Watched any good mystery/detective shows/movies?

[KyriakosCH]

In general I avoid them, because the plots in most of them just aren't realistic and so wouldn't play out that way irl. A good example of that would be, imo, Columbo.



(that's Johnny Cash, by the way)

While Falk is a very sympathetic character, the plots in Columbo tend to be resting on convenient errors and are rather forced. That's certainly not only a trait of Columbo, which at least has redeeming elements (tone, entertainment value), for example it is much worse in that Mentalist tv series where (in my impression) really everything is artificial.

I found that some of Agatha Christie's works are a little more serious and believable, though even in her case (despite the higher level when compared to tv writers) convenience and forced action/mistakes also exist. It's just that those coexist with good ideas for diversions/misleading of the police, which might actually work, so are more authentic in that sense.

Anyway, enough with the intro If you have any suggestions for good detective shows, I am interested to read!

[arj0n]

Here are a few. This little list is a mixed bag of series and mini series (no movies), ranging from serious to more funny lighthearted shows:

Series / Mini Series:
Dark Winds (2022)
Magpie Murders (2022)
Only Murders In The Building (2021)
The Pale Horse (2020)
The Head (2020)
The ABC Murders (2018)
Ordeal By Innocent (2018)
Rig 45 (2018)
Beau Séjour (2016)
And Then There Were None (2015)
Trapped (2015)
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012)

Movies:
The Outfit (2022)
Death on the Nile (2022)
The Silencing (2021)
An Inspector Calls (2015)

[KyriakosCH]

Thank you, arjOn!
I will check out those I haven't already watched... Which of these would you say is the "most serious"? I don't mind some lightheartedness, but not at the expense of believability 

[arj0n]

Very roughly sorted from serious to lighthearted:

Series / Mini Series:
Dark Winds (2022)
Ordeal By Innocent (2018)
Trapped (2015)
The Head (2020)
Rig 45 (2018)
Beau Séjour (2016)
The Pale Horse (2020)
The ABC Murders (2018)
And Then There Were None (2015)
Magpie Murders (2022)
Only Murders In The Building (2021)
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (2012)

Movies:
An Inspector Calls (2015)
The Outfit (2022)
The Silencing (2021)
Death on the Nile (2022)

[KyriakosCH]

Thanks again, you rule 

[Stupot]

@Arjon, where can one watch Magpie Murders? I enjoyed the book but had no idea they’d made a TV series out of it.

[arj0n]

@stupod, one can watch Magpie Murders via Amazon Prime.

Spoiler

(or dl the ION10 release)

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[KyriakosCH]

 

Hm, I will try to find An Inspector Calls...

[arj0n]

Hm, I will try to find An Inspector Calls...

That one has a great storyline.

[KyriakosCH]

A good adaptation of a story (then play, with some ending changes, which this movie uses) by Agatha Christie is this one:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051201/

Due to how old it is, you should easily be able to find it online (possibly also on youtube)

The two main actors are good, and the plot is imo very elegant 

[Danvzare]

While Falk is a very sympathetic character, the plots in Columbo tend to be resting on convenient errors and are rather forced.

If you're ever interested in the epitome of forced convenient errors, may I recommend Dirk Gently. It was originally a pair of books by Douglas Adams (known for making Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that manages to tie together a series of completely random and unrelated events into somewhat compelling mysteries with brilliant humour to boot. It even got two TV shows, one by BBC 4 (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and another one by BBC America (which I didn't enjoy as much).

But as for proper head scratching mysteries that can be legitimately solved by the viewer without trying to anticipate the inevitable twists that the writer will shoehorn in. Those are unfortunately quite rare.
May I recommend Veronica Mars though. It had three seasons, followed by a movie, followed by another season. I found the individual mysteries to be quite engaging, and the overarching mystery to be solvable in my opinion. Although I'm probably not the best judge for those kind of things. 

[arj0n]

A good adaptation of a story (then play, with some ending changes, which this movie uses) by Agatha Christie is this one:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051201/

Due to how old it is, you should easily be able to find it online (possibly also on youtube)

The two main actors are good, and the plot is imo very elegant 

The 2016 2-ep miniseries is also a nice one

[arj0n]

May I recommend Veronica Mars though.

Interesting, somehow this series slipped under my radar. Gonna check it out for sure, thanks for the recommendation.

[KyriakosCH]

While Falk is a very sympathetic character, the plots in Columbo tend to be resting on convenient errors and are rather forced.

If you're ever interested in the epitome of forced convenient errors, may I recommend Dirk Gently. It was originally a pair of books by Douglas Adams (known for making Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) that manages to tie together a series of completely random and unrelated events into somewhat compelling mysteries with brilliant humour to boot. It even got two TV shows, one by BBC 4 (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and another one by BBC America (which I didn't enjoy as much).

But as for proper head scratching mysteries that can be legitimately solved by the viewer without trying to anticipate the inevitable twists that the writer will shoehorn in. Those are unfortunately quite rare.
May I recommend Veronica Mars though. It had three seasons, followed by a movie, followed by another season. I found the individual mysteries to be quite engaging, and the overarching mystery to be solvable in my opinion. Although I'm probably not the best judge for those kind of things. 

I will have a look at that too
Regarding believable plots, at least the overarching plot (not all parts of the films, and I haven't read the original stories) is solid in Christie's (similar to each other) 4.50 from Paddington and After the Funeral. The second one is much more famous and had a decent film adaptation (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057334/) which is ok as far as the main plot/diversion goes. The tv series with Suchet also has an episode on this, but imo they made the family needlessly convoluted.
The trick used in 4.50 from Paddington is imo a parallelism to that used in After the Funeral, and could work to fool the police/authorities.

[Snarky]

(Vague spoilers for various Agatha Christie mysteries.)

I sometimes wonder if Agatha Christie suffered from face blindness or something, because a disturbing number of her plots depend on people failing to recognize people they meet. (Most infamously in one novel where a woman has married the same man twice without recognizing him.) This is also a problem in adaptations, where you can always see where things are going as soon as the outrageous theater disguises show up. Though as Ali has pointed out on Twitter, in the 1957 Witness for the Prosecution they actually do a great job with Marlene Dietrich's makeup; it's the cockney accent that's the problem.

Which is to say that I don't quite agree that the plots of (at least one of) the mysteries you mention are entirely solid and believable, Kyriakos.

Spoiler

In After the Funeral, the family hasn't seen their aunt Cora lo these many years, and don't realize that she's actually an impostor. Fair enoughâ€"perhaps. But then they all meet the impostor again in her real identity within a few days, and none of them recognize her. That I find very hard to believe.

[close]

(In fact, Christie's obsession with this theme goes back to a Capgras-like recurring nightmare she used to have as a child, of a monster she called "the Gunman," who could transform and impersonate anyone she lovedâ€"like her mother or sisterâ€"and would only be recognizable by his pale blue eyes. As she writes in Crooked House: "Because this is just what a nightmare is. Walking about among people you know, looking in their facesâ€"and suddenly the faces changeâ€"and it's not someone you know any longerâ€"it's a strangerâ€"a cruel stranger.")

[KyriakosCH]

(Vague spoilers for various Agatha Christie mysteries.)

I sometimes wonder if Agatha Christie suffered from face blindness or something, because a disturbing number of her plots depend on people failing to recognize people they meet. (Most infamously in one novel where a woman has married the same man twice without recognizing him.) This is also a problem in adaptations, where you can always see where things are going as soon as the outrageous theater disguises show up. Though as Ali has pointed out on Twitter, in the 1957 Witness for the Prosecution they actually do a great job with Marlene Dietrich's makeup; it's the cockney accent that's the problem.

Which is to say that I don't quite agree that the plots of (at least one of) the mysteries you mention are entirely solid and believable, Kyriakos.

(In fact, Christie's obsession with this theme goes back to a Capgras-like recurring nightmare she used to have as a child, of a monster she called "the Gunman," who could transform and impersonate anyone she lovedâ€"like her mother or sisterâ€"and would only be recognizable by his pale blue eyes. As she writes in Crooked House: "Because this is just what a nightmare is. Walking about among people you know, looking in their facesâ€"and suddenly the faces changeâ€"and it's not someone you know any longerâ€"it's a strangerâ€"a cruel stranger.")

Interesting quote!

Hm, yes, in Witness the make-up act isn't ruining the film at all, as you said they did a great job. And the fact that it was originally a story (then play) means the writer wouldn't be to blame for lack of realism in such a case (and yes, that motif is there in other works, which I won't refer to so as to avoid spoilers). But even in Witness, it isn't very important since the heroine is a stage actress/performer in the first place.

I don't agree that (at least the ones I mentioned) Christie's plots are as artificial as one tends to see in tv shows. At least Christie doesn't have the "killer made a stupid mistake/miscalculation" all that often (it does happen, but isn't central/things spiral down by that point). Compare to something as ridiculous as the 7-season The Mentalist, where essentially half the episodes are solved by "instant hypnotism" 

[Snarky]

I added in a more explicit discussion of why I don't find one of the plots you mentioned very believable:

Spoiler

In After the Funeral, the family hasn't seen their aunt Cora lo these many years, and don't realize that she's actually an impostor. Fair enoughâ€"perhaps. But then they all meet the impostor again in her real identity within a few days, and none of them recognize her. That I find very hard to believe.

[close]

I think the difficulty many Christie adaptations have had in making believable disguises when the same character appears under multiple identities demonstrates the flaw in those plots: they wouldn't actually work in reality. That objection may be harder to demonstrate when reading a book and you have no portraits to refer to, but it's still a problem with the realism of the story.

As for the other one you mention:

Spoiler

I had huge issues with the logic of the murder in 4.50 from Paddington, but I forget exactly what it was. Perhaps that the killer would obviously fall under suspicion for the mass poisoning towards the end of the book? I do recall being frustrated because Miss Marple doesn't actually solve the case in a meaningful sense: she never demonstrates a chain of deductions or inferences from the evidence at hand that points to the murderer. Instead she goes the cheap "TV detective" way of just intuiting who the guilty person is and then setting them up to incriminate themselves.

[close]

I don't agree that (at least the ones I mentioned) Christie's plots are as artificial as one tends to see in tv shows. At least Christie doesn't have the "killer made a stupid mistake/miscalculation" all that often (it does happen, but isn't central/things spiral down by that point). Compare to something as ridiculous as the 7-season The Mentalist, where essentially half the episodes are solved by "instant hypnotism" 

I'm a huge Christie fan, but I think by any standard her plots are highly artificial. They are very ingenious puzzles, but they are not realistic crimes, or realistic investigations of crimes. (And that's not what she was going for.) And of course, in real crimes killers make stupid mistakes all the time.

To take a favorite, Five Little Pigs:

Spoiler

the crime itself is fairly realistic for Christie, in that it's a pretty straightforward murder that gets obfuscated by a cover-up based on a misunderstanding. And the investigation (with the twist that Poirot has to investigate retrospectively, fifteen years after it happened) is well-plotted and engagingâ€"but it is not realistic. The testimonies are far too accurate, far too revealing (the murderer provides a written testimony that includes key facts that allow the murder to be brought home to them, while other witnesses give away secrets they've desperately tried to conceal), and Poirot's deductions hinge on recollections of details that simply could not be reliably recovered after all that time. (Like, what flower smell was in a room on a certain occasion when you entered it fifteen years ago, even though you didn't note it at the time, or precisely what words were used in an argument you overheardâ€"and misunderstoodâ€"as you were passing by a room.)

[close]

It's artificial as hell, but very satisfying.

[KyriakosCH]

I personally like the use of believable misdirection, and don't focus on the more debatable part of "couldn't identify person x was the same as y".
In the case of 4.50 from Paddington (and After the Funeral) :

Spoiler

A known fact, which is coincidental, is used to misdirect the police into thinking the murder has to do with a specific location and family. In Paddington the victim could have been a person whose looks the family wasn't really aware of, but knew she existed, and in After the aunt hasn't been seen in years. But in both plots this element (mistaken identity) is secondary to the trick, which is about implicating a location/group of people in something they have nothing to do with.
It may seem artificial to you, but I don't agree and in my view it is elegant and self-supporting; it creates developments naturally, instead of forcing them (which is what happens with convenient/inconvenient inputs in shows where very visible x is inserted to bring about y). Compare to things in tv-written shows, that don't even bother to aspire to elegance and rely blatantly on favorable coincidence - a good example would be the Cassavetes episode in Columbo, where Cassavetes not only makes a series of mistakes, but somehow isn't seen while moving in and out of a car garage because his raincoat and sunglasses make him invisible.
But even worse than that is how he got caught, because he was too stupid to prepare a story about how he got the flower back, despite Columbo very clearly asking him about it and in the meantime being a pest and suspecting him 

[close]

[Snarky]

I'm not disputing that Agatha Christie is a highly skilled constructor of elegant and satisfying puzzles, and I think the misdirect functions well as a twist in these stories (and other times she employed the same trick, particularly in The A.B.C. Murders; The Body in the Library also has a good variation on the gimmick). But are they "believable" in the sense of "these are plans a murderer would in reality make and carry out in order to not get caught" and "these plans would in fact work" (that is, reduce their risk of getting caught)? Hardly.

And again, realistically speaking, criminals do make mistakes, and difficult cases are often solved by fortuitous coincidences. Insisting that the successful solution of the case should not rely on mistakes by the criminal or on coincidence is not to insist on realism or objective believability, but on what is elegant and narratively satisfyingâ€"i.e. artificial.

To get back on topic, I haven't seen many detective mysteries I liked on TV or film recently that aren't on arj0n's list. (Hugh Laurie's adaptation of Why Didn't They Ask Evans was a disappointment after a promising start, with the third episode so rushed as to be almost incoherent.) But let's see…

Series:
Sharp Objects
Big Little Lies
Trial & Error (comedy)
American Vandal (true-crime spoof)

Films:
The Dry (haven't actually seen it, but it got decent reviews and I liked the book a lot)
A Simple Favor
Knives Out (the solution is far-fetched, but still a good film)
A Hero (more of a drama, but has some mystery elements)
Burning

I'll also throw in a book series: The A Good Girl's Guide to Murder trilogy (plus wholly unnecessary prequel novella) by Holly Jackson. Like Veronica Mars, it's a very satisfying mix of YA tropes and proper hardboiled detective mystery (the books ultimately get very dark, as events take their toll on the main character and the people around her), and like Only Murders in the Building it uses the idea of a true-crime podcast host as amateur detective. The books are also really well produced, full of reproductions of the various evidence (photos, interview transcripts, web records, Google Maps printouts, etc.), very much like an updated version of the old-school whodunnits that featured a map of the scene of the crime, and the audio books similarly take advantage of the podcast conceit, with the interview transcripts performed by a full cast. I had some quibbles with each book, both in plotting and prose, but overall they are very compelling. Only, if you do check it out, make sure which version you get: the original version is set in the UK, but the American version of the books relocates it to New England, along with some other changes.

[KyriakosCH]

I will have a look 

[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?

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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.)

[Snarky]

After the disappointments of Amsterdam and See How They Run, I was thrilled that Glass Onion (now on Netflix) lived up to my expectations. It is ridiculously good fun, better than Knives Out; a real tribute to Agatha Christie (the setup is very similar to And Then There Were None, and there are elements of The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side) and the star-studded Christie adaptations of the 1970s, with famous faces popping up in bit parts every other minute.

From the opening, where the world's greatest detective, Benoit Blanc, is spending the pandemic in the bath playing Among Us with real-life Angela Lansbury (username "MurderSheSolved"), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Stephen Sondheim and Natasha Lyonne—and losing—I was grinning throughout. The spoofing of the ultra-rich offers a wealth of great gags, and the jabs at its fictionalized Elon Musk, "Miles Bron," seem prescient in light of his recent Twitter debacle.

The case is not terribly complex or taxing (a plot point in itself), but it's a proper fair-play mystery with all the clues provided. In fact, you actually see the murder committed, though your eyes will probably be too distracted to notice.

[Mandle]

Yup, I loved Glass Onion, although I thought it more an homage to (and some playful poking at) Dan Brown than Christie. I felt more of a Christie vibe with Knives Out. I got the feeling that they might be theming each movie after the style and tropes of a different mystery writer and, if so, then I'm very excited to see where it goes next.

[Snarky]

I felt the opposite: this gave me more Christie vibes than the first one. What do you see as the Dan Brown connection? He's not known as a writer of detective mysteries, is he? (Oh, I suppose you mean the puzzle boxes. Were you sorry they did not play a bigger part?)

It has also been pointed out that Glass Onion owes a lot to Stephen Sondheim's (and Anthony Perkins') The Last of Sheila (1973), which explains his cameo. I haven't seen that, but now I want to.

[Stupot]

I enjoyed Glass Onion too. A lot of the background stuff about Bangladesh etc. went a bit too quickly and quietly for me to process so I never would have had a shot at guessing all the motives and timelines. I almost wish it had been a book so that I might have had good go. But the solution ended up being quite satisfying and I'm looking forward to watching it again to catch more clues.

I did go back and rewatch the scene Snarky referred to and it is quite amazing. They pull off a moonwalking bear in a basketball game trick right in front of our eyes. I wonder how many people actually caught that.

[Mandle]

What do you see as the Dan Brown connection? He's not known as a writer of detective mysteries, is he? (Oh, I suppose you mean the puzzle boxes. Were you sorry they did not play a bigger part?)

Spoiler

Dan Brown's books always start with a murder investigation and end with the solution. It's just that there is always the complexity of something bigger which distract but, at their core, they are murder mysteries.

As for the connections in Glass Onion: Yes, the puzzle boxes but also:

The tiny bit of fuel that is unstable and can blow everything up is straight out of "Angels and Demons". The Elon Musk/Steve Jobs personality-cult figure was done in his recent book "Origins". The Mona Lisa being right at center stage was an obvious wink for me. The setting on the rich "genius's" super futuristic base is quite a Dan Brown trope: some super high-tech facility with grand, soaring architecture usually shows up, (and maybe blows up, like in Glass Onion). The murder via allergy was done in DaVinci Code, although it was peanuts in that.

There were quite a few other nods I remember noticing at the time but would have to rewatch to remember. And I do plan to rewatch it soon.

And also gonna go back and see the "dancing bear" effect from that scene. I totally did not notice!

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[Kini Games]

I'd like to throw Jonathan Creek into the ring.

It's a BBC TV series from the 1990s and 2000s, in which Jonathan (who devises magic tricks for a living) solves a different mystery each episode, enlisted by a tabloid-y true crime writer named Maddy (although she doesn't feature in the later, IMO weaker, series).

The mysteries are usually murders, often of the 'locked-room' variety. The solutions are often clever, if highly elaborate (don't expect to get them before the reveal). The emphasis is always on figuring out how the crime was committed, not whodunnit. There are always a couple of 'mini mysteries' thrown in throughout, so you don't have to wait till the very end to get a taste of that 'aha' feeling.

In many ways, it's similar to Monk (which I've also enjoyed, although I haven't seen that much of it).

The show is old enough that you should be able to find it floating around online somewhere. It used to be on Netflix in the UK, but not anymore. I recommend starting from the beginning. It's not one of those that takes two seasons to find its stride, from what I remember.

[Ali]

It has also been pointed out that Glass Onion owes a lot to Stephen Sondheim's (and Anthony Perkins') The Last of Sheila (1973), which explains his cameo. I haven't seen that, but now I want to.

The Last of Sheila is good, well worth tracking down, but very hard to find. It's playful, but quite a bit darker than Glass Onion - but I can't do content warnings without spoilers. Apparently, it was inspired by the Murder Mystery evenings Sondheim and Anthony Perkins used to throw in Hollywood.

I also don't think Glass Onion is a Dan Brown spoof. I suspect Dan Brown is just borrowing from the same sources. I think the Mona Lisa is there because it's a philistine's idea of a cool painting.

[KyriakosCH]

I watched Glass Onion but unfortunately didn't like it :/
Also I wouldn't say the style is pleasant - you can only name-drop so many celebrities and/or have them guest before the entire movie comes across as non-serious.
More importantly, though...

Spoiler

, why do that to Bautista? (who is actually great in his movies!)

Re Christie moments, when the scene first happened, I recalled that "my students"-related moment in a Poirot story (with the latin teacher or similar). But it was nothing - possibly not even meant as a red herring.
I can't say the plot was very structured (?), for example lots of things could have happened very differently or didn't need to even happen (such as the originally planned murder game).
Come to think of it, what was the point of the party? They'd all already know the other person was dead, if the detective himself didn't see to postpone the news, so is there any sense in having them all there with him? (assuming they'd even come, which they would not)

edit: yes, it also reminds one directly of that Poirot story in (another) Greek island (was it Rhodes?), where the same trick was used with the glass.

[close]

[Ali]

Come to think of it,

Spoiler

what was the point of the party? They'd all already know the other person was dead, if the detective himself didn't see to postpone the news, so is there any sense in having them all there with him? (assuming they'd even come, which they would not)

[close]

You're entitled not to enjoy it, of course! But I find this criticism a little confusing.

Spoiler

Yes, gathering all the suspects together in a remote location with a detective is a silly plan, and something no one would do in real life. But it's also a staple of the whodunit, for obvious reasons. If they hadn't held the party, there would have been no film.

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[KyriakosCH]

Come to think of it,

Spoiler

what was the point of the party? They'd all already know the other person was dead, if the detective himself didn't see to postpone the news, so is there any sense in having them all there with him? (assuming they'd even come, which they would not)

[close]

You're entitled not to enjoy it, of course! But I find this criticism a little confusing.

Spoiler

Yes, gathering all the suspects together in a remote location with a detective is a silly plan, and something no one would do in real life. But it's also a staple of the whodunit, for obvious reasons. If they hadn't held the party, there would have been no film.

[close]

I agree, but imo it's not a good idea to base your entire premise on something which is simply irrational:

Spoiler

if the news was out (that the girl was dead), no one would want to go to a remote island with the killer, so there was no logic in having the billionaire send invitations: it still takes some time to travel to Greece from the US, email alerts would have reached them prior to arriving at the island.
There are plenty of far more believable plots where the suspects are all there with a detective.
I think they sort of tried to "excuse" all glaring lack of logic, by terming the billionaire "an idiot", and the entire group as "s..heads", but in reality this is an extremely bad joke (I feel) on the audience and/OR just very lazy writing.

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[Ali]

We're getting deep into spoilers here, but I'm afraid I still don't understand the objection!

Spoiler

It makes sense for the billionaire to hold their regular get-together as usual, because acting differently (cancelling the meeting, or not sending an invitation to Andi) would indicate that he knew she was dead. It would be foolish for him not to act as if Andi were still alive.

[close]

It's an outlandish premise, certainly - but as far as I can tell, the logic is coherent.

[KyriakosCH]

^Agree to disagree; iirc,

Spoiler

he didn't always send invitations at fixed intervals; and they were all surprised when they received the box,

[close]

and anyway the film has a nicely flamboyant style (besides, Dave Bautista makes everything better  )

[Snarky]

I've edited the earlier posts to hide spoilers, since all this goes directly to the central mystery and identity of the killer.

Spoiler

This was an outing that happened roughly every year, and it had been planned long in advance. (It's basically this group's version of Mittens.) The island getaway had nothing to do with the death of Andi, and it would have been far more suspicious to cancel it before the news of her death came out, than to proceed as already arranged. No, the others would not have known, but he had involved a bunch of outsiders (some guy who studied with Ricky Jay to make the boxes, Gillian Flynn to write the mystery, etc.), and if there was ever an investigation, the fact that he changed his plans would easily have come to light.

If the news had broken as expected (and it's a bit unclear why it doesn't, since Helen only gets Benoit involved days after the death), Miles might have canceled, or he might have rebranded it as a sort of memorial or wake for her—I don't really agree that this group of people would have decided not to go. Remember that Andi's death was thought to be suicide, not murder.

The bit that is a little more difficult to swallow is that Miles would have invited Andi in the first place, given the extremely acrimonious court case and the fact that they all know he swindled her. I think we simply have to accept that his ego is just that enormous.

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Spoiler

, why do that to Bautista? (who is actually great in his movies!)

[close]

Why do what?

Spoiler

Re Christie moments, when the scene first happened, I recalled that "my students"-related moment in a Poirot story (with the latin teacher or similar). But it was nothing - possibly not even meant as a red herring.

[close]

I have no idea what you're talking about. What scene? A little googling finds that there is a Latin teacher in Hallowe'en Party, but it's only a minor character, and a "my students"-related moment doesn't ring a bell either with Christie or this movie.

[KyriakosCH]

Dave Bautista should never

Spoiler

die first ^^ - lots of others died in Dune 1 so his impending doom in Dune 2 doesn't count.

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As for the Poirot plot, I am trying to recall the name of the story, but it is one where the murderers are a couple (the latin-knowing one had killed a person in the past, and the girl covered for him). In the end he punches Poirot - played by Peter Ustinov.
Maybe it is Evil Under the Sun? (most probably)

I doubt it's a red herring/homage, likely just nothing at all

Spoiler

(there's a scene in this Glass Onion movie, where the sister of the dead says something about her students liking "Clue", and it was followed by a rather needless brief silence; but it's nothing, her students were in the third grade, so could play Clue, just made me think at the time of the important plot element in the Christie-adapted movie)

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[Ali]

I seem to remember that Evil Under The Sun involves some Latin (or Italian?) wordplay. Perhaps it isn't worth digging deeper into Glass Onion, I just don't think it's irrational for a character not to do what you would do in that situation.

[Snarky]

Yes, that was apparently added to the Ustinov adaptation; it's not in Christie's novel (and strikes me as a rather cheap kind of clue of the sort you've mentioned you don't like, Kyriakos). I think the Clue-reference is just to set up or underline how Janelle Monae spends the flashback basically playing Clue with all the suspects, crossing off motives and means on her list.

As for Bautista:

Spoiler

Don't actors stereotypically love to do death scenes, and compete fiercely for those parts? And since the film goes into flashback soon afterwards it's not like he has to sit out the rest of the movie or anything.

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[KyriakosCH]

I am just a Bautista fan, won't lie 

[eri0o]

I just watched Glass Onion too, I just want to comment that I did like it very much

Spoiler

and I picked all the little things Miles said wrong while watching so I was thinking "this is a nod that Andi is the smart one"

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I really liked the writing, the midpoint and watching it, I got very curious how they will spin the next movie!

For some reason Detective Blanc (Daniel Craig) feels for me like the anti-Poirot.

Spoiler

just, in the first movie, my memory is that his character was not very smart, and in this second movie for me it felt like they retconned as he is smart but lazy

[close]

One thing I loved about both Knives Out is that they are original movies with original characters, it's good to have new movies that are movies!

[Mandle]

For some reason Detective Blanc (Daniel Craig) feels for me like the anti-Poirot.

Spoiler

just, in the first movie, my memory is that his character was not very smart, and in this second movie for me it felt like they retconned as he is smart but lazy

[close]

One thing I loved about both Knives Out is that they are original movies with original characters, it's good to have new movies that are movies!

Spoiler

Ah, I caught a lot more about his character on rewatches of both films. I feel that in both of them, the way he presents himself is usually for the benefit of the other characters and not the real him... a means to an end.

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[Snarky]

Expanding the question to another medium, are any of you familiar with the less-famous Golden Age authors (loosely construed), so that you can make any recommendations? I've been trying to explore beyond the top names (Christie, Sayers, Carr, Chesterton...), with mixed success.

My ventures so far include Freeman Wills Crofts, R. Austin Freeman, Josephine Tey, Erle Stanley Gardner, Q. Patrick/Patrick Quentin, Cyril Hare, Edmund Crispin, E.C.R. Lorac, Anthony Berkeley, Christianna Brand, E.C Bentley, J. Jefferson Farjeon, Baroness Orczy, Mavis Doriel Hay, John Bude, A.A. Milne, and Miles Burton (aka John Rhode). Out of these, the one I've liked best by far is Berkeley, along with Patrick Quentin. — Though I feel I ought to enjoy Brand in particular a lot more than I do. She is certainly a very clever puzzle-smith, up there with Carr and Christie, but I find her attitude to her characters so flippantly spiteful that I can't bring myself to care about their stories.

I'm thinking of next trying out Ronald Knox, Georges Simenon (whom I've only read a few short stories by), Berkeley's other alias Francis Iles, Henry Wade, H.C. Bailey, Nicholas Blake, Georgette Heyer, Gladys Mitchell, Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, S.S. Van Dine, Mary Roberts Rinehart, and G.D.H & Margaret Cole, as well as giving Allingham and Marsh another go. I would appreciate any tips!

[Mandle]

I would appreciate any tips!

I hereby introduce you to what is probably my favorite book of all time: "Boy's Life" by Robert McCammon. It IS a murder mystery, but also so much more. I dearly love this book and always return to it, and to the lovely town of Zephyr with all it's wonderful characters, once every couple of years.

(Not to be confused with the DeNiro movie "A Boy's Life" in any way, shape, or form)

[KyriakosCH]

Fernando Pessoa did write some detective stories - but I haven't read any of them in full.

[cat]

Because of this thread, we recently watched Knives Out and Glass Onion. Thanks for the recommendation!

Knives Out was brilliant

Spoiler

The story was clever (if a bit far fetched), the characters were interesting (I loved Linda and the Detective), the plot twists were fun and the genre switch was well done. We thoroughly enjoyed watching it. When the detective started about the donut with something missing, we realized that the bottles must have been swapped - it was also suspicious that he didn't show any symptoms after getting the medication. So we had a at least a bit of the "guess what happened" that eri0o was missing.
The resolution at the end was well done and satifying.

[close]

Considering this, Glass Onion was somewhat disappointing.

Spoiler

The beginning was great, I got strong "Evil under the sun" vibes from the setting. However, it was too much over the top for me. The plot fell flat soon - I thought the crime game story was much more interesting than the real crime - and Raeff suspected immediately that the Duke died because of the allergy. The whole "the detective has huge amounts of information that the viewer does not have" also felt unfair in retrospective and if it weren't for this element (i.e. we knew what the detective knew), the whole story would have been even more boring. The ending was boring and unsatisfying. At least, this story had a very good reason why the people and the detective would stay on the island.
While the first part was still enjoyable for various reasons, we agreed that the movie would have been much better if the last third of it had been cut.

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[Mandle]

All good points, cat. I too preferred Knives Out far above Glass Onion. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it was instantly in my top ten favorite murder mystery films of all time, if not top five.

I did love Glass Onion, but not so much for the mystery as for the characters and setting. It was a nice breath of fresh air to watch a movie with over-the-top characters set in a vibrant colorful location after sooooo many movies recently try to be as grey and brooding as possible. Glass Onion remembered to be fun.

It felt like old-times a lot for me and even a bit reminiscent of movies like "Clue" and even the original "Sleuth", although not quite as obviously in-your-face insane as those. (That being said, "Sleuth" is my favorite mystery movie of all time, just for how batshit insane it gets)

[cat]

I fully agree with you, Mandle.

I gave the movie another thought: It is probably because of my expectations, that I didn't like it that much. This can change a lot how media is perceived.

A few years back, I read "Pride and Prejudice" and knew nothing about the book except that it was very famous and the most downloaded book on Project Gutenberg. I didn't even know the genre. I think one of the reasons I enjoyed the book so much is that I read it without any prejudice (pun intended) and made up my mind as I went along.

Spoiler

Glass Onion is actually a fun movie. That gong was hilarious, I was laughing every time I heard it.
At first, I thought casting Edward Norton as the crazy evil guy was a bit boring, because that's just the role he has played in several movies already. But actually, exactly this image helped hiding Miles' stupidity. So in retrospect, it was a great casting decision.
Also the theme was disruption, so maybe they were just taking it a bit further by disrupting the murder mystery and thus the whole movie, leaving nothing but a big (enjoyable) mess behind?

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After considering this, I still think that Glass Onion fails as a murder mystery movie but it is a great society critical comedy.

[KyriakosCH]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride & Prejudice is vastly overrated   

Anyway, I watched Resurrection (it's somewhat mystery, but not really - more in the spoiler). Overall it is worth a watch, imo, but I did have an issue with it.

Spoiler

Seems to be a delusion-story, but the problem here is that it's not very believable that one would manage to mass-delude themselves at 19. Would be more realistic if she was in pre-puberty when she did, or at least early puberty - to go with the child plot. Imo the ending was severely botched stylistically too, but I did like the rest of the movie

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[cat]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride & Prejudice is vastly overrated   

Just like Poe is 

[KyriakosCH]

Well, sort of ^^
But at least Poe was the one who made Europeans bother to read an American writer...
(Borges later on did that for Latin America)

Anyway, not sure how you wouldn't get that there's a nested meaning relating to how the prototype's opening sentence is meant - not entirely in earnest.

[Snarky]

I watched Park Chan-Wook's Decision to Leave this week.

It's more of a psychological thriller (with strong echoes of Vertigo and Basic Instinct) than a whodunnit, but there are some fun investigative twists, and I enjoyed it. The combination of very stylized noir and quirky comedy reminded me a little of the Coen brothers.

I've also checked out the first couple of episodes of Rian Johnson's Poker Face, the Columbo-esque "inverted mystery" series with Natasha Lyonne. I'm not entirely sold yet: her gimmick is that she can immediately tell when someone is lying, and since she's not a detective who has to provide any evidence for her conclusions, it renders the investigations pretty trivial, so far. I've heard the next two episodes are better, so I'll give it another chance.

And I recently read Seishi Yokomizo's The Honjin Murders (1946), a classic Japanese locked-room mystery recently available in English. I found it more interesting for its portrayal of Japanese society before and after WWII (the main narrative takes place in 1937, with a frame story set right after the war) than for the mystery itself, which is convoluted and strained.

[Ali]

And I recently read Seishi Yokomizo's The Honjin Murders (1946), a classic Japanese locked-room mystery recently available in English. I found it more interesting for its portrayal of Japanese society before and after WWII (the main narrative takes place in 1937, with a frame story set right after the war) than for the mystery itself, which is convoluted and strained.

I really enjoyed the 1975 film adaptation, called Death at an Old Mansion in English. The title is particularly enjoyable, because that's the premise of every whodunit. It's a little plodding, but I suspect that the solution is one of those explanations that are more plausible when you see it happening. That said, the whole concept of a locked room mystery is somewhat different in a country where walls can be made of paper.

[Snarky]

I really enjoyed the 1975 film adaptation, called Death at an Old Mansion in English. The title is particularly enjoyable, because that's the premise of every whodunit.

Nice! Maybe I'll try to find it, if only to check out the scruffy bohemian stammering detective.

The book explains that a "honjin" in olden times was a family mansion used as a place for the nobility to stay during official travelâ€"i.e. a very exclusive innâ€"and that families running this kind of establishment were a privileged class, a kind of gentry. So "Old Mansion" is a pretty literal translation into English.

… Although weirdly enough, (at least in the book) the deaths do not in fact take place in a former honjin, the family in question having sold theirs several generations ago and moved to a new homeâ€"though they still jealously guard their status as an historical honjin family.

It's a little plodding, but I suspect that the solution is one of those explanations that are more plausible when you see it happening. That said, the whole concept of a locked room mystery is somewhat different in a country where walls can be made of paper.

Yeah, I can imagine that the solution would play better when you can see it. The written explanation is ludicrously complex and hard both to visualize and believe.

Spoiler

And I don't know if it's meant to be self-deprecating or what, but early on in the book, the detective criticizes just this kind of locked-room solution, saying he finds it disappointing and is "totally unimpressed" by it.

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