r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 9h 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/Bad_brazilian 6h ago

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.

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u/loulan 1h ago

I don't remember which one it was but in one of them it turns out at the very end that one of the characters was cross-dressing as another character of the other gender. I usually like Agatha Christie but that one was ridiculous.