Medical mysteries and detective doctors : metaphors of medicine

Most classical detective novels start out with a community in a state of stable order. Soon a crime (usually a murder) occurs, which the police are unable to clear up. The insoluble crime acts as a destabilizing event, because the system of norms and rules regulating life in the community has proved powerless in one crucial instance and is therefore discredited. In other words, the narrative incapability on the part of society's official agents, their inability to discover and tell the story of the crime, thus threatens the validity of the established order. At this point the detective takes over the case, embarks on a course of thorough investigations, and finally identifies the criminal, explaining his solution at length. Thus, through the development of the second story, the absent first story is at last reconstructed in detail and made known. By reintegrating the aberrant event, the narrative reconstruction restores the disrupted social order and reaffirms the validity of the system of norms. From Peter Hühn, “The Detective as Reader.” The figure of the detective holds a special appeal in society: crime fiction and television series are perennially popular genres with audiences, with some detectives reaching iconic status—Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot—and particular fictional locations gaining notoriety for their unusually high murder rates—Cabot Cove, Midsomer, St Mary Mead.