From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdetective story/novel etcdetective story/novel etcALAMTa story etc about a crime, often a murder, and a detective who tries to find out who did it → detective
Examples from the Corpus
detective story/novel etc• It was the feeling she had had as a child when she frightened herself with a detective story.• But they can also be used to play the game that is the simple blueprint detective story.• I wanted to stay and read the latest Encyclopedia Brown detective story.• Elizabeth did not like detective stories, because some one was usually hanged at the end of them.• Their approach is informal and Physics of Stellar Evolution and Cosmology reads like a scientific detective story.• This is the detective novel or the crime novel which makes its comments on life through humour rather than more directly.• Your detective of the detective story, of course, went about seeking information.• Key elements are missing, primarily the complexities, surprises and textures of the detective stories.