My likes and dislikes:
Likes
-a mystery that CAN be solved by the reader, but difficult
-third person pov (not necessary, but I prefer it)
Dislikes
-when the murderer (just an example!) is some random character introduced at the end, completely unguessable, feels like a waste of time
-cheap attempts at psychology, I have a degree in psych and roll my eyes at most “they are actually insane” plot twists
-ambiguous endings, I want to work HARD solving the mystery and get the satisfaction of being right lol
Great: And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (incredibly satisfied when I guessed correctly)
Meh: In The Woods, Tana French (great plot and characters but guessed the psych angle too quickly)
Bleh: The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides (too much psych involvement to suspend my disbelief, obvious ending) Postmortem, Patricia Cornwell (random killer at the end)
by greenest-beans
1 Comment
You’ll wanna search for what’s called fair play mysteries! All the clues are there and are solvable but good ones aren’t easy.
An author I love that does qualify fair play is Anthony Horowitz. Any of his stuff like stand alone Magpie Murders or his series Hawthorn and Horowitz (starting with the Word is Murder) has the author even telling us when he missed a vital clue and dares us to find it!
A recent book that I had a blast trying to solve was called Murder in The Crooked House by Soji Shimada. It’s an older Japanese who dun it and sorta set up like a play with scenes as chapters but it also has a lot of diagrams of the house and murders and doors and it was awesome trying to figure it all out! I think I got like 2 details right in total, let myself not get one bc I don’t know enough about certain things in Japan and the rest just totally went over my head! The motive isn’t something to be figured out but the who and the how was the really fun part.