This chapter traces the trajectory of the investigative paradigm and the development of the Italian literary detective within a variety of literary and non-literary discourses on crime in the years that saw the emergence of positivist criminology, the establishment of the modern police force, and the rise to power of fascism. Focusing on three aspects—policing, forensic science, and the state; detection and providence; the tensions between society’s underlying domestic ideology and the emergence of women sleuths—this chapter challenges the apparently conservative and comforting character of the detective-centred story, and, with it, the problematic view that denies the form’s capacities for resistance and opposition.