In this chapter the author begins his own investigation with an analysis of the detective narrative as form. A formalist approach to popular fiction can be criticised for paying too little attention to the relationship between textual form and meaning in the world; but much popular fiction is formulaic and an understanding of how the formula works is an essential starting point in its study. The chapter uses formalist and structuralist criticism to show the basic workings of the detective narrative. It shows how the narrative form provides an interpretative framework from within which the reader can position him or herself in relation to the modern world. The chapter argues that the mystery's solution supplies a temporary sense of self through which the reader is offered an apparatus for negotiating the boundaries that define identity.