I love mysteries and always have, ever since I was first introduced to the concept. I would be hard put to tell you what the first one I ever saw might have been: I think it would have to be either Batman in the comics, or a juvenile edition of Sherlock Holmes. Sometime around 1967 or 1968, thereabouts. It was the Hitchcock juveniles that sealed the deal when I found them in the local library, though. I wrote about those here.
Now, when I say “mystery,” I mean the real thing. Not just stories of crime and adventure, though those things are certainly present. But when I’m talking about ‘mystery’ stories proper, there is the added component of the puzzle.
Mysteries are often disparaged by the more literary folks out there, and there is a certain merit to those criticisms; certainly, a lot of Agatha Christie’s books run to a formula, to say nothing of Erle Stanley Gardner or Murder, She Wrote. Those stories always put the puzzle front and center, often to the expense of a believable plot or characters that are recognizably human. Even when it’s done extraordinarily well, when it’s just the puzzle you are still left with something relatively fluffy like Remington Steele or the TV version of Ellery Queen.
Which we love, don’t get me wrong; Ellery Queen with Jim Hutton may be my wife’s favorite show. But ideally, for the best kind of mystery story, you have something that transcends genre; it’s still got a puzzle and plays fair with the reader, but it’s also got the character and thematic things going on that raise the game a bit. It’s worthy just as a story, it’s about something.
That’s a really high bar, and it’s damn hard for writers to clear it. Even the classics tend to fall short.
For example, Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are usually cited as examples of the form– they are wonderfully atmospheric and the characterizations are a delight. But as mysteries, the puzzles are mostly duds ranging from the impossible to the ridiculous: the most famous of them turns on a plan to paint a big dog with glow-in-the-dark paint to scare an old guy into a heart attack. Doyle rarely plays fair with his readers, since the clues Holmes uses are usually invisible to the audience until after Holmes describes them. Here is a prime example of both the good and the bad about Doyle’s Holmes, from probably the best-constructed mystery of the originals, The Red-Headed League.
The characterizations are terrific, both the manic Holmes and the normal Dr. Watson, and Jabez Wilson, a rather dull man caught up in something bizarre. But you can also see that we are told Holmes is a deductive genius after the fact; none of the indications Holmes notices about Wilson are visible to us until after Holmes mentions them.
Which is not to say it isn’t a good story; it is. The Jeremy Brett adaptation even surpasses the original in that we are shown the clues as Holmes gathers them, and they managed to foreshadow Holmes’ battle with Professor Moriarty as well.
But if we put aside sentiment and look at the matter objectively, the best Holmes mysteries— the real thing, fair-play puzzles, I mean– were done long after Doyle’s time. For example, here is a sample from the 2009 Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr.
That one, in terms of being memorable, vivid, interesting and engaging, AND being a solid mystery story, is the one to beat simply on the writing. (Although I agree with Pol Rua that it’s insane to have Mark Strong in a Holmes movie but not as Holmes. I would have probably liked it a lot better if he and Downey had traded parts. Yes, yes, I know, then it would never have gotten made. But still…) And the follow-up, A Game of Shadows, is just awful. Pity.
My feeling is that you didn’t really see literary quality happening in the mystery genre till the hard-boiled guys showed up; Hammett, Chandler, the rest of the Black Mask boys. Chandler’s wonderful essay The Simple Art of Murder lays out the challenge better than anything I could say here.
I suppose the principal dilemma of the traditional or classic or straight-deductive or logic—and—deduction novel of detection is that for any approach to perfection it demands a combination of qualities not found in the same mind. The cool-headed constructionist does not also come across with lively characters, sharp dialogue, a sense of pace and an acute use of observed detail. The grim logician has as much atmosphere as a drawing-board. The scientific sleuth has a nice new shiny laboratory, but I’m sorry I can’t remember the face. The fellow who can write you vivid and colorful prose simply won’t be bothered with the coolie labor of breaking down unbreakable alibis.
Even Chandler, who defined the challenge for all of us, couldn’t quite pull it off; his mysteries are much more about atmosphere and feeling than they are about the puzzle. The Big Sleep, which made his reputation, is kind of a hot mess, puzzle-wise, and one murder just gets completely forgotten.
Nevertheless, it can be done. Here are a few of my picks for classic mystery puzzle stories with genuine punch to them, from comics, prose, and film.
*
C Is For Corpse, by Sue Grafton.
This was the first of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series I ever read and it instantly made me a fan. Not all the Graftons are traditional mysteries, but this one is, and it’s brilliant: He was young-maybe twenty or so-and he must once have been a good-looking kid. Kinsey could see that. But now his body was covered in scars, his face half-collapsed. It saddened Kinsey and made her curious. She could see he was in a lot of pain. But for three weeks, as Kinsey watched him doggedly working out at the local gym, putting himself through a grueling exercise routine, he never spoke.
Then one Monday morning when there was no one else in the gym, Bobby Callahan approached her. His story was hard to credit: a murderous assault by a tailgating car on a lonely rural road, a roadside smash into a canyon 400 feet below, his Porsche a bare ruin, his best friend dead. The doctors had managed to put his body back together again-sort of. His mother’s money had seen to that. What they couldn’t fix was his mind, couldn’t restore the huge chunks of memory wiped out by the crash. Bobby knew someone had tried to kill him, but he didn’t know why. He knew he had the key to something that made him dangerous to the killer, but he didn’t know what it was. And he sensed that someone was still out there, ready to pounce at the first sign his memory was coming back. He’d been to the cops, but they’d shrugged off his story. His family thought he had a screw loose. But he was scared-scared to death. He wanted to hire Kinsey.
His case didn’t have a whole lot going for it, but he was hard to resist: young, brave, hurt. She took him on. And three days later, Bobby Callahan was dead.
Kinsey Millhone never welshed a deal. She’d been hired to stop a killing. Now she’d find the killer.
It grabs you and never lets go, and the plotting of the puzzle is absolutely, completely fair.
*
The Silent Speaker, by Rex Stout: The head of a Federal agency is bludgeoned to death just before giving a speech to an industrial association. Public opinion quickly turns against the association, which is thought to have been involved in the murder. The association hires Wolfe to find the murderer in hope of ending the public relations disaster.
Here’s the thing; this blurb barely scratches the surface. First of all, Stout’s genius move was to knit together the two schools of mystery-writing Chandler describes in his essay– Nero Wolfe is the eccentric logician, but his aide, Archie Goodwin, is a wisecracking hard-boiled private eye who narrates the stories.
Stout was no slouch as a humorist and he soon found the perfect tone for the series– murder mysteries laced with acerbic wit.
The Silent Speaker was the first of the postwar Wolfes, it came out in 1946. Rex Stout had been successful with Wolfe for over a decade, but he took a break from the series to concentrate on the war effort. And the break really helped; it was clear that he wanted to come back with a bang. The plot is brilliantly constructed but it also lets Stout use a number of wonderful comedic set pieces (like Wolfe faking a nervous breakdown) and it also has lots of great character bits for all the supporting cast, especially Archie falling for femme fatale Phoebe Gunther, and Wolfe having to come to the rescue of his perennial adversary in officialdom, NYPD Inspector Cramer.
It was adapted for the A & E television series in its second season and they did it proud, particularly Cynthia Watros as Phoebe. Here’s a clip where you can see her really take it downtown.
Do check out either the book or the TV movie — or both– if you get a chance.
*
Ms. Tree: I, For An Eye by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty.
I’ve written enough about Max Allan Collins in this space that it shouldn’t come as a surprise he makes the list. Probably the best of his mystery stories– that function both as mysteries and historical novels– would be his Nate Heller books, True Crime in particular. But I will always love the old-school hardboiled whodunits that he pioneered in Ms. Tree, and the original I, For An Eye remains one of the best mysteries ever done for comics.
Since I mentioned Ms. Tree, I should add that the inspiration for that series, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels, has a fair number of genuinely clever mystery plots intertwined with all the mayhem. Of those, my pick for the all-time best is the second Hammer, My Gun Is Quick. Intricately plotted, full of action, and it has an even better payoff than its predecessor I, the Jury.
It was made into a movie in 1957, but honestly Hammer didn’t have much luck on film till Stacy Keach came along in the 1980s. I’d stick with the novels.
*
I certainly can’t ignore one of the greatest mystery series ever done for television– Columbo. Although most of the time this show falls into the puzzle-above-all category, there were a few that rose above that to do stories that were genuinely compelling on a literary level. I’m thinking in particular of the fourth-season entry, An Exercise In Fatality.
Most of you probably know the formula for Columbo stories stood the traditional whodunit on its head; we in the audience saw the criminal commit the crime, we were given every detail; the mystery became how Lieutenant Columbo would find the fatal flaw in the plan that would allow him to bring the killer to justice. In this particular entry, we have Robert Conrad as the malignant narcissist Milo Janus, a fitness guru with a line of workout facilities and other brand-name stuff, who has murdered his accountant and wants to make it look like an accident.
This one is especially memorable for the battle of wits between Columbo and Janus, including one of the very rare instances when Columbo tipped his hand and let the killer know he suspected him… and Janus jeers at him and tells him to pound sand. It’s studiously fair in its construction of the mystery, and has one of the best reveals of the series, I think, especially Columbo’s last line. I won’t spoil it, but you should really check it out.
*
If I was going to pick a novel as the best-ever mystery I’ve ever read, in terms of story construction, literary merit, and just being all-around brilliant, I think I’d have to go with Ross MacDonald’s The Chill.
In The Chill a distraught young man hires private investigator Lew Archer to track down his runaway bride. But no sooner has he found Dolly Kincaid than Archer finds himself entangled in two murders, one twenty years old, the other so recent that the blood is still wet. What ensues is a detective novel of nerve-racking suspense, desperately believable characters, and one of the most intricate plots ever spun by an American crime writer.
I’d agree with that assessment. Now, Ross MacDonald is one of those guys that tended to come back to the same idea over and over– a decades-old family secret has echoes that result in a modern tragedy — but this one is the purest expression of it and he just knocked it out of the park. In particular, the plotting of this thing is so beautiful that, when the solution is revealed, you the reader have the moment of realization at the same time as Lew Archer. Seriously. You aren’t there way ahead of him (like most episodes of, say, Castle) and you aren’t (unfairly) way behind him like the reader usually is with Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe. The identity of the killer dawns on you the same moment it dawns on Archer and that makes it a thousand times more horrifying and powerful. I am in awe of that achievement; I first read the book thirty-something years ago and I still think it’s flatly the greatest straight-up mystery novel anyone’s ever written.
There have been some Lew Archer novels done for the movies but this one never was. Probably just as well; I don’t think it could be done, at least not well. You need Archer’s internal monologue to sell it. Voice-over’s just too clumsy a device for that in film and without it, it just falls flat.
Harris Yulin did manage a wonderful audio-only version of MacDonald’s Sleeping Beauty, which is not quite as good as The Chill but I’d call it a strong second place. It was done with a full cast of characters played by a who’s who of Hollywood journeyman actors. Sadly, it only exists as a set of cassettes. I keep hoping it will show up on CD or download somewhere, but so far no luck.
+
An achievement equal to– maybe even surpassing– The Chill, in terms of doing a traditional whodunit mystery story that is actually about something, and the one I usually answer with when I’m asked to name my favorite fair-play mystery of all time, is not a book at all. It’s a television show. Veronica Mars.
First of all, it’s the kind of genre mashup I can never resist: a plucky high school heroine in the style of Nancy Drew…
… but set squarely in the sun-baked, corrupt Southern California of Raymond Chandler.
Dissipated rich people, decadent movie stars, gang violence and crooked law enforcement. Through all this teenage Veronica and her father, disgraced former sheriff turned private eye Keith Mars, navigate a landscape where nothing is as it seems, committed to doing the right thing no matter what it costs them. The first two seasons of the show were the best; each had a season-long arc with an overriding mystery to solve, and the payoff in each finale was worth the wait. Individual episodes usually had a pretty good mystery driving the action as well.
Season 1 trailer:
And here’s Season 2:
Season 3 falls off a bit but the Kickstarter-backed reunion movie was a delight. Yeah, we backed it, enough to get the DVD when it was released.
There are two follow-up novels from the creator, Rob Thomas, as well. And now we are getting a revival on Hulu. Julie and I are counting the days.
*
So there you go. Those are my picks for the best in some fifty years of reading mystery stories. I could have kept going, believe me. There’s A Dark-Adapted Eye, A Grave Talent, The Dreadful Lemon Sky, any of a dozen different Sara Paretsky books (Burn Marks, especially) but I have to stop somewhere. And there’s probably a bunch more I forgot, but I expect many of those will be pointed out to me in the comments.
Back next week with something cool.
Housekeeping note– if you should happen to click on one of the Amazon links above and you end up purchasing an item– ANY item, not necessarily the one at the link — the Junk Shop gets a referral fee. If you feel a shopping spree coming on, please consider using our gateway. It helps to defray the costs around here and then we don’t have to put up annoying ads. Thanks.
One reason I love Watchmen is because it’s the best murder mystery in comics, and it’s very fair play. All the clues are there, you just have to read carefully! I think that writer has a future in comics, man.
I hate to tell you, man… but that particular writer is retiring soon and will probably never grace us with his subtle prose ever again.
The horror, the horror ….
Another couple of whodunits that I like is The Mystery Play by Grant Morrison and Jon J. Muth, and Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell.
Both are awesome, but you have to read carefully to figure out the solution for one of them.
Good point about Watchmen, Other Greg.
The Chill: that one’s been sitting on my shelf of shame for a while now (also, I wish the edition I have had that cool cover you posted). I really need to get to it…
I have to disagree with you a bit about C is for Corpse. I read that and G is for Gumshoe about a year ago, and while both are well written, I think the plotting could have been touched up a bit. In the first one especially, once I got done, I remember thinking that there were some scenes and plot points that either didn’t make sense or were just superfluous. That’s not to say that they aren’t worth reading – Grafton kind of sucks you into Milhone’s world from basically the first sentence, and her characters and dialog especially are quite believable. Also, Kinsey Milhone is just a great character.
Since you mentioned Collins, I have to say that I really like the mystery element to his Quarry novels, i.e., trying to figure out who ordered the hit – although I’m not sure that those can be considered ‘fair play,’ in that Collins seems to engage in a little misdirection in many of them.
Greg, I’m with you regarding Ms. Tree. I’ve only been able to find a small number of the Eclipse single issues. I do have all of the Ms. Tree’s that DC put out.
Anyway, I’ve wanted so long for someone to collect the original series. I noticed on Amazon that Titan has a TPB collection of Ms. Tree that one can preorder, supposedly with a February 2019 release date. I do hope this is true and that they plan to collect all of the issues from the 80’s.
Have you heard anything about this?
I’m astonished nobody’s collected Ms. Tree. I have a goodly number of the Eclipses, but gave up when they started reprinting the Mike Hammer knockoff Johnny Dynamite as a backup feature. That left me wasting half the purchase price on something I didn’t like as much as they did.
My first mystery was Gardner’s Case of the Duplicate Daughter, which does give a fair clue, though not one anyone’s likely to spot. But then I think “fair play” is overrated — a number of mysteries I’ve read involve complicated timelines or maps to figure out whether the prime suspect could really have nobbled Mr. Boddy in the kitchen with a spanner, and even if all the information is there, that’s more effort than I want to make.
I think a big part of Perry Mason’s appeal was that it was the first adult fiction book I’d read. Reading them was, I vaguely imagined, a window into adult life.
First mystery on screen: some of the Avengers episodes.
Enthusiastic agreement for Veronica Mars and the A&E Nero Wolfe. I love Columbo, also McMillan and Wife (while I didn’t list her in comments to the crushes article, Susan St. James was a big one of mine).
There are four collections. Three volumes of The Files of Ms. Tree — here, here, and here –and an odd little one-off paperback of the later Renegade run here. There is also a novelization of the first two Eclipse storylines here, but I like the comics version of I, For an Eye much better.
Just that it’s happening. I am assuming it’s something through Hard Case Comics, same as Quarry’s War. I really hope it’s just a straight reprinting from the beginning.
You really do. Spoils you for Archer, though, everything after is a letdown. Even Sleeping Beauty and Black Money are kind of photocopies of copies. As for the movies, well, I finally got to see Paul Newman in Harper and wondered what all the shouting was about. Without the internal monologue there’s not much there.
It’s funny that Greg brought up Watchmen. I loved that part of it too, and I had sussed out that it had to be Adrian by #9; but in those pre-internet days I had no one to try my theory on. I felt validated in a bit of a lonely nerd way when the reveal came though.
Just like to add The Maze Agency, from Mike Barrand Adam Hughes. Fair play mysteries and a bit of Moonlighting/Remington Steele romantic stuff. Most of the mysteries weren’t that intricate, given the space they had for the story; but, usually formed a good single issue plot.
When I was a kid, the local radio station played the Ellery Queen Minute Mystery, in the morning. They gave you the situation and clues, then took calls for the solution; then played the recorded solution. I found a few recordings of it on-line, a while back.
It’s a dang crime that Maze Agency isn’t still in print.
Greg:
Did you consider Guy Davis and Gary Reed’s BAKER STREET from Caliber a fair play mystery or not?
I don’t generally think of it that way, but then I didn’t think of WATCHMEN when I was writing this either. So sure.
If you didn’t think of it that way, then it may well not be. I was genuinely just curious. I mean, it’s definitely a murder mystery and Davis and Reed clearly were influenced by the Holmesian format, but that doesn’t mean it was a true fair play. I don’t really have a case to make for it one way or the other.
As a fellow Stout fan, The Silent Speaker was the first one I thought of. That said, sometimes I think Prisoner’s Base is even better. One thing that bothers me a little about The Silent Speaker is that it’s one of what I call “find the solution” books, in which Wolfe has to find an object (or a box, or whatever) that has all the answers. It was quite common for Stout, particularly in the early years.
Curious to see what everyone thinks of “The Last of Sheila,” a favorite of mine that doesn’t really seem to be widely known anymore (I’m not sure how popular it was when it came out in 1973; maybe it was never widely known).
An all-star cast for the ’70s — Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Mason, James Coburn, Ian McShane and Raquel Welch.
But the reason it SHOULD at least be on people’s radar (even if they don’t like it) is that it was written by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim; they apparently hosted murder-mystery nights and decided to make it into a movie, basing the characters on real people they knew and worked with.
Definitely worth checking out if you haven’t seen it; it’ll be on TCM this Friday.
It’s an excellent, tricky movie. I love it, and my mystery-loving niece does too.
One that occurred to me yesterday: A Shadow pulp novel called Mox. Multiple clues point at one character as the killer Mox, and every time he insists there’s a perfectly rational explanation … and it turns out he’s right, and not the killer. It plays so perfectly with formula, i was blindsided.
Mox was one of the first I picked up, back in the day when Pyramid was doing them with the Steranko covers. Still a favorite. Most of the Shadows were whodunits in some form, but it was usually pretty easy to figure out who the villain was. Mox was a good tough one though.