called detective fiction. In the Old Testament story of Susanna and the Elders (Daniel 13; in the Protestant Bible this story is found in the apocrypha), the story told by two witnesses breaks down when Daniel cross-examines them. The author Julian Symons has commented on writers who see this as a detective story, arguing that "those who search for fragments of detection in the Bible and Herodotus are looking only for puzzles" and that these puzzles are not detective stories. In the play Oedipus Rex by Ancient Greek playwright Sophocles, the title character discovers the truth about his origins after questioning various witnesses. Although "Oedipus's enquiry is based on supernatural, pre-rational...
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