Confessions of an Armchair Detective

I have a confession to make. I am incapable of reading a murder mystery like a normal person.

While sensible readers are presumably enjoying the story and allowing the detective to get on with their job, I’m conducting an investigation of my own.

Who’s lying? Why did they say that? Was that apparently insignificant comment actually a clue? And surely the person the author desperately wants me to suspect can’t possibly have done it?

There was a time when I was rather good at this. Sometimes I’d get halfway through a book or a crime drama and realise I’d already worked out who had done it. You might think that would be satisfying. It wasn’t always. In fact, it could get on my nerves.

Part of the pleasure of a good mystery is surely being kept guessing. I don’t necessarily want to reach the halfway point, announce the murderer to myself and then spend the rest of the story waiting for everyone else to catch up.

These days I don’t spot the culprit quite as often as I used to. Strangely enough, that may actually make crime fiction more enjoyable. There’s something very satisfying about reaching the final chapters, discovering I’ve been looking in completely the wrong direction and realising that the clues were there all along.

Of course, that doesn’t stop me trying.

Give me a collection of suspects and I’m still mentally taking notes. Someone is too helpful. Someone else knows more than they’re admitting. That perfectly innocent character in the background has caught my attention for absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever.

And then there’s the dangerous moment when I become convinced I’ve solved it.

Sometimes I’m right.

Sometimes I’m very, very wrong.

And I think that’s probably how I prefer it.

I don’t mind getting it wrong if the eventual solution makes sense. In fact, some of my favourite mysteries are the ones where the answer takes me completely by surprise, but afterwards I can look back and realise the clues were there. I simply didn’t put them together.

What I don’t enjoy is a twist that seems to have appeared from nowhere purely so that nobody could possibly guess it. There’s a difference between being cleverly misdirected and not being given a fighting chance.

That’s part of the fun for me. I don’t just want to know who did it. I want to see whether I could have known who did it.

And this doesn’t stop when I put a book down. Give me a crime drama or mystery series and exactly the same thing happens. I’m watching the characters, questioning their motives and deciding which seemingly innocent detail is going to matter later.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve always been drawn to mysteries. They’re stories, but they’re also puzzles — and apparently I can’t resist trying to solve them.

So when you see a crime or mystery review here on A Virtual Bookcase, there’s a good chance I’ll be judging it on more than whether I enjoyed the story. Did it keep me guessing? Were the clues fair? Did I fall for the red herrings? And, most importantly…

Did I solve it before the detective?

Welcome to the investigations of a self-confessed armchair detective.