Crime fiction
The most frequently encountered interpretation of Hoffmann's novella holds that it is an early example of crime fiction, perhaps the earliest in German literature. Crime fiction generally is divided into two main categories: the detective story and the crime story. In the detective story, as defined by "The Oxford Companion to English Literature", "a crime (generally, though not necessarily, a murder) is committed [...]; the puzzle of the criminal's identity is finally solved through a process of investigation, observation, and deduction by an expert detective. In a crime story, the criminal's identity is known from the start, and the interest lies in observing his psychology and his attempts to escape justice ..."