Ellery Queen’s Anthology. Volume 38, Fall/Winter 1979

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Every mystery has its secret.

Its innermost secret.

Let us divide the crime-mystery story into two all-inclusive categories — the tale of crime with detection and the tale of crime without detection.

In the first category — crime with detection — there are subdivisions: deductive, intuitional, and procedural detective stories, dealing with both realistic and bizarre situations, the latter including the locked room, the miracle problem, and the impossible crime; all these subgenres contain a detective, amateur or professional, or a law-enforcement agency whose common purpose is to discover the culprit and uncover the secret of the mystery.

In the second category — crime without detection — there is obviously no sleuth, no man or woman hunter; but even when the reader knows the identity of the criminal from the beginning, there is still a secret to be penetrated and disclosed. If it is not the secret of who, it could be the secret of how, or of when or where, and often of why — why did the criminal commit the crime, why did the victim invite or cause the crime?

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