Tzvetan Todorov pointed out that detective fiction contained "not one but two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the investigation. An examination of "Agatha Christie's "The Witness for the Prosecution" present a story of crime and investigation as a means to keep the reader in absolute suspense from beginning to end. Agatha Christie's, "The Witness for the Prosecution,"begins by revealing to the implied reader that a crime had been committed, …showed first 75 words of 737 total…

…showed last 75 words of 737 total…is a story that consists of both a crime and an investigation. The "secret" is revealed in the first few lines of the story. The implied narrator devotes the remaining of the story to the investigation of acquitting a man who indeed has broken the law. The implied narrator manipulates the readers mind through the testimony of an unreliable foreigner and by presenting the criminal as a man who is incapable of committing a crime.