: What is the stereotypical structure of a crime narrative? I have been wanting to start work on a short crime novel, but I am not sure how to structure the story- To elaborate, I have a

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I don't think there is one, I admit that maybe my reading is a little narrow in this regard but the crime novels I've read have widely varied structures. Crime stories, of any length, all seem to share four certain scenes in common though:

the crime, not always shown, in fact more often not shown. If shown often uses flashback technique and is placed towards the end of the story as the investigation draws to its conclusion.
detection, someone discovering that there has been a crime, often but not always the first real scene of the narrative.
investigation, the meat of the story, finding out why the crime happened and "who done it", not necessarily in that order but motive is often key to understanding who committed a crime.
resolution, wrapping up the case, putting cuffs on the killer etc... this may never happen depending on the particular narrative, a lot of cases in the real world just peter out without a satisfactory conclusion too.

I've seen these four scenes written in many different orders though so as long as you have them it would appear that you can knit them together whichever way you want to.

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