The Semiotic Background of the Ineffective Investigation in the Weird Detective Story

Abstract The classical detective story is based on a teleological certainty offered by the narrative. In these stories, the detective successfully solves the crime, and the lawful order is restored in an assuring manner, so the closure of the narrative structure does not allow for an open ending in ontological terms. However, weird fiction and its most recent form, new weird, have a different approach to the teleological givens prescribed by the classical detective story (whodunit). The weird investigation is paradigmatically open-ended, and the detective most often fails to solve the case. The argument develops a distinction between two basic semiotic structures that characterize crime fiction. While all crime fiction is set in an environment that is based on simulation, the classical detective can revert the simulated semiotic structure into signs based on representation, thus the interpretation of the signs results in solving the crime. The weird and new weird stories, on the other hand, defy this representational logic, which is demonstrated by Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s weird fiction and Neil Gaiman’s new weird short story entitled “A Study in Emerald.”