whodunit
noun

- a story about a crime and the attempt to discover who committed it

The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary


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ORIGIN

whodunit stems from the grammatically-incorrect expression "who done it" (the correct way is to use the simple past tense "did" - who did it).

The earliest known whodunit is "The Rector of Veilbye" by Danish author Steen Steensen Blicher, published in 1829, although it is certainly not the most well-known. The Golden Age of the whodunit was the 1920s through the 1940s and included authors such as Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, having sold more than 4 billion copies of her works. Her 66 detective novels featuring famous detectives such as Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple have influenced writers and readers around the world.

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FICTION MEETS FACT

In 1977, a young Arab girl was flown to England in a semi-conscious state and admitted to a London hospital. After six days, a nurse noticed that the girl's hair was falling out and remembered that the symptoms were similar to a series of murder victims in a book she was currently reading: The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie. The fictional characters had been murdered by thallium poisoning.

Subsequent tests on the Arab girl revealed high levels of thallium in her urine. The child returned home after three weeks and the case was written up in the British Journal of Hospital Medicine with a note of thanks to the observant nurse and the late Dame Agatha Christie.

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SYNONYMS

crime story, mystery, thriller

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Practice OWAD in a conversation:

"I always pack a couple of WHODUNITS in my suitcase when I go on holiday."