GraniteGeekNH t1_j9ui2qn wrote on February 24, 2023 at 5:30 PM

If you read a lot of mysteries you realize that a good writer can make almost any solution work in any murder. It's completely arbitrary, really. So I read them to enjoy the characters and the tone and the feel of the work (for lack of a better term) not to see whodunit.

Check out "The Poisoned Chocolates Case" by Anthony Berkeley for the ultimate example of this.

rafasimoes OP t1_j9ut06q wrote on February 24, 2023 at 6:39 PM

But that is exactly my issue. I think that revealing the murderer was betraying the tone and feel she had established. To me this one felt a lot more like a horror book than her other books.

And thanks, i will check it out

GraniteGeekNH t1_j9zt2sy wrote on February 25, 2023 at 7:50 PM

Also, if she had published a story without revealing the kidder, Murder of Roger Ackroyd would have immediately been relegated to "second most controversial mystery by Agatha Christie"

GraniteGeekNH t1_j9zswns wrote on February 25, 2023 at 7:49 PM

Note that Poisoned Chocolate Case is sort of a satire of murder mysteries, it almost makes fun of the genre.

tritium3 t1_j9wzk2w wrote on February 25, 2023 at 3:59 AM

Yeah any character could be made the murderer. It’s really about the message and the thread that connects the characters and the artistic originality of the motive.