This paper presents an analysis of the crime, the investigation itself, and punishment in Tribuson's cycle of novels about Investigator Banić. At the beginning of the paper, we presented the rich literary work of one of the three most productive Croatian writers, Goran Tribuson. Namely, Tribuson's literary work can be divided into three thematic areas: fantasy area, autobiographical area and crime novels. In the following text, we present a brief history of the crime novel in Croatian literature, and then we look at the structure of the crime novel. Namely, every crime novel has a linear-feedback narrative and a riddle that needs to be solved in order to re-establish balance. Therefore, the following depend on the composition of a crime novel: sequences, compositional blocks and enigma. The enigma is crucial in a crime novel because it contains the crucial thing that will move the action forward. So we can speak of four forms of riddle that are present in crime novels. Furthermore, we approached the analysis itself by paying attention to the space in which the plot of a particular novel takes place, and we also noticed the social situation. Then we described the crimes, how the investigation was conducted, ie. with whom investigator Banić talked and what evidence he collected, and finally we described the punishments and compared them with the Criminal Code of the Republic of Croatia, ie. the SFRY. In addition, it is necessary to mention that we used Lasić's, Pavličić's and Mandić's structure of the crime novel in the analysis.