Mayhem and Murder

The detective story centres on unravelling two questions: whodunit? and who is guilty? In Murder and Mayhem, Heta Pyrhönen examines how these questions organize and pattern the genre''s formal and thematic structures. Beginning with a semiotic reading of the detective as both code-breaker and sign-reader, Pyrhönen''s theoretical analysis then situates the reader and the detective in parallel wo...