Watched any good mystery/detective shows/movies?

[eri0o]

About Christie I think the general idea is that once Poirot announces he is going to do the reveal you can close the book and reflect about everything you know until that point and attempt to guess at the solution. The book is more intended as a puzzle in that sense.

Big Little Lies mentioned is interesting because you don't follow on the detective, the first season closer to a protagonist is Reese Witherspoon's character, and you try to guess what is the crime in relation to the information presented so far. I don't remember correctly, but I think everything only happens in the last episode of the first season, so you can also attempt a guess before watching that episode - me and my wife did not correctly guessed though.

Knives Out is great, but I missed the moment of guessing what happened once the movie presented what happened with certainty soon - I think the movie switches genre twice so I loved the movie but I did not have the puzzly enjoyment I expected when watching the trailer.

Veronica Mars is really great and has interesting characters. Also back to Christie the characters usually are less formed, and have nothing of the normal characters in other types of books like the ones mentioned on the other thread - to avoid duplicating discussion. But back to Veronica Mars, the episodic format allowed to at least explore the characters that exists through multiple episodes and the movie.

Back to other things now. Harlan Colben produced some books that not sure if I should say they are good, they are alright, feel like they achieve less than Christie's, but some short series were made that are interesting to watch - if you can only watch one, watch Safe, which I thought it was the best one. They are good to desconstruct at least, if you want to produce similar work.

[KyriakosCH]

Every writer has their own motifs, which are just (core or not) parts of the outline of the stories, so some of those find themselves into more works. "You can only write the same story so many times", as Lovecraft noted 
Christie apparently overuses the mistaken identity/impersonation motif, but imo her tales while relying on elegance (which I like) are still walking the line (the better ones, not all) on being believable, if we compare them to tv shows. Other authors only care about elegance: Borges' own "detective stories" may be a good example there; my favorite of those is "Ibn Hakkan Al-Bokhari - Dead In His Labyrinth", which hardly is believable but the misdirect only had to work on one person and not the reader (and even one of those who hear the story immediately notes it can't be how things happened).

Personally I'd always prefer elegance to something cruder that is supposed to be more realistic, and one of the reasons for that is that ultimately (by definition) both are fictional, and the first at least has value due to its elegance 

[eri0o]

I just watched the first season of The Wire. It's very good, I really enjoyed it, and now I am trying to think of a tiny game where you are like Pryzbylewski, doing some mechanical office activity to record audio conversations and occasionally having to mark what is relevant and what isn't to piece together a case without going outside.

[Mandle]

The original movie of Sleuth, and the movie Deathtrap. Both with Michael Caine. (The "remake" of Sleuth is also with Maichael Caine but is absolute arse. Be careful!)

[Snarky]

I watched An Inspector Calls (2015) off the recommendation in this thread. It's a good movie, but I wouldn't really call it a detective mystery, even though it features a series of interrogations following a death, and even some twists. It's more just a traditional tragedy, told in retrospect, with a social message.

And I just watched Amsterdam by David O. Russell in the cinema, which again hardly qualifies as a mystery. While the story features an investigation (of sorts) into two murders, it quickly becomes more of a "clear our names"/political conspiracy thriller with comedy elements:

I did not like this one. Russell uses a lot of intrusive gimmicks to tell the story, with scenes that are aggressively digressive to the point where they almost seem absurdist. Neither the villains' plot nor the attempts to thwart it make a whole lot of sense. This one also has a social message, which I found rather ham-handed. Although loosely based on (alleged) pre-WWII historical events, this might be the first Hollywood movie (indirectly) "about" the January 6 insurrection and attempted coup.

Coming out soon is See How They Run, a period murder mystery on the set of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. I'm looking forward to that (I need to refresh my memory of the play), though the trailer makes it seem like a spoof more than a serious mystery:

And of course in December there is Glass Onion, the sequel to Knives Out:

Should be fun! I guess Hollywood has decided that comedy is the way to go with films like this.

[KyriakosCH]

^I didn't like An Inspector Calls that much either, although the cinematography was nice and the actors did they job. It's just that the metaphysical element makes the whole thing convoluted and isn't anymore about a detective story resolution.
One would likely question whether it was believable, even without the metaphysical reveal, imo

[Snarky]

I saw The Mousetrap in London as a teenager decades ago. I remember it as half mystery, half farce. Enjoyable, but very slight.

In preparation for See How They Run, I decided to try and watch a recording of it to refresh my memory. (The failure to make a film adaptation—at least an English-language film adaptation—of the play apparently figures into the plot of the film.)

There are a lot of versions on YouTube, all of them apparently by high school or amateur dramatic societies. Having tried out a bunch of them, I settled on this one:

Uh, it's not great, is it? Probably a stronger cast could bring out the comedy more. I think it needs it, because the characters are much too broad to work in any serious dramatic scenes.

[heltenjon]

I remember The Mousetrap from a London visit back in 1988. I liked it a lot at the time, but of course I was young then, and the actors very good, delivering the humour brilliantly, while the play itself felt like a game with the audience. Can you guess who the killer is? I remember the cast came out and spoke to the audience after some rounds of applause, telling us to please keep the murderer's identity a secret, in order not to spoil the play for future audiences.

I watched it later with amateurs in my home village, in a Norwegian version, which was okay, but nowhere near the London version for me. My friends rather liked it anyway.

I think the Mousetrap must be seen for what it is, a guessing-game with the audience. As always, having good actors will make such a play work. I still remember the body language of the London troupe, giving clues and/or false leads not directly conveyed in the dialogue.

I don't really think it will make a good movie. Even though I liked Hitchcock's Rope, as one of few (?), I think it's a better suit for the stage.

[KyriakosCH]

I also watched a theatrical production of the Mousetrap, in late highschool. It was nice, and obviously it's all about the reveal. While I do recall who the murderer was (and the twist), I don't remember any actual dialogue. Just the (not yet known then) murderer's entrance.

It's another of Christie's motifs, rather close to Ten Little Indians etc.

What I like in such plot elements is that they are supposed to work regardless of what the reader/viewer personally feels about the rest of the story (for obvious reasons this is more potent when you read it, since in a movie or play you have to focus on how things are presented by others too). It's a distinct type of plot, and in larger than short story format it inevitably co-exists with the more personal reading of the rest of the plot. A good example of this, in my view, is Camus' The Stranger, where almost all of the story is something you react to more subjectively (due to sentimental themes etc), but there is also the little story (in the newspaper) about the man who wanted to surprise his relatives and booked a room incognito in their hotel, only to be murdered by them for the money he meant to share with them anyway.

[Ali]

I enjoyed that version of An Inspector Calls, and somehow I didn't know the ending. It's the quintessential set text in the UK, so it's one of those classics that everyone is a bit sick of. I probably should have read it in school...

I'm a huge fan of murder mysteries, and there are never enough good ones. Somehow, I didn't realise that the TV series Foyle's War is a classic whodunnit written by Anthony Horowitz (who wrote Midsomer Murders when it was half decent). If you can forgive it being an ode to broadminded English small-c conservatism, it has some terrific episodes. (At least until they stop shooting on film and switch to digital and I start sulking.)

In terms of classic films, have Les Diaboliques and Rebecca come up yet? For Agatha Christie fans - Agatha and the Truth of Murder on Netflix is both a straightforward whodunnit and a witty parody of the conventions.

[Snarky]

Yeah, I also enjoyed An Inspector Calls, regardless of it not really being a murder mystery. The twist/explanation offered by the fiancé near the end is very elegant—it feels a bit like the ending of The Usual Suspects (and then the second twist reminds me of John Dickson Carr's The Burning Court, or perhaps its photographic negative). And I really liked David Thewlis as the inspector. I'd never really noticed him before (though I'd seen him in a bunch of things), but this was a real powerhouse performance—and then of course he showed up in a major part in The Sandman on Netflix soon after I watched this.

Thanks for the Foyle's War and Truth of Murder tips!

I just came back from seeing See How They Run. Underwhelming. The comedy is alright but mild, while the murder mystery is very run-of-the-mill; like an average episode of an average detective show. And I almost regret refreshing my memory of The Mousetrap right beforehand, even though it helped me spot some in-jokes and references, because it made the liberties the movie takes with the play-within-the-film stick out.

Spoiler

I think they must not have had the rights to show any part of Christie's play verbatim, because every scene or line of dialogue has been modified slightly (or greatly) from the real thing. But even beyond that, they play very fast and loose with it. For example, a recurring joke in SHTR is that the movie director who is to adapt the play keeps complaining that there isn't a murder in the first ten minutes of the script, while in fact the play opens with a murder right away—presented in audio before the lights even come up.

[close]

Also, I'm not one who complains about "race-blind" casting for hobbits or Bridgertons or mermaids or whatever, but I have to say I find it weird to portray Max Mallowan (Agatha Christie's archeologist husband) as a Black man. It feels to me like an attempt to white-wash the racism of the period... and Christie herself.

[Snarky]

In terms of classic films, have Les Diaboliques and Rebecca come up yet?

Rebecca is deservedly a classic, of course, though I like the book even better. Really the paragon of this sort of neo-gothic psychological thriller/mystery.

I watched Les Diaboliques (1955) last night in part because of your recommendation.

Like The Mousetrap (which opened three years before it), it features a plea at the end not to give any spoilers to people who haven't seen it, so I'll put even my general comments behind spoiler tags.

General comments

I like how it seems to shift genre throughout, starting off by making you think it will be an inverted detective story (the Columbo model, where you first see a crime committed and then follow how the detective finds and puts together the clues left by the criminal—there's even a rumpled detective who seems likely to fill the role), due to the camera lingering on all the potential witnesses.* Then with the twist halfway through it becomes a mystery and psychological thriller, and finally veers towards supernatural horror. I'm not sure to what extent that's deliberate (certainly in part it must be), versus just because the genre tropes were less well-defined at the time.

In any case, its influence on a host of other movies and stories is very apparent throughout, calling dozens of later examples to mind.

[close]

If you haven't seen the movie and have any intention to, don't read this:

Explicit spoilers

[* For example, witnesses like the boy who sees the two of them take the soporific, the neighbor who notes down the time they fill the bathtub, the woman M. Delasalle flirts with on the train, etc.]

Unfortunately, I have probably seen and read too many stories that rip off the twist (or at least use a similar one), because I spotted "one of the partners-in-crime is secretly in kahoots with the apparent victim" and "he's not really dead" as possibilities from the start, and once the body disappeared and the two women started turning on each other I became more and more convinced that must be the case.

Towards the end it didn't seem like there was any other real possibility, and clear that Mm. Delasalle must be the mark, so for me all the spookiness didn't really make much of an impact since I knew what was going on. The "drowned" body of Michel Delasalle slowly getting out of the bathtub should be terrifying, like the ghost in the Overlook's Room 237, but I just kept thinking how difficult it would be to time it right, especially while underwater and with those contacts covering your eyes.

I also found the passivity of the retired Commissioner rather baffling. Mm. Delasalle tells him what happened, and he seems to know that M. Delasalle is not actually dead and suspect the plot against her. And he hides out to catch them. But then he just... lets it play out, waiting until they've killed her before intervening?

[close]

So while I could appreciate it as a well-made movie and classic, my personal experience of it was rather tame.

[KyriakosCH]

^Reminds me a bit of Identity (although the supernatural element there is replaced by a psychological/delusion one).

I watched Rebecca. It has a nice style - Hitchcock - but it's not a detective story. The protagonist is a bit too one-sided imo.

[Ali]

I watched Rebecca. It has a nice style - Hitchcock - but it's not a detective story. The protagonist is a bit too one-sided imo.

No, certainly not a fair play detective story. It's a Gothic mystery like My Cousin Rachel or Uncle Silas. The BBC has adapted The Moonstone about three times, and I've never seen any of them (though I've heard the one from the 70s is a classic). And that's a great story and an interesting case, because it's sort of a proto-detective novel. Apart from August Dupin, I think Sergeant Cuff is one of the first proper detectives in literature.

[KyriakosCH]

^I haven't read Moonstone, but do know the general story - and the reveal 

[Snarky]

Someone – I think maybe @AGA? – lent me The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, or, The Murder at Road Hill House during a Mittens years ago, a true-crime account of the case that inspired Wilkie Collins's Sergeant Cuff. That book also inspired me to read the novel, as well as The Woman in White.

It is of course a prominent early example – perhaps the originator – of the extremely tiresome Orientalist trope of the gemstone from some exotic outpost of the British Empire which mysterious, sinister foreigners seek to recover by any means. Conan Doyle, Christie, and Sayers all used it at various times, as did countless others. I recently read another example among the Dr. Thorndyke stories by R. Austin Freeman: "The Mandarin's Pearl."

It always makes me cringe (even though the sinister foreigners are often portrayed as being in the right, morally if not legally, and are rarely the actual murderers), and in fact, as early as 1929 Ronald Knox banned the appearance of mysterious Orientals as part of his 10 Commandments for detective stories: "if you are turning over the pages of an unknown romance in a bookstore, and come across some mention of the narrow, slit-like eyes of Chin Loo, avoid that story; it is bad."

Still, it's natural enough that a book from the nineteenth century should contain some outdated attitudes, and I suppose we cannot blame Collins for what his imitators ran into the ground.

[KyriakosCH]

I like some of the short stories by Collins, but it's no surprise he (unlike his friend, Dickens) is only a footnote in (certainly global, maybe also british) literature. He was more occupied with realistic characters and plot-twists, which is all well and good but simply not enough to make you stand out. I did enjoy his story about the dumb (but well-connected, socially) inspector, who managed to not see who the guilty person was even when everyone else did.
Not that I am much of a fan of Dickens either, but he did produce some poetic work, such as the Christmas Carol and the eerie story about the railway watchman.  Then again I definitely prefer romanticism to realism.

[Ali]

I love Wilkie Collins, and I think he's more satirical than he might look with modern eyes. He certainly scandalised people in his lifetime. Most of his plots would unravel if a female character just told someone trustworthy about the nightmarish scheme she was caught in. But that's the point, I think, that women in particular were trapped by Victorian sensibilities - that social codes could be weapons in the hands of (admittedly, sometimes foreign) villains.

I didn't think his kind of sensational story would work in the modern era, but the first series of The Sinner (a whydunnit) manages to come very close. Perhaps the real story of Britney Spears's conservatorship is the kind of thing Collins would have written about.

[KyriakosCH]

There are all sorts of weird formats for detective stories, and I think that it's extremely rare to get realism to be memorable...
For example, something like Chesterton's "The Invisible Man", has incredible holes or eclectic elements in it and the format is almost amateurish, but still includes a memorable passage (because it was so ominous).

Then again, even what is often referred to as "the first detective story", is very unrealistic and has a peculiar format (Murders in the Rue Morgue). It's a memorable story, though.

[Snarky]

The Sinner had passed entirely under my radar. Thanks!

As a rule I don't have a high tolerance for pointless secrets and other plot-necessary idiotic behavior in mysteries. (One of the Wimsey-Vane mysteries, I think Gaudy Night, has a subplot about the difficulty of creating a psychologically plausible motivation for the heroine to not simply reveal all she knows at once; a snag that eventually forces Vane to rewrite the whole story, turning it from a standard puzzle mystery into a "serious" novel.) But if it's done satirically or with a purpose I would find it easier to tolerate, I think.

From the same era, I seem to recall that The Notting Hill Mystery (1862–63, often credited as the first detective novel in English) deals with similar themes of female disempowerment, and that, incidentally, it also prefigures the villain of Trilby, "Svengali." In fact, I just now discovered that the author of Trilby, George du Maurier—grandfather of Daphne—did the illustrations for The Notting Hill Mystery. It's all connected!

If you haven't read The Notting Hill Mystery, it's an odd beast, since it reads like a proto-detective novel that hasn't quite figured out how the genre is supposed to work—natural enough as one of the first of its kind. There's some very neat stuff with witnesses and forensic evidence, but the chosen format is a kind of legal brief against a known culprit, which is rather awkward from a storytelling point-of-view: it first tells you the answers, and then explains how they were found. (Yet it's not quite an inverted detective story either.)