Playing by the Rules of Romance: Detective Fiction and Games

This chapter reassesses the long‑standing relationship between detective fiction and games by tracing a literary genealogy that reveals detection as a fundamentally ludic form. It argues that from Poe’s ratiocinative tales to the Golden Age codification of “fair play,” detective fiction has been shaped by game‑like structures that govern readerly agency, narrative control, and the rigged contest at the heart of the whodunit. Yet the chapter challenges the conventional alignment of detective fiction with rational puzzle‑solving by introducing Robert Louis Stevenson’s conception of romance as an alternative framework. Romance emphasises immersion, imaginative role‑play, and affective engagement, offering a counter‑tradition that complicates debates about fairness, solvability, and reader participation. Bringing these literary histories into dialogue with game studies, the chapter presents a hybrid methodology that treats video games not merely as adaptations of detective stories but as critical instruments that illuminate their narrative logics. This is demonstrated through an analysis of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, a paradigmatic example of procedural adaptation that converts the methods, constraints, and pleasures of detection into playable systems. Through this lens, the chapter shows how games both expose and remediate the structural tensions of detective fiction, revealing new intersections between narrative immersion, rule‑governed play, and the evolving figure of the detective.