howdunit
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English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Noun
[edit]howdunit (plural howdunits)
- (literature, film) A type of detective story in which the focus is not on the person who committed the crime, but on the manner in which it was committed.
- 1969, Ellery Queen, In the Queens' Parlor, and Other Leaves from the Editors' Notebook, page 72:
- After half a century, the whodunit was joined by the howdunit, in which the emphasis swung from the identity of the murderer to the method by which the murder was committed.