“Which is exactly why we have to keep startling the reader in a desperate attempt to keep one step ahead: The hero did it. The victim did it. Watson, did it, Holmes did it, it’s the butler, it’s all of them, it’s none of them—”
–from Accomplice by Rupert Holmes
Hey, let’s twist again! (Like we did last summer, remember?) I pick up every puzzler hoping to be both astounded and humbled by some stunning revelation lurking within. The classic mystery novel is the magic show of literature, and the illusionist’s audience can be divided into two camps: those who hope to guess the trick in advance (often incorrectly) and those of us who eagerly hope to be fooled, misdirected, and stunned by the magician’s craft . . . because it makes us feel like children again, and sustains our hope that there might be real magic in the world.
As a reader I live for twists, plot turns, gasp-inducing reveals and reversals . . . and as a novelist and playwright, my characters live or die by them as well. So I try to ensure each new work of my own comes with a free crackerjack surprise in every box. For example, my play Solitary Confinement at The Kennedy Center saved its biggest twist for the company bow, and totally fooled the then-President of the United States (perhaps not my most challenging feat), and my latest novel Murder Your Employer attempts to bamboozle you at Three-card Monte as many times as there are cards in the deck.
I’ve been asked to list a few of the mysteries that have, over the years, caught me napping while I was riveted with suspense. Even listing them here is counter to their authors’ intent, tipping you off that there’s an accomplished confidence game in the works, but I’ll do my best not to tip their hands. Most importantly, let me assure you that nowhere in what follows will you find those two most loathsome words in literature’s vocabulary: spoiler alert. Read on, without blinders.
THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD by Agatha Christie
Poor unjolly Roger. One of the most famous victims in mystery literature, and yet how many of us who’ve been so satisfyingly suckered can recall why he was murdered? This was only the third Hercule Poirot novel, and it comfortably resembles the tone and pace of Christie’s first well-wrought Poirot, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, while cloaking one of the most audacious reveals in all of detective fiction. We are not far away from its 100th anniversary. If you’ve never read it, do treat yourself to a cornerstone of the Golden Age, written by a young woman who was only just beginning to invent herself as well as most of detective fiction’s most stunning twists and tropes—since borrowed by many but bettered by none.
A KISS BEFORE DYING by Ira Levin and RANDOM HARVEST by James Hilton
I list these two titles—which couldn’t be more dissimilar in plot, tone, and protagonist—directly beneath Roger Ackroyd because the triumvirate represent three books which were adapted for the screen but whose major reversals could only be served most effectively in book form. In all three instances, the legerdemain of their reveals was diluted by the visual medium; only in print do they triumph. SIDEBAR: I got to know Ira Levin in the mid-seventies; at one point, we were hoping to write a mystery musical together. He won the first of his three Edgars at the ripe old age of 26, more than a decade before penning Rosemary’s Baby, Stepford Wives, and the scoliotic first act of Deathtrap, which Ira told me he had once considered titling “A Better Mousetrap.” (!)
THE SIAMESE TWINS MYSTERY by Ellery Queen
I read this in college and two aspects of it impacted me back then. First, we all love a mystery where the suspects are trapped in a mansion during a blizzard, don’t we? (If you don’t, how did you get my number?) Turning that trope inside out, here sleuth Ellery Queen and his father Inspector Richard Queen are trapped in a mansion during a raging forest fire. The mystery features a Queen trademark: revealing multiple solutions midway through the novel, then discarding each explanation even as we believe them to be correct. The book’s solution is both a complete surprise and no surprise at all, which makes it all the more surprising. The same might be said for Queen’s small-town classic THE MURDERER IS A FOX.
THE LAMP OF GOD by Ellery Queen
A novella by Queen that has been my textbook example of How to Hide a Clue. John Cleese once said that, on his farcical TV series Fawlty Towers, when he was obliged to convey some expositional information to the audience, he tried to imbed it in one of his very best jokes, so that the audience would process it as a laugh and not a creaking plot point. Here, Queen moves heaven and earth to plant a clue within what might seem like poetic self-indulgence. (This last sentence was a clue, by the way.)
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION by Agatha Christie
Christie again, of course. This legendary title began its life as a humble short story circa 1928 entitled “Traitor’s Hand,” with the payoff to its remarkable conception delivered in the story’s final sentence. (No, Toby, don’t go and read the final sentence first, please!) Prior to Covid, a Broadway producer commissioned me to write a two-act version of Christie’s three-act stage play. As Christie did in taking her short story from page to stage, and as Billy Wilder did in taking it from stage to the screen, I honored the tradition of adding yet another twist to its original ending, as well as newly harvesting some seeds sown by Dame Agatha but never nurtured . . . all this with the approval of Christie’s estate. I was well-paid for the assignment, but I can now reveal I would have paid them for the privilege. Warning: more Christie ahead for the next two miles.
THE BLACK SHRIKE aka THE DARK CRUSADER by Ian Stuart aka Alistair MacLean
MacLean was an expert storyteller. He could sidle you up to a character and within seconds of your meeting they felt real on the page. He also knew how to unspool a narrative, drawing you forward, forcing you to turn the page, the plot deepening and layering until you no longer know which way is up and what way is out. Considering his books don’t bill themselves as mysteries, he embeds an avalanche of twists within his tales of high adventure. Ice Station Zebra and Bear Island are excellent examples, (neither book resembling the movies which bore their title). But I’ve chosen here one of his lesser-known works, The Dark Crusader, because, in the 007 era, it was the antidote and, ultimately, the anti-Christ to Bond, James Bond. I found its gradual reveal most memorable and troubling.
THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY by G.K. Chesterton
One of the most beautifully written books in the English language, a barely post-Edwardian novel of anarchists and espionage, and absolutely not that at all.
___________________________________
MORE CHRISTIE
___________________________________
Do I surprise you? Dame Agatha has been plundered and parodied so often that those who’ve never read her think they know her work. Christie is not Colonel Mustard in the Ballroom with the Wrench. She was a most romantic author, whose stories were often driven by oppressive relationships and the painful yearnings of two people madly in love. Death on the Nile, The Body in the Library (where she made touchingly clear that—even in a cozy—corpses matter), The ABC Murders and the cruel Murder in Mesopotamia. But the titles aren’t important. Pick any “C” for “Christie” and she won’t steer you wrong, even as she misdirects you every time.
*
It’s been my pleasure to share these favorites with you. If you have your own favorite twisted plots to champion, let me know, please. I can be found in any city’s revolving restaurant, delighting in the view and hoping that in twenty minutes I’ll be seeing things completely the other way around.
