# Detective

> Detective

- Skill: `handsomeboy990/detective` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add handsomeboy990/detective`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/handsomeboy990/detective/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: Handsomeboy990 (https://skillmd.com/u/handsomeboy990)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/handsomeboy990/detective

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# Detective

An investigation novel centred on the investigator. Where the mystery
organises the puzzle, crime fiction organises a method, a milieu and a gaze.

## 1. Reading contract

The reader demands: an investigator whose method is legible, a documented
milieu, progress through work, and a truth that costs the person who finds it.

## 2. Choice of school

| School | Engine | What the reader comes for |
|---|---|---|
| Classic puzzle | pure deduction | the pleasure of the puzzle |
| Procedural | collective method, institution | the accuracy of the trade |
| Hard boiled | corruption of the milieu | the voice and the disenchantment |
| Roman noir | social determinism | fatality, not the solution |
| Intimate investigation | a family secret | the truth that destroys |

The choice governs rhythm, voice and ending. It is declared in the bible.

## 3. The investigator

Five mandatory fields beyond the standard character sheet:

1. Method: what they look at first at a scene.
2. Blind spot: what they never see, which costs at least one error.
3. Authority: by what right they investigate, and what can remove it.
4. Personal price: what the investigation takes from them.
5. Relation to the law: what they will break, and where they stop.

The investigator must be wrong at least twice, once seriously.

## 4. Progression of the investigation

Canonical steps, to be adapted:

1. Discovery and first observations.
2. The circle of interested parties, apparent motives.
3. A first hypothesis, coherent and wrong.
4. The element that ruins the hypothesis.
5. Resistance from the milieu: someone obstructs the investigation.
6. A second hypothesis, partly true.
7. Direct danger to the investigator or to a third party.
8. The truth, obtained by rereading an earlier detail.
9. The consequence, often unjust.

## 5. Procedure and professional truth

- Document the real legal framework: custody, warrants, autopsy, territorial
  jurisdiction, hierarchy.
- Show administrative slowness, which is a free source of tension.
- The laboratory is neither instant nor infallible.
- Witnesses lie out of self-interest, modesty or faulty memory far more often
  than out of guilt.
- An interrogation is a scene of conflicting objectives, not a questionnaire.

## 6. Interrogation technique

- Fix what each party wants to obtain and what each wants to hide.
- Establish who holds power in the room, and make it shift once.
- Use silence, the repetition of a question, the return to a material detail.
- A confession, if it comes, arrives through weariness or vanity, never
  through demonstration.

## 7. Cliches to turn or prohibit

- The alcoholic divorced investigator with no other trait.
- The superior who removes the case for no credible reason.
- The medical examiner who gives the time of death to the minute.
- The brilliant serial killer who leaves riddles.
- The informant who knows everything.

## 8. Exit checks

- The investigator's method is visible in at least five scenes.
- Every advance results from an act, never from a free confidence.
- The milieu is researched at level 2 minimum.
- The truth costs the investigator something.

## 9. Auto-critique

The eleven constitution axes, plus four genre axes: legibility of the method,
procedural accuracy, quality of interrogations, cost of the truth.

Threshold: no axis below 3, average at least 4 on procedural accuracy.

## 10. Interfaces

- Upstream: `mystery`, `research-director`.
- Neighbours: `genres/thriller`, `genres/political-fiction`.