the "fair play" mystery

[ratzo]

I was reading today about Mike Barr's Maze Agency (which sounds like a pretty cool comic) and the article mentioned how it was a "fair-play mystery," meaning that all the clues are there in the story for the reader to try and solve before the hero does. My question then is this: why would anyone write a mystery any other way?

[Donald M.]

I was reading today about Mike Barr's Maze Agency (which sounds like a pretty cool comic) and the article mentioned how it was a "fair-play mystery," meaning that all the clues are there in the story for the reader to try and solve before the hero does. My question then is this: why would anyone write a mystery any other way?

Inability/lack of talent to do so naturally?

[Bright-Raven]

Basically, the prevalent attitude is this:

You (the reader) are not supposed to be as smart as / smarter than the protagonist of the novel. Therefore, the writer must parlay elements into the story to try to fool you, so that the character can demonstrate their (and the author's) mental superiority.

Hey, you asked. Didn't say you were going to like the answer.

[BcAugust]

Though to be fair, a lot of "fair play" mysteries tend to require knowledge that may be unknown to most of their readers. I'm reminded of Agatha Christie, the near queen of fair play mysteries, that completely stumped me.... by including a reference to hundreds and thousands.

[Greg Hatcher]

Playing fair is HARD, no question. But when it's done well, it's a thing of beauty. As for why anyone would write a mystery any other way? Well, there you get into the age-old argument over whether or not you still call them mysteries or just 'crime fiction' or 'suspense.' (Which is, you know, really kind of a dumb argument. They're called 'mysteries' because that's what they're called, same as 'comics' are called 'comics' without necessarily being funny. As far as I'm concerned, it lets me know where they're shelved in the bookstore, so who cares.)

As for why anyone would write a whodunit without playing fair? I don't know... mostly I think it comes down to bad writing. Even the greats could have an off day. The Long Goodbye and The Maltese Falcon are brilliant novels that ALSO succeed as fair-play whodunits... but some of Hammett and Chandler's short fiction, viewed as whodunits, are pretty crappy.

I'd disagree with BR, though, about the protagonist being smarter. There are a lot of books like that, sure, starting with Sherlock Holmes and on up (incidentally, Doyle was NOT all that great at the fair-play whodunit, the Holmes stories are carried by the personality of Holmes.) If you want to see a GOOD example of this that still plays fair, I'd recommend Rex Stout's The Silent Speaker starring Nero Wolfe. That novel is a masterful piece of plotting and misdirection, yet it's all there for you and you come away from it thinking, okay, yeah, that guy WAS a genius. Plus it's funny.

But the BEST mysteries are the ones that have you and the protagonist solving the crime AT THE SAME TIME. Those are damn near impossible to write well but it can be done. In movies, think "Chinatown." But the best ones in print for my money are Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer novels. Those are intricately and beautifully written, to the point of being literature.... and they STILL WORK as mysteries, the hardest kind to write, the ones where you and the detective are neck-and-neck. I'd recommend The Chill as the best of these. Just a harrowing, emotionally violent book.... AND a magnificently plotted mystery that is exquisitely fair.

[Bright-Raven]

Greg:

I was just saying that many so called mystery writers tend to write in such fashion because they aren't skilled enough to write it "fair play". Holmes stories being one of them, and yep, those books suck as "fair play" and are carried by the character. And Stout's Nero Wolfe series is hit and miss in terms of consistently pulling off the style. Sometimes the character overpowers the mystery.

[MWGallaher]

My favorite author, Harry Stephen Keeler, wrote the exact opposite of "fair play" mysteries. In one notorious example, the guilty party is mentioned by name for the first time in the very last sentence of the book!

Trust me, mysteries you have no chance of figuring out can be far more fun to read.

[Shem the Penman]

I'm not so sure about calling Christie's mysteries "fair play" -- something like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the absolute antithesis of fair.

My favorite fair play mystery is Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game -- it's a book where, when she finally reveals the solution, you'll look back and wonder how you could possibly have missed it in the first place.

[BcAugust]

I'm not so sure about calling Christie's mysteries "fair play" -- something like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the absolute antithesis of fair.

My favorite fair play mystery is Ellen Raskin's The Westing Game -- it's a book where, when she finally reveals the solution, you'll look back and wonder how you could possibly have missed it in the first place.

Interesting. I've never found Christie unfair, unless it's something I don't know that stops me from noticing. The Westing Game I found frustrating, then again, I read it as a pre-teen and found the reveal... disappointing.

[ElectraAlan]

My idea of "fair play" is a mystery in which the killer, faced at the end of the book with an accusation and no real proof, doesn't bust out crying and confess. A good example would be "Busman's Honeymoon," which even takes the reader all the way through the trial of the murderer.

[The Drunkard Kid]

Fair Play mysteries are also somewhat unrealistic (though resolving mysteries as fast as they do in fiction does tend towards unrealism in a lot of cases). In an actual crime, clues are not so perfectly easy to deduce and they're solved (if they're solved at all) by doing in depth research into the victim's associates and the motives and means that they might have, which might have well hidden roots stretching back years. It'd be a rare writer who could put that entire process into a book and not have the audience chuck it away in self defense.

As for Holmes, I'd argue that the character and narrative method practically preclude fair play, seeing as how Holmes likes to show off and hold back (as well as constantly trying to test the deductive abilities of the people around him) and the story is told as a first person chronicle of what Watson experienced by being the one that Holmes enjoyed showing off to the most.

[Shellhead]

As a kid, I remember reading a collection of interesting short stories that were all "fair play" mysteries. Alfred Hitchcock's name and likeness were on the cover. The collection seemed to be aimed at kids, to challenge them to figure out the clues in each case, sort of like those old Encyclopedia Brown stories.

[Matthew E]

I'm not so sure about calling Christie's mysteries "fair play" -- something like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the absolute antithesis of fair.

No, no; it is fair. It's absolutely fair. I don't want to say too much in case people haven't read it, but what about the part where we find out that the guy was concealing the other guy's son? That told us right there that we shouldn't trust the guy completely.

[T Hedge Coke]

I was reading today about Mike Barr's Maze Agency (which sounds like a pretty cool comic) and the article mentioned how it was a "fair-play mystery," meaning that all the clues are there in the story for the reader to try and solve before the hero does. My question then is this: why would anyone write a mystery any other way?

Because not all stories that involve a mystery are, in fact, a guessing game for the reader. Not all mysteries are detective stories and not all detective stories are games for the reader or whodunnits (or howdunnits), just as not all (good/competent) humorous stories are shaggy dog stories and not all (good/competent) science fiction is sound in mathematics or physics.

Even Chandler has said that the solution to the mystery must make sense after it is revealed, not that it need be guessable/deducible from clues before the reveal, and indeed, a fair number of his stories work that way, from shorts to the unanswered mystery/mysteries in The Long Goodbye.

Many fine mysteries, from Morrison/Muth's Mystery Play to William Burroughs' Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded), are not entirely deducible from "clues." Most pre-Poe mystery is, of course, entirely without the whodunnit expectation. Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet and some of Vladimir Nabokov's later "mystery" fiction is deliberately not deducible without taking sides, as is (if I'm recalling correctly), Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. It does not weaken those works at all, and if anything, it enhances their quality and rereadability.