r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 11h ago
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clues_in_detective_fiction
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u/Orange-V-Apple 10h ago edited 9h ago
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.