howdunit

noun

howdunit

noun

1

Broadcasting, Film, Literature, Media, Publishing, Television 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.

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.1969, Ellery Queen, In the Queens' Parlor, and Other Leaves from the Editors' Notebook, page 72:

Related terms: wheredunit, whodunit, whydunit

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