The research is the first attempt in the Ukrainian comparative study of literature to provide typological characteristics of retrodetective in Ukrainian and Russian literatures. Retrodetective appears on the basis of historical detective in the postmodern era. In the Russian and Ukrainian literatures, original works with elements of historical and detective genre as a separate kind have already appeared on the post-Soviet cultural space, and their formal-substantial features are caused by poetics of postmodern literature and popular literature. Its specificity as a special type of verbal art lies in stereotyping at the formal and substantive levels. First of all, it is manifested in constructing of the plot on the basis of so-called literary formulas described by John Cawelti. Thus, the formulas of popular literature are widely used at all the three levels of modern literature - mass (popular), middle and experimental, but at the last two ones they are also parodically transformed and reinterpreted. As a result of writers' attempt to reach the widest audience of readers, fiction, which because of its intermediate position in the literary hierarchy is often called the middle-literature, became the mainstream of modern literary process. The vanguard experiments are not carried out in it, but the canons of the genre, as a rule, are more transformed, and inter-genre synthesis takes place. By this reason fiction differs from mass literature, where full conformity of the readers' horizon of expectations is an obligatory condition. Considering retrodetectives of modern popular writers, we have come to the conclusion that they are all written using receptions of formula literature, thereby they are popular among a wide audience of readers, but the mix of genres, irony, parodic revealing of literary devices, wide intertextuality allow them to create more meaningful levels, addressed to a qualified recipient. Moreover, the change of genre formula always in some way reflects the transformations taking place in social consciousness. Thus, a new look at the essence of the historical process was formed in postmodernism, as well as a new attitude in general, have become one of the main reasons for the transformation of historical detective in retrodetective. Attention shifts away from such large-scale objects as, for example, political history, to the reconstruction of the bright, entertaining details of private life, a life of the past. The highest, the essential level of postmodern philosophy was reflected only in the few samples of retrodetective. But basically postmodern nature of the retrodetectives was manifested in the use of the game with the reader, irony, collage, revealing of literary devices, parody, mixing of high and low styles, wide intertextuality. The study of the development of this inter-genre variety has shown that each national literature learns postmodernism experience in its own way, emphasizing or retouching its certain features. Not only typological similarity of Ukrainian and foreign retrodetectives is evident, but also their identity, which is manifested at different levels. Mastering of genre codes of world literature does not deprive Ukrainian literature of identity, but even updates it. Therefore, retrodetective arises as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which can be productively studied in a variety of socio-cultural and literary aspects.
