Good examples of literary twists

[KyriakosCH]

The thread is supposed to be a discussion of twists in literature (film/tv series can also be mentioned), with some theoretical elements, but mostly geared towards presenting examples you find of note.


I think that the literary twist can be divided to a few distinct categories, most of which have to do with form.


Scope-wise, any author/creator will give the audience ample time to identify the setting, before coming up with a twist - otherwise it's not the same effect, but something more akin to a cynical or otherwise moody introduction (an example of such a non-twist, because it happens already in the prologue of a story, would be Level's very nice short story about a bank employee who is presented as very good and thorough in his job and a model employee, but soon we learn he stole money and then did surrender to the authorities and admit he stole the money but also lied that he lost it by being himself robbed later on. In reality he entrusted it somewhere, with the plan to get it after he would be released from serving a few years in jail). So one parameter would be time given before a twist, if it's intended to be such.

Another parameter is whether the twist is discussed to any degree in the story, prior to happening - that is to say, if the reader is given reason to suspect something may be different than presented. A good example of that would be Tanizaki's tale about a student at whose dorm some objects have gone missing, and there is a mystery as to who stole them. The student (the text is in the first person narrative) goes into length examining who could be the thief (but later he tells us that he is the one). So this is a case of a twist which potentially could be foreseen since its subject is at the very forefront of the tale.

For an example of a work where the twist is simply not discussed at all, and nothing prepares for it, I always think of Lovecraft's The Outsider. Because there we as readers simply never have any reason to suspect

Spoiler

that the protagonist, his vast castle and the dark forest around it, all exist hundreds of meters below the ground...

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Of course this type of twist is form-wise the safest. You can't look for something, when you are unaware that it even exists.


There are various hybrids. Agatha Christie's plots are typical of a subcategory of hybrid twist which is both discussed and we are given specific reason to look away from the direction the answer is - she usually achieves that by providing a seemingly more than adequate reason for the reader to identify the guilty character as innocent (eg by placing the murder in a location which brings other suspicions, or using doubles). Another hybrid is common in works by ETA Hofmann (such as The Sandman), where instead of having other characters being antagonistic as to the guilt, they just overshadow the chosen to be revealed as wondrous, by being presented themselves as mysterious and even possibly supernatural (eg while we focus on the titular character of The Sandman, who may be anything up to a flying monster,

Spoiler

we may not notice that much of worth in a rather stiff girl by the name of Olympia, but later on she is revealed to be an automaton.

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Ok, after this very brief mention of a few of the types, feel free to suggest your own favorite twists in literary stories.



Ps: you can mention Shyamalan, if you absolutely have to   Personally I only find the twist in I See Dead People as being of note. Of course he didn't help himself by (after his second movie) making people expect every single project of his to have a twist.

That said, the twist in ISDP is part of the group where the reveal changes a significant part of the meaning of the story. This often happens in Philip Dick's works, although there it is based on tech that makes the distinction between reality and hallucination difficult to pin down (as in Ubiq, but most of his other novels too).

[Danvzare]

The end of Dragon Quest Builders 1.
I have never played a game that made me want to defeat the final boss and save the world, while giving it my all, quite like that game did.

I've put it in spoilers, because I don't want to spoil it. If you think you'd like a JRPG with some Minecraft-like gameplay thrown in, I'd highly recommend it.

Spoiler

Throughout the game you're told that you're not a hero, and you take it with a pinch of salt. You know, maybe you did something bad before or maybe you'll become a hero. You get it. Except no. Right at the end after you've made all of the equipment to be used to defeat the final boss. The goddess who brought you back to life at the start of the game tells you to get lost. Because you're not destined to be the hero that defeats the final boss. You're told you can't defeat it because it's not your destiny, and you should just leave it for someone who is worthy.

So what you inevitably end up doing is saying "FUCK YOU AND YOUR DESTINY!"
The twist inspires you to do your absolute best and to not get hit, because as you're told. You won't be resurrected this time, especially since you're going against the wishes of the goddess. But you just want to give her the middle finger.

It's framed way better than how I'm portraying it as well. It's definitely the kind of twist that you could only really do in a video game. It's brilliant and will probably stay with me for the rest of my life.

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Dragon Quest Builders 2 is the better game by far. But the first game has the better story. 

EDIT: And I know you wanted books, films, and TV shows. But video games have writing in them, heck two genres are practically called books because they essentially are for the most part (Interactive Fiction and Visual Novels). Also this is a forum about Adventure games, so... I hope you don't mind that I chose to talk about a game.
I did make sure to pick something I thought was especially noteworthy though, and not just the latest thing that's been on my mind. 

[Snarky]

John Dickson Carr, The Burning Court
Carr was a master at locked room mysteries/impossible crimes, managing to provide rational explanations of events that at first seem like they must require a supernatural cause. And he was also excellent at creating a spooky and terrifying atmosphere, so that some of his mysteries almost cross over into horror. The Burning Court is probably his finest achievement on that score, and the solution is audacious.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Given its familiarity, it can be easy to forget that Marlow's confrontation with Kurtz is a twist: all along, Kurtz has been presented as an idealist, and contrasted with the corrupt and brutal company men whom Marlow despises.

Charles Palliser, The Quincunx
A labyrinthine dispute over a will tangles up five families and causes the protagonist to endure all kinds of Dickensian hardships and dangers in this brick of a novel, which makes sure to keep its readers in uncertainty, ignorance and confusion as much as the main character. And once everything finally seems to be revealed, two final twists—one in the very last sentence of the book—force us to reconsider the meaning of it all.

Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
To me, the impressive twist in this book is not the early one that got all the attention, but the ending, because I think it's one of the very few original endings in the mystery/psychological thriller genre in decades. Of course, it's possible that it has been done before in some story I haven't read, and it has some similarities with a book I'm currently reading but have already been spoiled for: Before the Fact by Francis Iles (aka Anthony Berkeley Cox), the basis for Hitchcock's Suspicion. A variation of the same was also used in another movie I liked...

Spoiler

Phantom Thread.

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Personally I only find the twist in I See Dead People as being of note.

The movie is actually called The Sixth Sense.

[Crimson Wizard]

I'm not a literature theorist, but one twist that impressed me for being both mildly expected and whimsically funny (that's why it stayed in my memory) was the Edogawa Ranpo's short story "The Human Chair". To me this is an example of a story where you have a almost physical growing anticipation of something "dark" to be revealed as it progresses, and also the one that gives you a hint practically right from the beginning, if you pay attention to a specific element.

This story has 2 consecutive twists actually.

[KyriakosCH]

I am actually reading a Carr story these days. But given I want it for locked room examples, maybe I'll switch to the Burning Court (I was reading the Hollow Man, but I already know its plot).

[ThreeOhFour]

When we read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier everyone in my book club expressed quite shocked delight at the twist. Completely recontextualises the story and characters in a wonderful way.

[CaptainD]

The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl has a fantastic twist, similar concepts have been used in movies and literature since so it may seem quite hackneyed now, but this story (written in 1955) made quite an impression on my when I read it in a sci-fi anthology in my younger years. I'm fairly sure the idea was pretty unique back when it was originally written (though I could be wrong).

If you want to read the story itself, don't look at the hidden description below!!

Spoiler

A chemical plant had exploded, killing all the inhabitants of Tylerton. A ruthless advertising executive, Dorchin, took over the ruins and rebuilt the town in miniature. The dead people's memories and personalities were read from their brains and copied into minuscule robots, which are being used as captive subjects for testing high pressure advertising campaigns. Each night, the power is cut and Dorchin's employees manually reset each robot's memory in preparation for the next experiment.The protagnosit founds out that his whole world fits on top of a table. The story is told from the point of view of one one of these people who, unaware of any of the above, slowly realises that things are not as they should be, and tries to uncover the truth... then maybe wishes he hadn't.

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The most famous example of a similar idea is in the movie

Spoiler

The Truman Show

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[Crimson Wizard]

The Tunnel Under the World by Frederik Pohl has a fantastic twist <...>

If you want to read the story itself, don't look at the hidden description below!!

Spoiler

...rebuilt the town in miniature. The dead people's memories and personalities were read from their brains and copied into minuscule robots, which are being used as captive subjects for testing high pressure advertising campaigns. Each night, the power is cut and Dorchin's employees manually reset each robot's memory in preparation for the next experiment. The protagnosit founds out that his whole world fits on top of a table.

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Hey, I know another example, and imo it is more close to this idea:

Spoiler

The "Dark City" movie, where aliens recreated a human city in space, and use humans as test subjects, wiping their memories and changing the roles they live.

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[Stupot]

I read Ender's Game for the first time a couple years ago and had no idea about the twist at the end of that one. I guess most people here already know it, but if you haven't, I recommend the book (if you're someone who can separate art from their artists).

[CaptainD]

Hey, I know another example, and imo it is more close to this idea:

Spoiler

The "Dark City" movie, where aliens recreated a human city in space, and use humans as test subjects, wiping their memories and changing the roles they live.

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Ooh haven't seen that one CW, though funnily enough I was looking at it on IMDB yesterday as a segue from someone mentioning that it shared several props with The Matrix (or bought them after The Matrix finished filming, to be more precise).

[CaptainD]

I read Ender's Game for the first time a couple years ago and had no idea about the twist at the end of that one. I guess most people here already know it, but if you haven't, I recommend the book (if you're someone who can separate art from their artists).

Sadly I read the book after seeing the movie so it was less of a surprise, although they movie and book did deal with it slightly differently.

[KyriakosCH]

Chesterton's The White Pillars Murder also has a nice subtype of twist. Though in a way it is similar to the one in Mousetrap, it rests on different protections and the short story is worth reading imo (can be found online, it's in the public domain).

[KyriakosCH]

I was recently watching some videos about Dead Space, and the nature of the "Marker" there is also a type of a twist. Though ultimately it is the same scheme as with WH40K "gene-stealer cults", since the object/being just tricks its victims into believing it's something positive for them, while it merely seeks to use them as fuel.
It's not a pure type of twist, though. Because to any outsider, it'd likely not represent something positive (unless they are religious zealots who already worship it from afar).
Thus it could work as a twist only if the story is presented from the pov of a believer or someone under the influence of the Marker.

[KyriakosCH]

Hm, I am a little over 9/10 of the Burning Court. Unhappy to say that it will take nothing short of a miracle for this book ending up as anything other than garbage.
The issue isn't the utter lack of any literary worth (that became known from the first few pages). It's the plot itself. But I shall wait till the end.

[cat]

How do you obtain those books? The Burning Court and The Human Chair, for example, don't seem to be in public domain, yet, but I also couldn't track down printed copies.

[KyriakosCH]

Amazon certainly has copies: https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Court-John-Dickson-Carr/dp/1780020031
There are also library-styled sites, where you can read for a fee, eg: https://archive.org/details/burningcourt00john/page/n9/mode/2up

[Ali]

I love mystery stories, and I love stories-with-a-sting-in-the-tail. I even enjoy several M. Night Shyamalan films. But I think it's hard to recommend stories with twists without giving something away.

And, I think there's a reason why stories with twists aren't regarded as respectable. It's the easiest thing in the world to write a twist (at least, the first thing I wrote had one!) because all you have to do is withhold information from the reader or the audience. The quintessential student film or short story ends by revealing that the protagonist who you were supposed to like is actually... the bad guy! Wow! Looks like I, the author, really wasted your time, huh?

A twist is often a bit of cleverness designed to make the writer look smart. It can be undramatic. It's structuring a narrative like a joke, with a punchline that has to be kept hidden. But when it works, I love it.

I haven't read We Need To Talk About Kevin but Lynne Ramsay's film is excellent, and it breaks every rule they teach about screenwriting. It simply unfolds the story for the audience - the protagonist already knows the ending - and yet it's gripping.

I'd recommend, in addition to Rebecca:

Spoiler

Jamaica Inn and Don't Look Now. Also, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Lovecraft's short story The Outsider. They're more about suspense than surprise, though.

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[cat]

Amazon certainly has copies: https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Court-John-Dickson-Carr/dp/1780020031

A paperback for 100$ that doesn't ship to my country 

But I'll have a look at the online library.

[KyriakosCH]

Well, I'd certainly advise against paying 100 dollars for this. Or even 1 dollar, for that matter.
Read it all now, btw. The ending somehow managed to be the worst part of this silly book. Laughable farce doesn't begin to describe it.

[KyriakosCH]

Read The Arrow of Heaven, by Chesterton.
It has the typically pleasant style of the Father Brown stories. And a locked room. But the guilty party was pretty easy to guess, from the first part of the short story. The ruse was a bit artificial/flamboyant. 

[Snarky]

Well, I'd certainly advise against paying 100 dollars for this. Or even 1 dollar, for that matter.
Read it all now, btw. The ending somehow managed to be the worst part of this silly book. Laughable farce doesn't begin to describe it.

Well, I suppose it's progress that for once you've actually read the book you "critique."

I probably wouldn't recommend paying $100 for it either, but I do definitely recommend reading it. It is spooky and extremely ingenious. Silly? Sure, but then any book about ghosts and witchcraft is fundamentally silly.

Spoiler

A newly married man comes across a photo of a painting of his wife. Only, it's not his wife, but a notorious poisoner and reputed witch who was beheaded centuries ago. Right afterwards he gets involved in the investigation of a possible murder by poison, aspects of which seem to defy any rational explanation other than witchcraft. As the evidence starts to point towards his wife, he seeks to shield her from suspicion while himself growing all the more frightened of who and what she might really be.

Some of the scenes are as memorably iconic as anything in Dracula or The Hound of the Baskervilles, and the mundane solutions provided for the several locked room mysteries involved are a tour-de-force demonstration of Carr's ability to explain the impossible.

It also has some nice authentic local and period color from Carr's original home turf, the wealthy towns and boroughs along the Philadelphia Main Line (very unusually for him, as he otherwise preferred to set his stories in England or France).

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[Snarky]

When we read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier everyone in my book club expressed quite shocked delight at the twist. Completely recontextualises the story and characters in a wonderful way.

The twist is great, but I also love the ambiguously unhappy ending (of the book, not movie).

I'd recommend, in addition to Rebecca:

I just read Verity by Colleen Hoover, which was recommended in one of those listicles that authors are forced to produce in order to promote their books (you know: "Here's a list of ten of the best psychological thrillers, and BTW, I just happen to have a psychological thriller coming out this month"). It is very much a riff on Rebecca, down to the title, but turns it around by having the new woman be the one to discover the truth about the wife, and deciding whether to hide it from the husband.

I liked that it had the guts to be really nasty (graphic descriptions of violence to a baby, primarily), but the plot was were pretty flimsy, leaving too few possibilities for where the story could go and therefore not generating a lot of suspense. The sex scenes were also rather gratuitous—Hoover is primarily a romance author, and brings some bad habits with her.

[Snarky]

I love mystery stories, and I love stories-with-a-sting-in-the-tail.

This might be a good opportunity to mention that I recently read (well, listened to, in the dulcet voice of the author) Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum.

It's clearly for kids, but even though I'm not in the target audience, I enjoyed it because of the humor, and because the love for the genre comes through so clearly. My favorite gags were the anonymous stakeout vehicle (former ice cream van, painted a discreet gray—including the big gray ice cream cone on the roof) and "St Hilaria's Church of the Unfounded Assumption," while my favorite part of the investigation was the relatively subtle way you hinted at the owner of the hairpin. And I really appreciated that it was a properly constructed mystery story, not the crude simulations often found in children's fiction (where there is no real riddle or any proper investigation, and where plot events are just arbitrary "business" before the solution conveniently falls into the detectives' lap), even if the gimmicks were lifted from various classic stories.

As for literary twists, the final twist/cliffhanger was OK, though to this adult reader it felt a bit low-stakes. But perhaps that was intentional.

From flipping through the book, the illustrations are really fun, too.

So congratulations on the publication! I hope the book and the whole series are a success. There's a Norwegian edition coming out next month, which I take to be a good sign.

[KyriakosCH]

Hm, is there any story (preferably short, not a novel) that can be reasonably presented as the one with the best use of a locked room plot?
It's a bonus if the author has literary value (eg Chesterton), but even just the plot will be enough for me to look into it

[cat]

I probably wouldn't recommend paying $100 for it either, but I do definitely recommend reading it. It is spooky and extremely ingenious. Silly? Sure, but then any book about ghosts and witchcraft is fundamentally silly.

Oh, then this book isn't for me after all. I'm not into supernatural stories. Considering this, would reading Rebecca be a good idea? This book I can order easily.

Regarding Chesterton, many years ago I read a collection of Father Brown stories and the only thing I remember is that I found it meh.

[KyriakosCH]

It wasn't presented in this thread as a supernatural story, otherwise I'd not have wasted my time with it either. It's just that Carr is too low value to pull off this type of twist

Spoiler

so up to the end he tried to play down the supernatural angle but then thought it would be great if he subverted expectations.

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Of course it wasn't. One of the worst junk I've read ^^ (ok, I should also state the obvious, that just because it wasn't for me, it doesn't mean no one could enjoy it for positive reasons of their own).

Chesterton isn't the best writer, but he rightly is regarded as being a capable one - which is rare (not impossible) for those delving into detective stories. Some of his detective stories don't feature father Brown (I mentioned the White Pillars one which is freely available online).

[Snarky]

Oh, then this book isn't for me after all. I'm not into supernatural stories. Considering this, would reading Rebecca be a good idea? This book I can order easily.

Well, The Burning Court is primarily a murder mystery, but a spooky murder mystery, like The Hound of the Baskervilles or Les Diaboliques (or, for Norwegians, De dødes tjern).

Spoiler

It ultimately offers both a rational and a supernatural solution.

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There is no supernatural element to Rebecca, but it's a gothic psychological suspense novel that appeals to a lot of the same emotions.

It wasn't presented in this thread as a supernatural story, otherwise I'd not have wasted my time with it either.

I did in fact mention "a spooky and terrifying atmosphere, so that some of his mysteries almost cross over into horror" with The Burning Court as the finest achievement of that. There's always been a close link between mysteries and the supernatural, given the common gothic heritage (Poe, Collins, Conan Doyle, ... ), and locked room mysteries/impossible crimes in particular often flirt with the supernatural as a possible explanation. As you were already reading The Three Coffins, this could hardly be news to you.

It's just that Carr is too low value to pull off this type of twist

That's such a vacuous statement. What does "too low value" even mean?

[Snarky]

Chesterton isn't the best writer, but he rightly is regarded as being a capable one - which is rare (not impossible) for those delving into detective stories. Some of his detective stories don't feature father Brown (I mentioned the White Pillars one which is freely available online).

Chesterton is a perfectly decent writer, but I'm with @cat (and against Carr, who was a big fan) that his stories are pretty meh. There is rarely anything interesting or memorable about them—admittedly this could in part be because whatever was novel and unique about his stories when he wrote them has been copied so often that the freshness has been lost—and he too often falls into didacticism and proselytizing. He's smug, and I find that a particularly irritating trait in an author.

Hm, is there any story (preferably short, not a novel) that can be reasonably presented as the one with the best use of a locked room plot?

I think the second murder in The Three Coffins/The Hollow Man (a man is shot in the back, up close, in the middle of an empty street with witnesses at either end; the street is covered in snow, and there are no tracks other than the dead man's) has a reasonable claim to being the greatest "locked room" mystery devised, because of its simplicity, apparent impossibility and the elegance of its solution. (The solution to the other murder, and the combination of both, is a bit too baroque and contrived for my tastes.)

Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room is also a strong contender due to overall excellence. And Then There Were None is not always considered a locked-room mystery, but I would argue that it qualifies and is one of the best. I also have a weak spot for The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill, which although indifferently written and badly dated, introduced two of the classic locked-room gimmicks. Oh, and Hake Talbot's The Rim of the Pit is tremendously good fun and absolutely preposterous. You'd hate it.

I tend to think locked room shorts are less interesting than novel-length mysteries, as a rule, since the length usually constrains them to pretty trivial tricks. Edward D. Hoch is usually considered the master of the form, but I haven't read a lot of his work. Some would cite Chesterton's "The Invisible Man," but I never found the solution credible. One I personally have fond memories of is the Sherlock Holmes-pastiche "The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle" by Carr and Adrian Doyle, but while neatly done, it's not very original.

There are good lists here (novels), here (novels and short stories) and here (short stories).

[KyriakosCH]

Afaik the Invisible Man is widely regarded as one of Chesterton's most memorable stories. I have read it, of course, and while the reveal is a bit trivial and artificial, the story has some other merits. In a lecture by Borges, it was correctly mentioned that the more striking part is about how a character there dies (and suggestion of other means), not the reveal.

[Ali]

Oh, then this book isn't for me after all. I'm not into supernatural stories. Considering this, would reading Rebecca be a good idea? This book I can order easily.

I've enjoyed every Daphne du Maurier thing I've read. Rebecca is great, but may not be the twistiest of her tales. I still recommend it, along with the ones I mentioned above, there's also My Cousin Rachel, and the short stories The Blue Lenses and Not After Midnight - which adventure game fans will surely enjoy. Having said that, there are elements of the supernatural in the shorts, and in Don't Look Now.

So congratulations on the publication! I hope the book and the whole series are a success. There's a Norwegian edition coming out next month, which I take to be a good sign.

Thank you for the review, Snarky!

In a lecture by Borges, it was correctly mentioned that the more striking part is about how a character there dies (and suggestion of other means), not the reveal.

I also found the solution, while clearly important in the history of the genre, annoying. Do you have a link to that Borges lecture?

[KyriakosCH]

I am not sure if it is available outside book form - quite possibly it's not yet in the public domain (if that applies to his lectures, anyway). I read it in an edition of all his articles and lectures

[Snarky]

On the subject of impossible crimes (and particularly inspired by "The Problem of Cell 13" by Jacques Futrelle, a classic short story about an impossible escape from a locked prison cell), I'm reminded of the real-life stories of the escape attempts from Colditz, the WWII POW camp located in an ancient German castle. Escape ought to have been impossible, but the allied prisoners employed a lot of the methods detective fiction writers rely on to create the illusion of impossible events, and managed to get out again and again (though they were almost always caught before they could reach friendly territory). For example, they had various ways to manipulate the periodic headcount, including an actual dummy, so that the guards wouldn't realize that a prisoner had gone missing.

The classic account is in two books by British Escape Officer P.R. Reid, The Colditz Story and The Latter Days at Colditz (sometimes collected together in one volume); more recently there is Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle by Ben MacIntyre, which fills in some of Reid's blind spots and omissions. There was also an excellent, lightly fictionalized TV show based on Reid's books in the 1970s.

[Snarky]

I am not sure if it is available outside book form - quite possibly it's not yet in the public domain (if that applies to his lectures, anyway). I read it in an edition of all his articles and lectures

It's presumably a version of the argument he makes in "On Chesterton" in Other Inquisitions, where he briefly alludes to the story.

Spoiler

As a reminder, the victim in "The Invisible Man" is a millionaire who made his fortune selling household robots, and the narrator observes:

Angus had suddenly the horrid fancy that poor Smythe's own iron child had struck him down. Matter had rebelled, and these machines had killed their master. But even so, what had they done with him?

"Eaten him?" said the nightmare at his ear; and he sickened for an instant at the idea of rent, human remains absorbed and crushed into all that acephalous clockwork.

In my opinion, Chesterton would not have tolerated the imputation of being a contriver of nightmares, a monstrorum artifex (Pliny, XXVIII, 2), but he tends inevitably to revert to atrocious observations. He asks if perchance a man has three eyes, or a bird three wings; in opposition to the pantheists, he speaks of a man who dies and discovers in paradise that the spirits of the angelic choirs have, every one of them, the same face he has; he speaks of a jail of mirrors; of a labyrinth without a center; of a man devoured by metal automatons [...]

These examples, which could easily be multiplied, prove that Chesterton restrained himself from being Edgar Allan Poe or Franz Kafka, but something in the makeup of his personality leaned toward the nightmarish, something secret, and blind, and central.

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[KyriakosCH]

Yes, it wasn't the article, but some similar flourish in a lecture. More than likely one of the detective story speeches to universities.

Maybe you should have put that in spoiler tags, btw.

[KyriakosCH]

Read Chesterton's "Secret Garden". Mmmh, can't say I liked it 

[cat]

When we read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier everyone in my book club expressed quite shocked delight at the twist. Completely recontextualises the story and characters in a wonderful way.

Now that I finished reading Rebecca, I wonder which of several events you mean.

Warning - full spoilers ahead:

Spoiler

What I liked about the book, is that most of the major events/revelations are hinted at. It's a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle. You find bits and pieces of all aspects throughout the story and with each additional information, you get a better picture of the persons and events.
What I didn't expect:
- the proposal at the beginning
- the discovery of the boat
- her illness
- the house burning down. It was clear that there will not be a happy ending. I didn't get that the house was burned down in the beginning. I thought they would escape England fleeing his conviction and end up hiding in exile somewhere in Europe, with the house just decaying due to lack of maintenance.

To me it was clear about halfway through the book that the marriage was not happy and she did not die in an accident. I thought of suicide first, though. I was also quite sure that the found body he identified was not Rebecca (I even considered her being still alive). It also did not surprise me when they found her body on the boat and that he killed her.

I think it is an extremely well crafted book. The pacing, especially during the last quarter, is excellent. Also one scene with the unnamed protagonist and Mrs Danvers was extremly powerful.

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Thanks for the recommendation, I fully agree it is worth reading.

[Snarky]

Glad you liked Rebecca, @cat. It's a good one! I guess ThreeOhFour will answer when he sees your post, but the big twist is usually considered to be:

(Again, huge spoilers)

Spoiler

The fact that Rebecca was a very unpleasant person, that her marriage to Mr. de Winter was unhappy, and that his passionate feeling for her was hate, not love. (And that the second Mrs. de Winter has therefore misinterpreted her husband's reactions any time her name was brought up.)

Personally I knew the twist before I read it, and even if I hadn't, the foreword—which IIRC tried to offer a revisionist take on Rebecca as a positive female character, a feminist rebel against a suffocating patriarchal society—gave it away.

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So when not otherwise specified, that's most likely what they are talking about. I would consider the secondary (more conventional) twist to be:

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The reveal that she deliberately goaded her husband into killing her because she had discovered that she had terminal cancer.

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... But I don't think that's as well known/remembered, perhaps in part because the Hitchcock movie, produced under the Hollywood "Hays Code" censorship rules, changed the details:

Spoiler

Because Mr. De Winter goes free in the end, he could not be revealed as a wife-murderer. Instead, Rebecca's death is portrayed as an accident (although IIRC we only have De Winter's word for this), and so her non-pregnancy and connivance in her own death makes less difference.

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[ThreeOhFour]

Glad to know you enjoyed it @cat!

For me:

Spoiler

Yes, both the fact that Mr. de Winter's emotions over Rebecca's name being mentioned were actually much more complex than simple grief at her passing, and also that Rebecca deliberately infuriated Maxim with her lies in order to escape the slow death of cancer (and, in my imagination, set her memory up to haunt the rest of his life with her presence/means of death)

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Very much agree that it's a great book. 

[cat]

This might be a good opportunity to mention that I recently read (well, listened to, in the dulcet voice of the author) Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum.

Thanks for the recommendation, it was a fun read and I loved the illustrations (it's a pity novels for adults don't have such nice illustrations). @Ali did you choose the illustrator or was she decided on by the publisher? In any case, good choice.

The book includes so many mystery novel tropes and puts a twist on them, my favourite probably being

Spoiler

the room behind the book shelf that turns out to be a dusty store room

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I was a bit surprised to see a real murder case. When I was a kid, no one ever died in children's mystery novels, I think the worst thing was a broken arm or something.

I'm looking forward to the next book!

[Snarky]

Me too. I just watched this trailer (if that's the word) yesterday:

Those drawings really are wonderful.

Since this thread is about twists, I suppose I will stick my neck out and with confident trepidation guess at the cliffhanger twist in Murder at the Museum:

Spoiler

The person who knows Bonnie's secret is Dana Hornville, right? I feel like it's foreshadowed that they will become friends and partners-in-crimesolving.

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If I got it wrong, I suppose that's proof I'm in the target audience of 8–12-year-olds or adults who are a bit thick.

I also recently read Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper by Donald Henderson, a really remarkable crime novel from 1944 that tells the story of a depressed serial killer who can't seem to get caught even though he wants to. It's not really a mystery, but still features a twist ending that caught me by surprise. And it doubles as an interesting depiction of life in London during WWII. I would recommend it.

[Ali]

Thanks for the recommendation, it was a fun read and I loved the illustrations (it's a pity novels for adults don't have such nice illustrations). @Ali did you choose the illustrator or was she decided on by the publisher? In any case, good choice.

Yes, I think Claire is brilliant and she was my first choice - I'm lucky she came on board! And I don't want to hog the thread, but Snarky's guess is, of course, correct.

[Snarky]

Snarky's guess is, of course, correct

Huzzah!

I've been thinking about twists, and how we often define them as surprises. For example, Hitchcock thought you should prioritize suspense over surprise, and reveal information early on ("there's a bomb under the table") in order to build suspense, rather than hold it back ("some people are sitting around a table, suddenly a bomb goes off")—except in the case of a twist, which he seems to have understood as "a surprise that is the point of the story."

But I question how true that is. Earlier on Ali compared them to joke punchlines, and I think that's right. And of course the thing with hearing a joke is that you're usually waiting for the punchline. It's a very different experience if you don't realize that what someone is telling you is a joke, and the punchline comes out of nowhere. Usually you don't know exactly what the punchline is going to be (sometimes you do), but the enjoyment is as much the anticipation as the reveal.

Similarly, I think the best twists often give you some inkling ahead of time that there is something off, something missing, but not enough to put your finger on exactly what. If it's just a matter of holding back some of the information until the end, it's usually not very satisfying. There should be some unresolved element to the story that the twist completes.

A good twist will often offer suspense and surprise.

[Ali]

And of course the thing with hearing a joke is that you're usually waiting for the punchline. It's a very different experience if you don't realize that what someone is telling you is a joke, and the punchline comes out of nowhere. Usually you don't know exactly what the punchline is going to be (sometimes you do), but the enjoyment is as much the anticipation as the reveal.

I have just a couple of thoughts on this. I always thought an un-signposted joke ought to be funnier than a joke that's presented as A Joke, because the punchline would be more of a surprise. In fact, I think the opposite is true. People laugh more when they are primed to believe that the next thing they hear will be funny. Perhaps there's a parallel with narrative twists there too.

Also, there are lots of jokes where the punchlines do come in an unexpected place, so even though the audience is expecting a gag they are still taken by surprise. I'm thinking of garden-path jokes like the kind Emo Phillips is famous for, or even the (very dated) "take my wife... please".

[cat]

I finally came around reading the second Montgomery Bonbon book, Death at the Ligthhouse.

It was nice that the book again included some jokes for adults (please tell me the only reason for naming a character Ribble was to have a chapter called "Ribble Trouble").
I was confused several times throughout the book, but maybe I'm just a bit thick.

Spoiler

I was generally having a hard time, even with the map, to figure out who was where and why getting from one point to another took which amount of time independent of walking or driving (I guess this was on purpose, to make the solution less obvious).
When they first went to the lighthouse, I couldn't find the spot on the map where they parked the car - from the description it was neither the pebble path carpark nor Manderley Miserley.
There was also a scene with Roz and Sands where Bonnie is talking to them and pointing to Dana in the onion costume (who is pretending to be Bonbon), but the illustration shows Roz, Sands and Bonbon.

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My favourite part was in Iain's house. I figured out the murderer but not the full solution

Spoiler

The motive became quite obvious with the visit in the school cellar, but I missed the connection of the school being next to the guest house and that he has seen her. I also didn't figure out the locked room puzzle.

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Fun side note:

Spoiler

When I was reading the last chapter that takes place in the rain storm, my partner came in and asked me, if I go to work by bike next day. For a second I thought "Why on earth would I go by bike in such a weather" only to remember that the forecast was 25°C and sunshine. That's what I call immersed in a book 

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I enjoyed the book and will lend it to my partner's mother, who also enjoyed the first book (though I doubt she will get the Ribble joke). Looking forward to the next case!