SOURCE: Leitch, Thomas M. “From Detective Story to Detective Novel.” Modern Fiction Studies 29, no. 3 (autumn 1983): 475-84.

In the following essay, Leitch compares a number of crime-mystery-detective novels to the short stories from which they were expanded.

The detective story, with its persistent emphasis on the one correct solution of a crime, is the most resolutely end-oriented of narrative modes. Given the financial pressures of writing, however, it is hardly surprising that authors of detective stories should occasionally seek to postpone that end by turning their short stories into novels. What is most interesting in this process is not questioning the author's motivation nor judging relative degrees of success but rather identifying what is added to a detective story when it becomes a detective novel. Structural analysis has shown that detective stories, long and short, employ a common narrative pattern: a crime, usually a murder, is committed by some...