howdunit
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Noun edit
howdunit (plural howdunits)
- A type of detective story in which the focus is not on who committed the crime, but how they have done so.
- 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.