A common view is that there is a distinction in kind between story-telling and reasoning in logic and the sciences. Narrative structures are of a different sort than the inferential processes found in the practice of science. We argue that this severe distinction between reasoning and narrative may not be entirely warranted. The distinction has already been called into question to a certain extent by Thomas Sebeok, Jean Umiker-Sebeok and Nancy Harrowitz, who have shown how characters in the detective genre, such as Sherlock Holmes and C. Auguste Dupin, use abduction in solving cases. However, we want to argue that abductive reasoning plays a fundamental role in all narratives and is not limited to the thinking of detective-characters or the detective genre. The argument here is that one type of scientific reasoning—what Charles Peirce called abduction—is a key factor in explaining how narratives—particularly in regard to plot--are constructed and read. We begin with a summary of Peirce’s concept of abduction, followed by a review of the work of Sebeok, Umiker-Sebeok and Harrowitz on abduction and the detective genre. Next, we analyze how the insights of narratology and reader-response theory point to the abductive features of narrative. We then look at abduction and narrative in two types of examples, the medical case study and the short story. A study by Ronald Schleifer and Jerry Vannatta shows how abductive thinking in medical diagnoses is itself narrative in character and tied to patients’ stories about their symptoms. We analyze two short stories by H.G. Wells, “Mr. Marshall’s Doppelgänger” and “The Star.” In these stories, Wells, who was educated in the scientific method by Thomas Huxley, explicitly narrativizes scientific reasoning and schools the reader on good abductive thinking. These examples challenge the conceptual boundary between “story” and “argument,” showing that abduction and narrative are much more interconnected, and that abduction is not simply illustrative of the sort of thinking typical of brilliant detective-characters.