IN the years since American writer Edgar Allan Poe introduced us to detective stories, there have been many different kinds of sleuth (侦探). Dupin, Holmes and Poirot have a private interest in crime-solving. For others it is professional: the paid detectives of police forces and private investigators (调查员). In another kind of detective story, the hero is an ordinary person without any thoughts of uncovering secrets or solving crime. They’re thrown into the story and we, the readers, are thrown in with them.