Detective Fiction: Sleuths, Story Structure, and the Search for Truth

Course summary: Explore detective fiction from Poe and Conan Doyle to modern global mysteries. Learn how sleuths investigate, how clues and narrators shape suspense, and how detective stories examine justice and society. Across 40 guided lessons, practice scene construction and close reading, then complete a comprehensive assessment or an analytical project presentation.

Course overview: This reading-and-writing course teaches you to recognize detective-story conventions and use their craft lessons in original short scenes and informed critical analysis. It covers amateur, police, and private investigators; narrative viewpoint; clue logic; character; setting; moral questions; investigative methods; important works; and adaptations in screen and interactive media. You do not need prior coursework. Allow roughly 2–3 hours per lesson, with additional time for the final assessment.

Learning outcomes: Identify the detective’s authority and motive; distinguish observation from inference; analyze clue placement and viewpoint; draft credible investigation scenes; compare literary and media techniques; support an interpretation with textual evidence; revise a critical argument after feedback.

Completion and AI policy: Complete the 40 lessons and their short writing labs, collect at least eight revised demonstrations or analyses, and submit the Lesson 10.4 capstone. An AI writing partner may ask questions or identify possible weak links in your reasoning; you must check its claims against the text, choose the final wording yourself, and avoid providing private unpublished work without permission. Course examples are invented unless a named literary work is explicitly discussed.