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A whodunit or whodunnit (for "Who done it?") is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final pages of the book. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric amateur or semi-professional detective.

It flourished during the so-called "Golden Age" of detective fiction, during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, when it was the predominant mode of crime writing. Many of the best writers of whodunits in this period were British — notably Agatha Christie, Nicholas Blake, Christianna Brand and Edmund Crispin, Michael Innes, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey.

Certain conventions and clichés developed – they had a predilection for certain casts of characters and settings, with the secluded English country house at the top of the list.