犯罪小说有明确的开头、中间和结尾:一个谜团、它的调查和它的解决。读者期望事件能够逻辑有效地展开,这些期望迫使作者花大量时间研究宏观结构,而不是美化单个句子。
(Crime novels have a clear beginning, middle, and end: a mystery, its investigation, and its resolution. The reader expects events to play out logically and efficiently, and these expectations force the writer to spend a good deal of time working on macrostructure rather than prettifying individual sentences.)