There is quite a difference between the typical "whodunit" versus the "inverted" detective genre. Most detective stories follow the "whodunit" format. The events of the crime and the events of the investigation are displayed so that the reader is only provided clues from which the identity of the culprit of the crime may be presumed. The solution is not revealed until the end of the story. In an inverted detective story, the commission of the crime, and also the identity of the culprit, is described at the beginning. The remainder of the story then describes the investigation. Instead, the ‘puzzle’ presented to the reader is finding the clues and evidence that the perpetrator has left
