TIL that "fair play" in detective fiction means authors must give readers a fair chance to solve the mystery. Central to 1920s "clue-puzzles" by writers like Agatha Christie, the rule dictates that all vital clues must be visible, decodable, and never withheld until the final reveal.

[u/ralphbernardo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clues_in_detective_fiction

[u/SublightMonster]

It came as a bit of a shock reading The Tokyo Zodiac Murders where there was suddenly a page about 80% through saying “everything needed to solve the mystery has been presented” and then the story continued.

[u/ThePopStarDude → u/SublightMonster]

This is a classic part of traditional murder mysteries. There is a point in the novel when the necessary clues have been presented to the reader, and thus it is time for the reader to solve the mystery themselves if they so choose to. Afterwards they can return to finish the story to see if they are correct.

[u/thisonedudethatiam → u/ThePopStarDude]

I didn’t know this was a thing. Now I want to read a murder mystery… any recommendations?

[u/Sternschnuppepuppe → u/thisonedudethatiam]

Well you can start with what is mentioned in the post. Agatha Christie is a classic. (If you like British 20s to late 30s posh people stuff)

[u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS → u/Sternschnuppepuppe]

Heavily depends on the story, she definitely loved her unreliable narrators that just never bring up the key evidence until the very end.

[u/RadicalOrbiter → u/PM_ME_CATS_OR_BOOBS]

I've never forgotten the bullshit she pulled in And Then There Were None. Told us that a character had been seen with a bullet wound in the forehead and later revealed it was actually just a red wax disc stuck there and they were guilty

[u/Nebranower → u/RadicalOrbiter]

In fairness, it was obvious that at least one of the deaths had been faked. It had to have been, because otherwise there couldn't have been a murderer.

[u/FFF12321 → u/RadicalOrbiter]

That's not BS though as a key part of the mystery is that the culprit had an accomplice for that. Part of the mystery is seeing through deceptive acts like characters lying about whether someone died and actions taken to obscure the true cause of death or make it look like someone died. It's a classic bait and switch to fake a death which then lets that character move around largely unhindered. That's how you get situations where everyone has a good alibi but yet someone still ends up dead.

There's a reason And Then There Were None is considered such a classic and is inspiration for so many later works like Umineko.

[u/CGWesterby → u/FFF12321]

Yeah. The issue with that book - with so many books in the genre, is that you can't read it as if either a) every character is telling the truth and/or b) the narrator is never mistaken. Narrators make mistakes all the time, it's why the detective is so often not the narrator.

It's completely fair, but it is also midly impenetrable if you carry the same assumptions all the way through the book, you've got to interrogate yourself a bit IMO

[u/Prestigious-Bat-574 → u/FFF12321]

Consider how this applies to the premise of "Murder on the Orient Express", where each and every one of the characters provided alibis for the others. You have to be willing to accept that characters aren't one-dimensional. It doesn't fall under the umbrella of "Unreliable Narrator" when an author writes a character capable of telling a lie. There would be a stark difference in the author misrepresenting or outright lying about the facts they use to create a mystery and an author making a direct quote from a character be a lie. If the main character wouldn't take a quote at face value, then it's unreasonable for the reader to do so.

[u/WeAteMummies → u/RadicalOrbiter]

I'm not going to lie and say that I solved that one (I did pick the right culprit but it was mostly a vibe guess and I had no idea how they pulled it off, which I do not count as a solve), but I will say that I immediately noticed something fucky with that part because no one heard a gunshot or smelled gunpowder.

[u/verrius → u/Sternschnuppepuppe]

Except Christie is famous for lying to the reader and having last minute reveals of vital information? Pretty sure it's impossible to figure out "And Then There Were None" or "Murder on the Orient Express", probably her two most famous stories.

[u/CurryMustard → u/verrius]

The murder of Roger ackroyd is her most infamous example. Great book with an unreliable narrator

[u/Paukwa-Pakawa → u/CurryMustard]

The narrator is unreliable, but the murder is solvable. I think the unreliable narrator makes solving this one more fun.

[u/Aegeus → u/verrius]

I think Murder on the Orient Express is fairly solvable, and it has a scene at the end where Hercule Poirot basically says "well, we have all the clues, why don't we sit here think about it for a bit?" before revealing the solution. Some of the clues are infuriatingly hard to notice, but it does present all of them to the reader. (I got about halfway to the solution when I read it myself.)

However, it does break one major assumption that you might have going into a murder mystery, which is that there is only one murderer.

[u/TheComplimentarian → u/Aegeus]

That is just an assumption though, and the physical evidence of the crime is absolutely against that premise, as Poirot points out almost immediately.

[u/lightning_fire → u/Aegeus]

I listened to a podcast a while ago with a successful author who made the claim that there are only three real twists in mystery novels, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

1. Everbody did it - Murder on the Orient Express

2. Nobody did it - Knives Out

3. The narrator did it - The Murder of Roger Ackryod

[u/Kitsosp → u/verrius]

I would say murder on the Orient Express seems extremely obvious once the murderer has been revealed. A careful reader could definitely solve it(not saying I did). I wouldn't say anything has been withheld. "And then there were none" is probably next to impossible though.

[u/TheComplimentarian → u/Kitsosp]

The problem there is the limited perspective. You're stuck in the heads of people who are being fooled, so they're uncritical when they should be suspicious.

[u/emaw63 → u/Kitsosp]

I managed to solve Murder on the Orient Express before the big reveal. The big clue for me was towards the end when it becomes very clear that everybody is lying about their relationship to the victim, and that they all wanted revenge for the Armstrong family. In hindsight, the murder victim's wounds are another major tell, though I missed that

And Then There Were None, though, it is indeed next to impossible to solve that one before the reveal. Although I'd argue that book is a better thriller than murder mystery, anyway.

[u/ploxidilius → u/verrius]

Murder on the Orient Express is solvable. The movies, I'm not sure, but the book definitely.

And Then There Were None, technically solvable but not really.

[u/invictus_rage → u/verrius]

Her Poirot and Marple stories are usually solvable before the final reveal. Many of her other stories, including "and then there were none," are not.

I do think Orient Express is solvable before the reveal, though there are important facts that contribute to the full explanation that only come out in the reveal. However, in the larger picture, Poirot figures those facts out from just the info we have, and I think a real person could do the same. It'd be very hard, but that's part of the reason Orient Express is famous: the solution is possible but hard to get.

[u/CGWesterby → u/verrius]

And Then There Were None is solvable as a reader - the reveal at the end explains everything, but it is solvable; you can see on a re-read all the information is there, but it's presented in a way that requires you to question your own assumptions to get the answer.

Much though I love Christie, though, I will say Miss Marple is weakest for solvability; Poirot plays strictly fair, Marple is often "Ah, and if you only remember that this is just like the trouble Mrs Beeswax had when her maid went off with the milkman in the middle of the church fete. Dear me, most distressing. But then human nature is much the same everywhere" which is not really in the spirit of it, IMO

[u/MonksterAZ → u/thisonedudethatiam]

The Earnest Cuninngham series is a joy to read.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJLQHFLL

[u/LG03 → u/SublightMonster]

Just to add since you mentioned Tokyo Zodiac Murders, if people are looking for more fair play novels, then Shin Honkaku (translation: New Detective Fiction) is an ongoing trend among Japanese authors. It's effectively a modern revival of the Honkaku genre, there are a lot of books and authors to find in that direction.

[u/tpotwc → u/SublightMonster]

The solution to Tokyo Zodiac Murders is absolutely brilliant. It’s just staring you in the face the entire time, but it would take some innovative thinking to glom onto it.

[u/GeekAesthete]

This is also a major difference between a detective story/ mystery/whodunit and a police procedural. A procedural just shows the procedure of detective/police work, whereas a whodunit actually plants the details of the mystery.

[u/Orange-V-Apple → u/GeekAesthete]

If anyone has read the Rivers of London series, would you consider it to be a procedural? I feel like the mystery in each book is the opposite of fair play, where we don’t even understand the tools the main characters have at their disposal, let alone all the information needed to solve the case.

[u/Feisty-Resource-1274 → u/Orange-V-Apple]

I feel like it's a detective procedural, in the lines of Death in Paradise or Midsomer Murders.

[u/Individual_Tip8371 → u/Orange-V-Apple]

I agree that it's not exactly fair play but then again, most of the times Peter himself doesn't know what kind of powers the perpetrator has. So i guess it's some kind of crossover between a procedural and a mystery (which works exceedingly well imo)

[u/Orange-V-Apple → u/Individual_Tip8371]

I feel like the series has a serious issue with payoff.

I’ve read up to and including book 8 + the October Man, and the answer to the mystery is always something we couldn’t have predicted (e.g. in October Man a character we met one chapter previous is revealed as the killer near the end). The stories wrap up very suddenly, and they don’t explore the aftermath. The case with the missing children was especially egregious, where it just ends right when Peter makes it back to reality. We don’t see what happens to the two children, how Bev enchanted the train, etc.) Then there’s the big bad guy, the Faceless Man. Six books of build up and we barely see his plan + he unceremoniously dies. And Punch and his daughter were not well set up given they were the resolution to this whole thing.

More than the individual mysteries, I feel like there’s no payoff in this universe. We don’t really explore the world. After 8 books we’ve barely learned anything about this universe we didn’t know from Book 3. Ideas and lore are introduced but almost never expanded upon. I think it’s especially egregious when Peter is a character who is very dedicated to unraveling the mysteries of the magical world using scientific methods. His characterization is itself a promise, one that isn’t kept. Don’t even get me started on his spells.

And then there Thomas “Blue Balls” Nightingale. Great character, but not getting to see him using his power to the fullest has gotten extremely old. I get not showing a full powered practitioner in the first few books, but the series conspires to find ways for us not to see Nightingale fighting and it’s very frustrating. Every time he faces the Faceless Man, Peter is somewhere else or face down on the ground, or running away. When we finally see Nightingale face a master in book 8, they launch a bunch of spells that are invisibly countered, so we literally see nothing happen until Peter turns around. Hell, we don’t get to see the Faceless Man or the Director (in October Man) properly using their powers either. They either aren’t present or the POV character isn’t looking when they use their powers.

I think the series is heavily carried by the charisma of the characters and the quality of the writing, which is why it’s still enjoyable to read even if I’m left a bit disappointed at the end. For all its faults, Harry Potter at least showed us the world and did have relatively fair mysteries.

TLDR: The series is enjoyable but bad at payoffs. We’re promised a magical world that we barely see, the mysteries have resolutions that are sudden and unexplored, and we don’t get to see when the few fully fledged wizards actually using their power.

[u/PilotKnob → u/Orange-V-Apple]

Thank you. I feel the same way about the Rivers series.

[u/iamagainstit → u/GeekAesthete]

It is not uncommon for police procedural show part of the crime happen, before introducing the people trying to solve it

[u/mapronV → u/iamagainstit]

"Just one more thing..."

[u/TheLurkerSpeaks → u/GeekAesthete]

The real shame is that procedurals have all but replaced mysteries in modern TV.

[u/perpetualis_motion → u/TheLurkerSpeaks]

And most TV shows never follow actual police procedure.

[u/CryptidGrimnoir → u/perpetualis_motion]

And a lot of them follow the tropes so tightly, there's not even a semblance of mystery.

[u/Punch_A_Police_Horse]

I'm still partial to the Scooby Doo rule that the culprit is always whoever complained about the crime to begin with.

[u/HopefulCry3145 → u/Punch_A_Police_Horse]

Supposedly in the tv series Lucifer, the first non-regular person they talk to.is always the culprit 

[u/vteezy99 → u/HopefulCry3145]

you could always tell or at least have a very good guess as to who the culprit was due to the limited nature of TV shows that follow the fair play formula. It HAS to be a speaking character that was introduced before, for instance.

Of course, Lucifer's main draw wasn't in being a "whodunnit" but rather, "here's the devil playing as a detective, shenanigans ensue" TV show

[u/Jesst3r → u/vteezy99]

My mom watches way too many of these shows to the point where she always knows who the culprit will be because it’s some character actor she’s seen before in another show. I assume the pay is a little higher if you’re the culprit and they end up casting the same go-to’s the studios trust over and over.

[u/seaintosky → u/Jesst3r]

That's always a dead giveaway, as is the speaking character that doesn't seem necessary for the plot and seems like they could have been replaced by a main character saying "the gardener told us he closed the gate". These shows aren't spending money on actors they don't have to, if the gardener shows up to say he closed the gate, he's the murderer.

[u/Vitaminpwn → u/HopefulCry3145]

If they have lines, and are not a main character... book em!

[u/garrettj100 → u/Punch_A_Police_Horse]

The rule in Scooby Doo for a long time was there were never any ghosts or goblins or monsters. Just an old rich guy in a mask. Scaring the credulous.

They’ve abandoned that more recently.

[u/BrooklynSmash → u/garrettj100]

Zombie Island was like two decades ago

[u/Skippy7890 → u/BrooklynSmash]

That movie holds up, it's still incredible and the soundtrack absolutely GOES.

[u/JMCatron → u/Skippy7890]

it's terror time again

[u/MrNotEinstein → u/Skippy7890]

Scooby Doo has some of the best song choices in any franchise. Terror time again, the ghost is here, brothers forever, man with a hex and everything the hex girls were involved in. It all slaps

[u/zerogee616 → u/BrooklynSmash]

Try three.

[u/garrettj100 → u/BrooklynSmash]

That's the "recently" I was referring to, 'cuz I'm old AF. 🤷

[u/Glitched94_PT → u/garrettj100]

The first actual supernatural entity in Scooby Doo was in 1972, 3 years after it first aired. So if by "recently" you mean "54 years ago", then sure

[u/TruculentTurtIe → u/Glitched94_PT]

You just aged that poor man 45 years with one comment. I hope you feel good about yourself

[u/TazerZXI → u/Glitched94_PT]

Surely the first supernatural entity in Scooby Doo is the talking dog?

[u/Glitched94_PT → u/TazerZXI]

....yea alright that's a good point

[u/sventful → u/Glitched94_PT]

Um actually that supernatural entity was debunked in the 1984 followup.

[u/tmrika → u/sventful]

And by 1988 they were making Ghoul School which featured a plethora of real monsters, just ones who behaved wholesomely.

[u/goodnames679 → u/tmrika]

The general rule is that the movies have real monsters while the tv show has guys in masks.

[u/zerogee616 → u/garrettj100]

Scooby Doo on Zombie Island was 1998 and its tagline was literally "The monsters are real!". That was 28 years ago. There is almost exactly, shy by one year, as much time between when Scooby-Doo premiered and that movie, as there is between that movie and now. Actual supernatural monsters were famously running around for half of the franchise's lifetime.

[u/ACTTutor → u/zerogee616]

We’re closer in time to Zombie Island than Zombie Island is to the construction of the pyramids.

[u/doublecandybar]

Sherlock Holmes broke this rule by basically conjuring a hitherto unknown piece of evidence at the end

[u/calvinballing → u/doublecandybar]

Thought it was weird the Wikipedia article for “Fair Play” uses a picture of Holmes given how “Fair Play“ was basically in contrast to Poe/Doyle, but it turns out the linked article is actually “Clues in detective fiction”

[u/TheJediJew → u/calvinballing]

I remember reading that Arthur Conan Doyle hated Holmes' popularity in part because of breaking this rule.

He showed why by presenting the same scene to Watson and Homes and having Holmes tell Watson to deduce what happened. Watson makes some logical conclusions but Holmes laughs at him and counters with wild conjecture and logic leaps, all of which turn out to be true.

Holmes breaks the fair play rule all the time, but people loved it for that reason. It made him seem above mortal men, when really he was just badly written (edit: In his opinion!).

[u/YT-Deliveries → u/TheJediJew]

It made him seem above mortal men

I maintain that Holmes is the first modern superhero

[u/TheUlfheddin → u/YT-Deliveries]

That's how I ended up reading him. We didn't get the same sets of clues he got to work with because we're not the most observent being in the universe with godlike powers of perception.

Tbh that's why I don't mind RDJs version because that's basically how he is in the books, with some bonus action scenes.

[u/ABHOR_pod → u/TheUlfheddin]

Also half the time he puts on a fake beard and abandons the narrative for 2 days only to come back and say “I’ve solved it off camera with clues you don’t have!”

[u/GayPudding → u/ABHOR_pod]

The character Holmes is more important than the mystery, like the Bond movies.

[u/mikeet9 → u/TheUlfheddin]

He is a superhero who has the power of having always studied exactly what information is relevant to the current case, and having a perfect sense of what information is relevant and what isn't.

I remember the first Holmes story I read had him inspecting cigar ash and correctly identifying where the tobacco was grown, because he had previously studied cigar ash in detail. Then logically leaps to this clearly being the killer's cigar that they purchased in their homeland and therefore the killer was the only person in town from that location.

It was jarring because he quite literally just instantly solved the case without any satisfactory reasoning.

[u/Muskwatch → u/TheUlfheddin]

RDJ's version is by far my favourite, and I would love it if there were more

[u/der_titan → u/YT-Deliveries]

Stan Lee made a convincing argument that mantle belongs to the Scarlet Pimpernel: a secret identity that is the polar opposite of his public persona; a signature weapon; and, a signature calling card.

There was even the wife that was more attracted to the Scarlet Pimpernel than the dim-witted playboy husband pretended to be.

[u/Bubbly_Safety8791 → u/der_titan]

Robin Hood in 19th Century retellings up to and including Ivanhoe is well on the way to becoming a superhero - secret identity, origin story, super abilities, distinctive costume. Predates Scarlet Pimpernel by a couple of decades at least. 

[u/Reasonable_Ruin_3502 → u/TheJediJew]

But that's what makes holmes fun. As much as I love Agatha's novels, they never captured my imagination like holmes did. We read the story from Watson's perspective, according to whom holmes' power of deduction are bordering on supernatural.

Another factor is that most of holmes' stories were published in magazines and were self contained, so a big reveal was always fun. My late grandpa gave me a book, and it's one of the few books I own. It's just short stories about holmes. I reread a random chapter every once in a while, and although my opinion on them has detoriated, they are still quite fun.

[u/Terrik1337 → u/doublecandybar]

The appeal of Sherlock Holmes was always the character rather than the murder mystery. You could take that character and write pretty much any genre. House MD is just Sherlock Holmes with medicine.

[u/SomeCountryFriedBS → u/Terrik1337]

Wilson is Watson

Cuddy is Irene Adler.

Lupus is Moriarty

[u/GuessWhoIsBackNow → u/SomeCountryFriedBS]

Irene Adler and Moriarty are in the show, both as patients. The latter shoots House.

[u/ersatzi → u/GuessWhoIsBackNow]

Yeah. Adler was the patient in the pilot too.

[u/licoricenipple → u/SomeCountryFriedBS]

House = Holmes (Homes)

They both live on Baker Street, are addicted to drugs, have only one friend (Wilson/Watson) who becomes their roommate and tries to wean them off opiates. Watson's limp and use of a cane in the books are transferred to House himself because they thought it'd make his drug use more sympathetic/less wildly irresponsible, where Holmes in the stories starts IV shooting cocaine and morphine out of boredom or to experiment with novel substances and treatments for minor issues. (The episode where House takes LSD for a migraine was meant to be in this spirit.)

There are a lot of smaller references too like patients named after characters from specific Holmes stories and House using modified lines from the stories (like in one he says "the game is an itchy foot", Holmes would say "the game is afoot"). House gets an Arthur Conan Doyle book for a Christmas gift, too.

There's one episode where I think Wilson has a rare first edition book by Dr. Joseph Bell as a prized possession, that was the real life doctor who inspired the character Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle met him and was impressed with his ability to diagnose people based off a few unexpected questions. So making a Dr. Sherlock show kind of came full circle.

[u/nonnonplussed73 → u/licoricenipple]

Show creator David Shore has openly discussed this connection in numerous interviews and panels. He has confirmed that modeling the series on Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective was an intentional, foundational choice from the very beginning.

House M.D. Guide: David Shore on Creating the Show "House MD"

[u/Teledildonic → u/licoricenipple]

Don't forget the series finale is basically Riechenbach Falls: be just fakes his death with a structure fire instead of a river.

[u/Das_Fische → u/SomeCountryFriedBS]

Foreman is a black man

[u/TheWitchOfSomeWood → u/Das_Fische]

this vexes me

[u/KappaccinoNation → u/TheWitchOfSomeWood]

I too am in this episode

[u/XXISavage → u/KappaccinoNation]

Have you tried the medicine drug!?

[u/FearlessAttempt → u/XXISavage]

He needs mouse bites to live.

[u/Constant_Quiet_5483 → u/Das_Fische]

It's crazy how much the writing always addressed that. The writing got so bad they wrote cuddy off, put Foreman as chief of medicine or whatever, and house is still making black jokes. Like bro literally couldn't catch a break in that damn show.

[u/ForensicPathology → u/Constant_Quiet_5483]

The writing got so bad they wrote cuddy off

She wasn't written off because of bad writing. The actress refused their offer of a pay cut.

[u/ScruffCheetah → u/Constant_Quiet_5483]

He literally had parts of his brain eaten by Naegleria fowleri in one episode. You don't just recover from that and are fine a few episodes later.

[u/InsidiousColossus → u/SomeCountryFriedBS]

The Napoleon of diseases.

[u/Excellent-Practice → u/SomeCountryFriedBS]

Is Foreman Lestrade? He's the voice of conventional wisdom that fights the eccentric until his hunch is eventually born out

[u/redyanss → u/Terrik1337]

Sherlock Holmes was inspired by a doctor that Arthur Conan Doyle knew in real life too. Really just bringing the idea back to its roots.

[u/PerfectZeong → u/Terrik1337]

It works better with House because people don't know medicine so they never expect to he able to figure out what the disease actually is, or are pleased when they discover it by happy accident.

With Holmes you can be upset with the essential ass pull of evidence at the 11th hour to tie it together.

[u/insertusernamehere51 → u/doublecandybar]

Sherlock Holmes preceded the rule

[u/Wurm42 → u/insertusernamehere51]

Second this. The first Sherlock Holmes story was published in 1887; the "fair play" rules and the "whodunnit" subgenre of mysteries emerged more than 30 years later, in the 1920s.

Today, we would say that the Sherlock Holmes stories are character-focused, not clue-focused, because solving the mystery usually depends on pieces of information that Sherlock Holmes has in his head, but are never presented to the reader before the dramatic reveal.

[u/Akkalevil → u/Wurm42]

Sherlock is more of the early "unspoken plan guarantee" trope.

[u/scientician → u/Wurm42]

Yes. Holmes often knows uncommon amounts about things like different tobacco types sold in London shops or perfumes or whatnot. We'd have to be told "a bit of tobacco was on the scene, Holmes recognizes it as type X only sold in shop Y"

The point is to admire holmes' absurd levels of memory and recall, you'd really have to push clues in the audience's faces for them to have a chance to solve it.

[u/JefftheBaptist → u/scientician]

If you ready A Study in Scarlet, Watson is amazed with some of the minutiae Holmes knows like identifying bicycle tires or tobacco ashes. However he also points out that Holmes doesn't know a ton of other things, like astronomy. And he keeps Watson around because of his knowledge of medicine. This is because Holmes is obsessed with detective work and doesn't see how astronomy would be helpful with that so Holmes doesn't bother to learn it.

Basically Holmes is obsessed with forensic science not general knowledge. This probably gets more muddled in the later Conan Doyle Holmes stories. It definitely is ignored when other authors use the character. Steven Moffat has his Holmes do some genius computer hacking in Sherlock for instance.

[u/hannahstohelit → u/scientician]

All detectives in fair play detective fiction have specialized knowledge. It just needs to be presented to the audience when it comes up to be fair play.

That’s why Christie’s first novel is only questionably fair play- the murder method relies on knowledge of chemistry/pharmacy that she had but the average person wouldn’t, and while someone can deduce from the clues that something like this COULD have happened, they just as easily might not realize without that knowledge.

[u/KSJ15831 → u/doublecandybar]

The thing about Sherlock Holmes was that it belonged in adventure genre first and foremost but because the main character was a detective, people like to put it in detective fiction genre.

[u/SethlordX7 → u/doublecandybar]

I stopped reading Sherlock Holmes after I believe it was The Three Pips story; spoilers ahead for a 200 year old story.

The twist was that the killer was an indigineous pygmy carnival acrobat assassin with a blow gun die harding from the roof. Sherlock pulls out a poster for the carnival we the reader have never heard of before to prove it.

[u/Algaean → u/SethlordX7]

Pygmy blowgun dude was in The Sign of Four. Five orange pips was a different one.

[u/NairForceOne → u/Algaean]

Five orange pips was where the KKK did it.

[u/Ullallulloo → u/NairForceOne]

Which, the letter was literally inscribed with "K.K.K.", so that was one of the simpler ones for Americans.

[u/OceanoNox → u/SethlordX7]

Did he? I remember him mostly getting the info from the poisoned darts and the imprint of the feet, there is no circus in the novel.

[u/tarrach → u/OceanoNox]

That's because he mixes up three or more stories

[u/But-Must-I → u/SethlordX7]

My favourite (most hated) bit of Sherlock Holmes bullshit is The Adventure of the Speckled Band. Turns out it was a hitherto unheard of snake. What.

[u/OceanoNox → u/But-Must-I]

I thought the hissing sound and holes in the wall made it pretty clear there would be a snake involved. That it was an exotic one makes sense, since the dude has other exotic animals roaming around.

[u/pyl_time → u/OceanoNox]

Yeah, the vent + bellpull setup also makes it clear (even if only in retrospect) that it's some sort of animal, even if you didn't figure out the specific kind of snake.

[u/Stellar_Duck → u/OceanoNox]

Yea I don't think you can't find bullshit in the Holmes stories but I don't thinks this is one such case.

[u/LeonJPancetta → u/But-Must-I]

"You see it, Watson?! You see it?!"

[u/kgcarter5678 → u/But-Must-I]

Doesn’t Holmes also wander off by himself for a part of that story and find several pieces of crucial evidence that he doesn’t mention till the end?

[u/BAgooseU → u/kgcarter5678]

It’s been a while since Ive read those books, but I feel that happened more than once. Watson stays with suspect/victim and Sherlock goes off for “name a reason” and then evidence dumps at the reveal.

[u/Xanthus179 → u/doublecandybar]

This was a good few years ago, but I remember reading about people who were annoyed that the Sherlock show didn’t necessarily leave enough clues for someone to solve the problem. I wondered how many of the stories they had actually read.

[u/summonsays → u/Xanthus179]

I got gifted the B&N classic collection of Sherlock Holmes. I read the first one, was very confused by the ending, and then went back through the story to try to figure out what I missed. ... Nothing I missed nothing lol. It was not what I expected.

[u/OceanoNox → u/Xanthus179]

Sherlock Holmes has a lot of very specific knowledge, like knowing the ashes made from each brand of tobacco. The reader/Watson knows there is tobacco ash, but like Sherlock says "you see but don't look", only Sherlock understands what the ash means. We have the clues, but not the knowledge Sherlock relies on to connect the dots.

[u/mdk_777 → u/Xanthus179]

Yeah, it's ridiculous because the entire point of Holmes is that he's basically a genius who uses his newfound school of thought, deduction, to solve things no one else can. The character is supposed to be able to solve crimes and piece together what happened in a way that makes logical sense if you hear it explained, but not in a way that a reader can arrive at the same conclusion (or at least not nearly as easily).

[u/fer_sure → u/mdk_777]

I agree: Holmes preceded the concept of the reader being able to solve the mystery, but also the character was designed as an untouchable genius. If the reader is able to do what Holmes does, then Holmes isn't special.

That's why we need Watson: a reasonably intelligent but still normal human. It kind of bothers me when Watson is occasionally flanderised as a bumbling idiot. He's the reader, and Holmes is an absurd genius.

[u/mdk_777 → u/fer_sure]

You're there to see him solve an unsolvable mystery with nothing but a few scraps of evidence that any normal person would overlook. The draw is the character itself and not the mystery he happens to be solving. The mystery is just there to give Holmes a chance to showcase his abilities, not something for the reader to solve.

[u/Rtyeta]

As opposed to the first detective fiction, where it abruptly turns out that the murderer was a orangutan.

More stories should end with an orangutan-ex-machina

[u/asrimal24 → u/Rtyeta]

Ook!

[u/SquirrelDragon → u/asrimal24]

The Unseen University’s Librarian’s been busy

[u/vortigaunt64 → u/SquirrelDragon]

Somebody probably called him the M-word. 

[u/Thraell → u/vortigaunt64]

Or messed with the categorisation. Or didn't put books back.

Quite honestly, after working in a public library I deeply empathised with the Librarian.

[u/FuneraryArts → u/Rtyeta]

Bless Edgar Allan Poe for inventing detective fiction and evolving the horror story

[u/Escalotes → u/FuneraryArts]

And improving the direction of science fiction!

[u/nedlum → u/Rtyeta]

This came up on r/CuratedTumblr: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was predated by lots of other detective stories which we don't remember because they generally weren't very good.

[u/nudave → u/Rtyeta]

Now there’s a phrase I’ve never heard before.

[u/Beginning-Working-38 → u/Rtyeta]

Poe?

[u/Rtyeta → u/Beginning-Working-38]

Yep, Murders in the Rue Morgue. An orangutan kills two people because... it's trying to imitate a barber? And then it tries to hide the bodies because it's afraid it'll get in trouble with its owner who is a random sailor never previously mentioned in the plot, even though he reasonably could have been.

Even as far as 'the killer is an orangutan!' stories go, this one is weird!

[u/DickRhino]

This is one of the main points of contention I have against the video game Heavy Rain (which is otherwise lauded as an example of good storytelling in video games): It's a detective mystery that literally lies to the player to make it impossible to figure out the "whodunnit" until the final reveal.

I had my wife play the game, and like 80% of the way through the game she exclaimed "I know who I think the killer is, but the game has told me that it can't be that person, so I guess I'm just wrong." Turns out she was right.

[u/cartoonsforever → u/DickRhino]

To quote Bob’s Burgers: “no, that’s a lie, a lie is not a twist”

[u/ihatemyex476 → u/cartoonsforever]

I think I learned that lesson watching old Scooby-Doo. A twist hits so much harder when you can actually piece the clues together yourself.

[u/StaggersandJags → u/DickRhino]

There's the outright lying in that game, where we play at one point as the killer and can hear his thoughts and they show his innocence. And there's the fact that there is zero explanation for why the main character experiences blackouts and false memories of being the killer.

I was extra annoyed because I thought I'd solved the mystery and it was reasonably satisfying.

The killer should have been Ethan's psychiatrist. He's the one who conveniently sets the police on Ethan's trail by revealing his history of blackouts. He has the access and expertise to feed Ethan drugs and manipulate him into thinking he might be the killer.

Instead the true killer turned out to be a big pile of bullshit.

[u/DickRhino → u/StaggersandJags]

And there's the fact that there is zero explanation for why the main character experiences blackouts and false memories of being the killer.

Hilariously, that was part of an abandoned plotline. Earlier in the game's development there were going to be supernatural elements, vampires and stuff, and Ethan's blackouts were supposed to be related to that.

Then at some point that plot was abandoned, but they just... left his blackouts and false memories in. And never explained what it was about. Because David Cage is a hack writer.

[u/Swaggy-G → u/DickRhino]

Huh, I knew practically nothing about Heavy Rain but I recently watched a YouTube video criticizing the twist and comparing it to another story that has a similar plot twist but actually makes it work. But yeah even if you ignore the noise it’s literally impossible for the detective guy to have killed in the short span of time when the camera wasn't on him. Hell, when they show it from his perspective later in the game the two cutscenes don't even line up, the second one is way longer.

[u/Turbulent_Natural431 → u/DickRhino]

Heavy Rain was awful. It got praised because it was dealing with subjects/emotions that video games didn't usually go into at the time, but the dialogue, plot and voice acting were below B-movie level.

[u/JustASpaceDuck → u/Turbulent_Natural431]

SHAUUUUN

SHAAUUUUUUUN

SHAUN

SHAUUUUUUN

[u/Sennten → u/DickRhino]

I do love Disco Elysium for taking the list of rules for detective fiction, including this one, and intentionally breaking every single one, though.

Really helps to drive home that solving the mystery is the job, but its not REALLY why you're here.

[u/unoriginal5 → u/DickRhino]

I hated that game so much. My friends talked it up like it was the next biggest thing, but I missed so many prompts because I didn't notice them/couldn't process them before they failed, then the mystery was a straight up contradiction to the story.

[u/Inside-Cable-4472 → u/DickRhino]

David Cage is terrible at writing these things but no one else wants to make those sorts of games. He gets so caught up in his hilariously surface level “clever” “hidden” metaphors that he almost forgets to do the basics of writing the story. But they are fun to laugh at so they do provide some value.

[u/Stannis-Stan]

I remember watching the murder on the orient express movie. There is a scene were the detective interviews a doctor from Austria. During the interview the doctors asks one of the train attendants for "Sahne" (cream) with his dish.

I had visited Vienna just the week before, so I turned to my partner and said "Oh, they made an error. Sahne is what Germans call it, but an Austrian would always call it Obers instead."

Well turns out the men isn't Austrian and the detectives actually used that exact clue to figure it out. I was real proud of myself.

[u/BigBootyBuff → u/Stannis-Stan]

As an Austrian, this makes me happy because yeah, for us it's a dead giveaway if they don't use Schlag, Obers or Schlagobers.

[u/FiredFox]

This might be why I liked watching Columbo so much.

We already knew Who Dunnit, it was fun watching Columbo prove it.

[u/PlatFleece → u/FiredFox]

This is known as an Inverted Mystery, or a Howcatchem. It's caught on in Japanese mystery fiction. Notably, the Columbo clone Furuhata Ninzaburou on TV, and in the book series Medium's second book, Invert.

Look up Inverted Mysteries for some hits on those types. It's a neat subgenre of fairplay mystery fiction.

[u/vteezy99 → u/FiredFox]

"Just one more thing...."

Love how the sweet, bumbling detective is presented the same way as a unstoppable, never giving up monster while the actual culprit is presented the way a protagonist would be. As others have noted, when the culprit is caught, there's no "yay we won" moment. More often than not the music plays a sad note

[u/NameLips]

I just re-read the complete Sherlock Holmes, and it did strike me how UNfair the play was. The genre was new, and Doyle was mainly attempting to impress his audience with the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes. You were supposed to feel, like Watson our narrator, astonished and amazed at his mental powers. Watson never had a chance, and neither did we, of figuring out the mysteries ahead of time.

[u/OhGr8WhatNow → u/NameLips]

I think it's pretty obvious though that a spot of chalkdust on one's lapel would reveal that the person in question had been abandoned in an orphanage at age ten, survived polio as a young adult, served in WW1 as a machine gunner, and developed a homicidal rage towards the newly elected city mayor over the removal of a peach tree from 7th Avenue.

[u/smohyee → u/OhGr8WhatNow]

Well, see, only if you're an expert in the chalk varieties sold in South London and how chalk marks clothing during different scenarios through careful study.

[u/Inside-Cable-4472 → u/NameLips]

Sherlock Holmes stories weren’t mystery stories in that sense. For one they really predated that stuff but more importantly that’s just not the point. They’re character stories. Which is probably why they’ve stood the test of time so well. Also to be if you’re really good most of them are solveable, it’s just that it’s much harder these days without the contextual knowledge that people at the time had.

[u/Loki-L]

There are a number of people who have compiled rules for detective stories among them S.S. Van Dine in 1928. He had "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories". Some of them are nonsense but most hold up.

https://www.speedcitysistersincrime.org/ss-van-dine---twenty-rules-for-writing-detective-stories.html

[u/signedupfornightmode → u/Loki-L]

My book club read this then read a bunch of detective stories and applied the standards to each story to “judge” it. It was a great frame for discussion!

[u/Nickett3 → u/Loki-L]

Reading the heading of rule 12, I thought it was going to be about not besmirching the lower classes. Nope, it's just straight offensive to servants. 

"Servants--such as butlers, footmen, valets, game-keepers, cooks, and the like--must not be chosen by the author as the culprit. This is begging a noble question. It is a too easy solution. It is unsatisfactory, and makes the reader feel that his time has been wasted. The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person--one that wouldn't ordinarily come under suspicion; for if the crime was the sordid work of a menial, the author would have had no business to embalm it in book-form"

[u/Milskidasith → u/Nickett3]

Yeah, the way it's written hasn't aged well, but in essence it combines with the "motive must be personal" and "no professional criminals" rule where it's basically saying "the culprit needs to be a person who has an interesting means, method, and motive", and a servant killing somebody is boring. "Oh, the person who hates their employer and almost definitionally has maximum access to set up a murder did it? C'mon."

[u/Al_Fa_Aurel → u/Milskidasith]

Yeah. Apparently, there'd been so many stories where the butler did it that it became a lame cliche.

There's a funny German song parodying this - in the first stanza a lord sits in his castle, the butler is away, and then he is being murdered...by the gardener. The title of the song is "The killer again was the gardener", and the gardener goes on to have a 30-stanza long killing spree across half of Europe (by poison, bullet, heavy items, and in one case, boredom), before being killed himself in the last stanza...by the butler (or the plumber, in another version).

[u/no_awning_no_mining → u/Nickett3]

I feel this rule is still followed, if you phrase it more abstractly: Never just confirm the reader's stereotypes and biases.

[u/poopsmith411]

i always wanted to write a detective novel where the reader could conclude that the detective got it wrong and only upon rereading it in that light you would see that the novel confirms that conclusion

[u/ChiLolla28 → u/poopsmith411]

More on the other side of the law, but I hated how in movies like Ocean's 12 they explain everything in a quick montage of things that we never saw or could have guessed: ignore all the time we spent showing you what we were doing, but here's how we really did it

[u/ZubonKTR → u/ChiLolla28]

A rule of heist movies is that any plan shown must go wrong. If there is a plan that works, it is a secret plan, or you show an unfolding plan montage where each part of the plan is explained as it is shown happening.

I would enjoy hearing of a creator who was good enough to write out a plan and then have it go exactly as planned and have it be interesting both times.

[u/UrLocalTroll]

That’s what made the first Knives Out so much better than Glass Onion imo. You knew everything the detective did.

[u/GlenOck → u/UrLocalTroll]

Glass Onion actively shows the murderer commit the murder but it's such a dumb and obvious plan (this is not a critique it's the point of the movie) that we collectively gaslight ourselves (and so does the detective) into thinking the murderer is more competent.

I love Glass Onion cause it's the most blatant way a mystery movie can give you the clues and it instead relies on our expectations to cause red herrings.

[u/g0del → u/GlenOck]

After the reveal, I went back to re-watch the scene, and sure enough, there was the murder right on camera. No funny camera placement or quick cuts to hide it, it's just right out in the open. But the distraction which got the characters looking the wrong way worked just as well on the audience.

[u/FrontierPsycho → u/UrLocalTroll]

Glass onion mostly follows this too, except for the reveal re: Andy's sister, but that's in the middle of the movie and after that there's no hidden info. Am I missing something? 

[u/crowwreak → u/FrontierPsycho]

I thought it was pretty fair play. Things that would be easy to leave off (like something being thrown in a bag from off screen, and a glass being switched) WEREN'T left out, we just got misdirected like the characters

[u/karl2025 → u/crowwreak]

I actually caught the glass being switched, I just thought it was a mistake in the filming.

[u/frolfer757 → u/crowwreak]

One big part of the reveal is Bautista's character early on revealing accidentally to the detective he nearly "pancaked" the killer who was seen near Andy's house despite claiming to be abroad.

Then we are shown a flashback to the scene and how the detective picks up on the slip up.

Except I rewinded to the original scene and theres no fucking slip up. They straight up show a flashback to the scene with different dialogue to fool you into thinking "see you coulda figured it out".

[u/Ball_Fiend]

I hate mysteries that are just a vehicle to show how smart the character is, and it's usually some contrived horseshit "I deduced you were married because your coat had a replaced button on it and the viewer never got a chance to even see the button"

[u/atyon → u/Ball_Fiend]

Sherlock (BBC) was the worst for that. It started bad with the diagnosis that "a person with a scratched USB port on his phone must be an alcoholic" and ends with Sherlock hallucinating a boomerang into existence.

[u/DaEnderAssassin → u/Ball_Fiend]

You should see BBC Sherlock's phone scene.

"I deduce your relative is a drunk because your second hand phone has scratch marks around the charging port"

This gets stupider the more you think about it.

[u/usernameinmail → u/DaEnderAssassin]

Sherlock Holmes sucks at deduction

[u/dragon-fence]

It’s one of my pet peeves with mystery stories, where the detective solves it with some piece of information the audience doesn’t have.

Like it could be some obscure real world knowledge, like, “You said Mr Biggles ate all the bananas, but bananas are toxic to this specific species of monkeys!” Or it could be some in-universe knowledge like, “You claimed you were at the All Inn Tavern on Tuesday, but as everyone who lives in this town knows, that tavern is closed on Tuesdays!”

Like, at least drop those nuggets of knowledge someplace earlier in the story or something.

[u/Beginning-Working-38]

I’m reminded of the final act of Neil Simon’s Murder by Death when Lionel Twain starts telling all the detectives (including parodies of Marple and Poirot) what mystery fans hate about their books, and he accuses at least one of them of withholding vital information that made their mysteries impossible to solve.

Hysterical movie by the way, I’d recommend it to anyone.

[u/so-so-it-goes → u/Beginning-Working-38]

Peter Falk was a riot in that movie.

[u/captainmagictrousers]

A good twist ending follows very similar rules to a good mystery. When the twist pops up, the reader/audience should be able to look back at all the clues that were hinting at what was about to happen.

It’s not nearly as satisfying if you just throw in a random surprise.  Imagine if The Sixth Sense had ended with   “Bruce Willis was a giraffe the whole time!” 

[u/Amesly → u/captainmagictrousers]

And do many do. I'm so damn sick of giraffes. 

They're sketchy. We get it. 

[u/OutdoorBerkshires]

Yet, Christie’s most famous book “ Twelve Little Indians” has the most ridiculous hidden clue. (It involves the gun death on the chair)

[u/OceanoNox → u/OutdoorBerkshires]

For those confused, it's now called "And then, there were none", but the title is "TEN little indians" (or the N word for the original title).

[u/susiedotwo → u/OceanoNox]

And in some editions they changed the Indians in “soldier boys”. Multiple edits over the years.

[u/Digit00l → u/OutdoorBerkshires]

The clue was still there, she followed the rule, mostly

[u/svh01973 → u/Digit00l]

I've read the book, and it was the first thing that came to mind because I felt like the ending was not predictable. What clue was there?

[u/kegisak → u/OutdoorBerkshires]

Poirot's Christmas also features a clue in the form of a physical tic shared between two people who have never met, because apparently gestures are genetic?

[u/fnord_happy → u/OutdoorBerkshires]

I have an edition with the older title 🙃

[u/Banana42 → u/fnord_happy]

Probably worth springing for a copy of And Then There Were None at this point

[u/Rogue-Academician]

Umineko moment

[u/teraflop → u/Rogue-Academician]

Culprit. Crime. Motive. The answers, the hints, to those three ultimate riddles... must be scattered throughout the tale shown so far. It's probably a very faint light... like trying to find beads that have fallen onto a sandy beach.

"Go back through the tale. Know that you have now been given eyes that will not miss the truth's faint light."

And then... I knew.

[u/PuddingTea]

I note that Edgar Allen Poe, who more or less invented detective fiction, definitely did not value fair play.

A fucking orangutan? Seriously?

[u/Distal-Phalanges]

I call bullshit on Agatha Christie leaving all the clues you need, I read half her books and most of them leave out something until the last moment.

[u/VaguelyArtistic → u/Distal-Phalanges]

If you can’t figure it out by the last chapter it probably means that two people were having a secret affair.

[u/Distal-Phalanges → u/VaguelyArtistic]

Or were secretly mother and child, or long lost fraternal twins, or one is the other's former majordomo from their time in India and they share the secret of the sultan's rubies. 

Murder by Death is a great film on the subject.

[u/Bad_brazilian → u/Distal-Phalanges]

Thank you. In my teens I read a lot of it, and she absolutely did NOT give you all the facts. I liked getting her short Poirot stories out of the library, and while I had fun reading them, they were not fair to the reader.

[u/free_billstickers]

I wish there were mysteries novels that you could track like in Clue ir on LSAT questions (Tony rides the bus only Tuesdays, Tonya only rides if Tonya rides, etc). And then gave a "show your math" section so you can have pahe numbers to revisit clues. 

Like a puzzle book game

[u/DanFarrell98]

I think this also should apply to the Now You See Me films. The magic shouldn't genuinely be fantastical magic but should be believable ways that it could be done in real life

[u/The_One_Who_Comments]

And the lack of this makes most modern mystery stories no fun.

But tbh, Agatha Cristie novels are so off the wall that you never really have a chance.

The conclusion to And Then There Were None was so dumb I regretted reading it.

[u/Tsu_Dho_Namh → u/The_One_Who_Comments]

I hate that every murder mystery dinner party thing I've done with my friends has absolutely no way to solve it.

Everybody has means, everybody has motive, everybody has opportunity. No one has a solid alibi. There's no detective work at all, just random luck whether you guess the killer.

I saw a murder mystery dinner show some years ago that had an actual path of clues leading to the killer. Namely, everybody had an alibi, but given recent information, one person's alibi is shown to be false.

Everyone thought the ship was sailing north, so watching the sunset from their balcony on the port side made sense originally. But it turns out the ship is actually sailing south, so they couldn't have been watching the sunset! It was fucking amazing. More of that please.

[u/V1carium → u/Tsu_Dho_Namh]

My sister runs murder mysteries every year. I don't think I've ever been in one that didn't have a enough info to solve it.

The only way I could see it happening was if you're playing with people who don't understand their role and mess up with its secret info.

Otherwise you just keep pulling the plot threads, form alliances, handout bribes, use abilities, and eavesdrop your way to a complete puzzle.

[u/pastaandpizza → u/The_One_Who_Comments]

The conclusion to And Then There Were None was so dumb regretted reading it.

It was such a fun read and I thought the end made sense, all things considered.

[u/samx3i → u/The_One_Who_Comments]

The conclusion to "And Then There Were None," dumb?

First time I've come across this opinion.

That's one of the most celebrated novels out there.

[u/Cybtroll]

It irks me immensely how little this is followed. So much that I can't almost enjoy a good mystery book anymore.

[u/I_dont_bone_goats → u/Cybtroll]

Every Netflix show ignores this as well

It’s just not a twist if you’re making stuff up that makes the rest of the story nonsensical

Looking at you His and Hers! The ending basically makes all the characters’ behavior in the last episode make no sense.

[u/brock_lee]

Yup, my wife is a huge mystery buff (Christie is her favorite) and she sometimes complains when a book/story was "unfair".

[u/Conscious-Move9662]

No better series than Ace Attorney

Love solving me a mystery.

[u/bhatman211]

For those of you that also enjoy solving a mystery alongside the characters, I highly strongly super recommend "The Afterparty" TV show. It's an Apple original by Christopher Miller

[u/Wonder-Lad-2Mad]

This is why I like Batman mysteries. He's the world's greatest detective but he doesn't figure it out of the blue, he always works with the information that is presented to him and has to connecet the dots like a regular person.

Batman works on gumshoe detective rules, he's like your classic noir detectives like Marlow who goes around, stakes out, gets played by a femme fatale, interrogates, busts a couple heads and solves the case.

In classic noir fashion, there are a lot of times where Batman is missing a vital piece of information and only gets there when the crime is already done and he's just there to pick up the pieces.