[Sherringford]

Originally Posted by naikou

This is just personal experience, but I have never been attached to a character in an Agatha Christie novel. Her formula seems to be: "Introduce as many hairpin twists in the plot as possible!" Once you realize this, you'll either guess the twist miles in advance, or you'll stumble upon a twist which makes no sense in the context of the story. See: "Postern of Fate", "Thirteen at Dinner", and "Murder on the Orient Express".

I think the character I got the most attached to and felt like I just took a punch from Christie when something happened to him was a certain character from Roger Ackroyd. You know the one.

...I still hate myself for not figuring that one out.

And for my money, Christie is even worse at writing romance than Mr. Ryukishi.

Hmm, I don't know. Her usual mysteries are not so good with romance, but her thrillers with Tommy & Tuppence were pretty decent, romance wise.

Ryu's romance is...too melodramatic for my taste. I like my murders cozy and my explosions to somehow not affect the detectives thank you very much.

It's probably just my taste though. They are both pretty bad at romance at times, though I do have a soft spot for Christie's romance.

I was under the impression that Queen was a pseudonym for two different authors who jointly wrote most of the novels. Are there even more than those two?

Roger already mentioned the other writers, so I'll just add that those two used to have "deduction battles" between themselves since the public didn't know Ellery Queen was a penname two people shared.

I have not, I'll look it up.

But, I would actually be surprised if Ryukishi hadn't read Carr. He seems like a very well-read person in general, and a fan of the mystery genre in particular.

It's really hard to find his essay anywhere(took me an eternity and a half to get a physical copy), the only blog that seemed to have it was deleted. But here's a copy:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...=www.google.ca

I've always found the Knox rules to be, well... blatantly obvious. Every rule (except the "no chinamen" one) is basically a general case of "We cannot reason about that which we do not know." It's more of a guide for mystery writers than readers. Van Dine's set of rules are the same, except with more emphasis on mystery cliches.

Knox's rules come down to "don't screw around with your reader" while Van Dine's came down to "be clever."

I agree about it being more of a guide for writers than for readers, which is why I felt that his lecture about them felt...pointless.

As for Erika, I found her to be pretty hilarious, personally. But eh, different tastes.

She was funny, it's just that she didn't seem like a detective to me.

They've been saying that for 50 years. But part of the problem is that classic mysteries were never considered art in the first place, even by the authors themselves. They were high-class games, intended for high-society (hence why mysteries nearly always feature wealthy characters).

Mystery novelists today have to struggle with the old formula, but also create something which is more than just a game, something which can be called art. It's a difficult task, and rarely pulled off well. Most modern authors prefer to bend the genre into something new.

I disagree about one thing. The murder mystery, by itself, is not just a game. It's the grandest game in the world.

It is hard for a pure game to go continue living on, but it is doing its best. For example, Edward Hoch's stories are almost impossible to find nowadays, and he is one of the best contemporary mystery writers. I wish his work was more accessible, and with his somewhat recent death they'll just become harder to find.

Edit:
Forgot to comment on this

Spoiler for Episode 7:

I think the purpose of that segment is to say that in many mystery novels, it is possible to form multiple theories which have different culprits, which are accurate in terms of the clues given. But theories which ignore motive are always inferior to theories which can find the "heart", even if both theories are technically competent.

Obviously, that line of thinking doesn't extend well to real life murder cases, but it makes sense in terms of mystery novels.

Spoiler:

Oh, I know that's the point he was trying to make. It's just that it didn't deliver the impact he intended because of the way he tried to pass that message. If he wanted to stress on how much the whydunit was important, he should have showed a scene where the whydunit was...actually important. In this case, had the SSVD been more competent in regards to the who and the how, the why wouldn't even have been brought to equation.

And I disagree with his obsession with the motive. I agree that the motive is important, but to claim that the why is the most important thing sounds a bit wrong to me.

Probably just personal preference.