From Detective Puzzle to Crime Story
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

From the "Golden Age" to the contemporary era, the detective story developed from a puzzle the reader and amateur sleuth needed to solve to a crime story where setting, motive, and character ruled supreme. Murderers became more interesting and sympathetic, and detectives evolved from intellectuals such as Auguste Dupin, Ellery Queen, and Hercule Poirot to an orchid-growing gourmand Nero Wolfe with his "legman" and narrator Archie Goodwin, witty barrister and aspiring detective Horace Rumpole, and poet-policeman Adam Dalgleish. Why the changes? Find out.