howdunit

• howdunnit

howdunit (plural howdunits)

1. (literature, film) 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.
   • 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.

• whodunit