The adventure of argument: Hypothesis-making in fictionalised crime

Argumentation plays a critical role in the consumption of crime narratives. The public’s unquenchable thirst for crime hasn’t been slaked since the rise in the genre’s popularity, providing a rich dataset through which to investigate the different kinds of reasoning (deductive, abductive, inductive) that play a role in the narratives of crime, as voiced by characters such as Conan Doyle’s Holmes and Christie’s Poirot. This focus on reasoning will be investigated through the making of hypotheses at key points in chosen texts. This paper will explore the different ways people hypothesise and the evolution between initial and following hypotheses, when more information is available. Investigation of hypothesis-making within fictionalised environments allows us to better understand the role argumentation plays and how it relates to the real world, by extending into real-world cases where endings are not quite so neatly wrapped up.