A field guide to clues, alibis, red herrings, suspicious gardeners—and the pleasure of being fooled

Terry R. Bacon

Reading a mystery is not complicated.

Begin on page one. Continue through the body in the library, the missing will, the unexplained footprint, the second body, the suspiciously knowledgeable gardener, and the detective’s baffling interest in a half-eaten scone. Stop when everyone has been assembled in the drawing room, and the one person you trusted is exposed as a homicidal taxidermist.

Those are the basic instructions.

But there is reading a mystery, and there is reading a mystery well.

Mysteries make an unusual offer to their readers. You may sit quietly and let the detective do the work, enjoying the atmosphere, the characters, and the gratifying removal of unpleasant people. Or you may participate. The author places facts in front of you, hides some in plain sight, supplies innocent explanations for suspicious behavior, and encourages you to construct a theory. Then, near the end, the detective explains why your theory was nonsense.

This is not rude. You paid for the experience.

A good mystery is really two stories. The first is the story the author tells you: Lord Pemberton was found dead in the conservatory, the French doors were locked, and seven people wanted him dead. The second is the story you reconstruct from everything the author tried to make you misunderstand.

Reading well means paying attention to both.

First, Determine What Kind of Mystery You Are Reading

Not every mystery is asking the same question.

A traditional whodunit asks who committed the crime. A howdunit asks how someone entered a locked room, crossed a field without leaving footprints, or poisoned a victim who ate nothing that everyone else did not also eat. A whydunit may reveal the killer early and focus on the motive, the psychology, or the moral history behind the crime.

A police procedural asks how investigators will turn suspicion into evidence. A thriller may tell you who the villain is on page twelve and ask whether the protagonist can stop him before the dam explodes, the virus escapes, or the vice president discovers that his parachute was packed by an intern.

Some mysteries are less interested in identifying a criminal than in uncovering a buried past. The mystery may be what happened to a child forty years ago, why an apparently happy woman disappeared, or what secret has poisoned a family for generations.

Before trying to solve the book, determine what game it is playing.

Readers sometimes become irritated because a psychological thriller does not provide enough clues to identify the killer. But that book may not be offering a fair-play puzzle. It may be asking whether the narrator is sane, whether a marriage is recoverable, or whether anyone in the story has told the truth since 1997.

Classic puzzle mysteries often promise a kind of competition between reader and detective. Ronald Knox and S. S. Van Dine famously formulated rules intended to preserve “fair play,” including the principle that the reader should have access to the clues the detective receives. Their commandments now sound delightfully severe—Van Dine also wanted romance kept out of detective stories, presumably because murder is serious business and no one should be kissing near the fingerprints—but the underlying bargain remains important: the solution should emerge from information the story has made available.

Not every modern mystery honors that bargain. But it helps to know whether you have been invited to compete, observe, worry, or merely hang on while unreliable people make terrible decisions.

Separate Facts from Interpretations

This is probably the most useful habit a mystery reader can develop.

Suppose the narrator tells us:

Gerald looked startled when he heard that Vanessa was dead.

What do we actually know?

Perhaps Gerald stopped speaking. Perhaps he dropped his cup. Perhaps his face went pale.

“Startled” is not a fact. It is an interpretation. Gerald may be frightened because he killed Vanessa. He may be shocked because he saw her alive ten minutes ago. He may be relieved, horrified, confused, or suddenly aware that the police will discover the entirely unrelated embezzlement he has been conducting through the village flower committee.

Mysteries constantly slide interpretations into descriptions.

Someone “recognizes” a voice over the telephone. A witness “sees” the victim walking through the garden. A doctor “establishes” the time of death. A detective concludes that a locked door means no one could have left the room.

Each statement may contain a fact wrapped in an assumption.

• What was directly observed?
• What was inferred?
• Who made the inference?
• What alternative explanation might fit the same observation?

This does not require keeping a forensic spreadsheet unless that brings you joy. It requires only a small, useful resistance to accepting the label attached to the evidence.

The detective often succeeds not because she sees something no one else sees, but because everyone else has mistaken an interpretation for a fact.

Be Suspicious of Problems That Get Solved Too Quickly

Mystery readers naturally focus on unanswered questions. But they should also watch questions that appear to have been answered.

A window was open.

“The room was stuffy,” someone explains.

A woman was seen leaving the victim’s house after midnight.

“She was returning a borrowed book.”

A gunshot was heard at ten fifteen.

“There were fireworks at the football field.”

All perfectly plausible. Everyone relaxes. The investigation moves on. The reader files the matter under RESOLVED and begins worrying about the muddy shoe in the pantry.

That mental filing system is precisely what the writer is counting on.

Human beings like closure. Once given a reasonable explanation, we stop generating alternatives. Mystery writers exploit this with the cheerful professionalism of casino operators.

Keep the question open a little longer.

The explanation may be true, but ask whether it completely accounts for the oddity. Why was the window open on a freezing night? Why return a book at midnight? Did anyone confirm the fireworks occurred at exactly ten fifteen? Was the sound even a gunshot?

The most dangerous sentence in a mystery may be: “That explains it.”

Sometimes it does. Sometimes it merely persuades you to stop looking.

Look at the Clue—and at the Spotlight Shining on It

Readers often ask, “Is this a clue?”

In a mystery, almost anything can be a clue. The better question is:

Why has the author made me notice this?

A broken watch may establish the time of death. It may have been deliberately smashed to create a false time of death. It may reveal that the victim was left-handed. It may be evidence of a struggle, a family connection, a secret visit, or an author who knows readers become excited whenever jewelry stops working.

The amount of attention a detail receives matters.

Some clues are hidden by being mentioned casually. Others are hidden by being made so dramatic that we interpret them in the wrong way. Agatha Christie was particularly skilled at placing important evidence among domestic trivia while directing suspicion toward more theatrical behavior. The hysterical niece may be hiding an affair. The moved chair may be hiding the murderer. Or the chair may be hiding nothing at all, which is why we have trust issues.

Pay attention not only to the object but to the presentation:

• Is it mentioned once and never discussed?
• Is it repeatedly emphasized?
• Does a character provide an explanation before anyone asks?
• Does the detective appear interested and then abruptly change the subject?
• Does the author surround it with more dramatic information?

The clue itself is part of the puzzle. So is the management of your attention.

Treat Every Alibi as a Short Story

An alibi is not a fact. It is a narrative produced for a particular audience.

“I was at the cinema from eight until eleven.”

That sounds clear until you begin asking impolite questions.

Who saw you enter? Who saw you leave? Did anyone see you during the film? Did you buy the ticket yourself? Does the ticket establish your presence or only that someone purchased a ticket? Was the film so bad that you could have committed a murder, returned during the second act, and still understood the plot?

A good alibi usually contains three elements:

1. A claimed location.
2. A claimed time.
3. Some form of verification.

All three can be manipulated.

A witness may be lying. The witness may be mistaken. The clock may be wrong. The suspect may have arranged for someone else to answer a telephone, send a message, wear a distinctive coat, or stand with his back to a conveniently nearsighted observer.

Also ask what the alibi actually proves. Being seen in a restaurant at nine does not establish where someone was at eight thirty. Hearing a person’s voice does not prove that person was physically present. Receiving a text establishes that a text was sent, not who sent it.

The strongest-looking alibi may deserve the closest attention because someone has taken considerable trouble to make it look strong.

In ordinary life, an elaborate alibi may indicate that a person is married. In a mystery, it usually means something worse.

The most important person in a mystery may not be the character with the strongest motive. It may be the character who decides what everyone else knows.

• Who discovered the body?
• Who established the timeline?
• Who explained the family relationships?
• Who identified the voice on the telephone?
• Who told the police which door was normally locked?
• Who said the victim always took sleeping pills at ten?

Notice Who Controls the Information

These people are not merely supplying information. They are framing the case.

The housekeeper who explains everyone’s movements, the secretary who manages appointments, the doctor who estimates the time of death, and the relative who provides the family history all possess narrative power. They help determine which possibilities seem reasonable.

Pay particular attention to the person who translates unfamiliar circumstances for the detective. When everyone relies on one character to explain how the business works, how the household operates, or what the victim “would never have done,” that character may be shaping the investigation from inside it.

This does not mean the helpful secretary is always the murderer. Sometimes the helpful secretary is merely helpful, a possibility the experienced mystery reader finds increasingly difficult to accept.

Remember That Everyone Has a Secret—but Not Necessarily the Secret

In a well-populated mystery, nearly every suspect is hiding something.

This is not because the village has unusually poor moral standards, although it may. It is because innocent people with nothing to conceal make terrible suspects.

One character is having an affair. Another has gambling debts. A third forged a signature, lied about a diploma, stole medication, secretly visited the victim, or has been writing extremely unkind anonymous reviews of the local bakery.

All these people may lie to the detective.

But lying does not prove murder. Suspicious behavior does not prove murder. Even destroying evidence may not prove murder if the evidence concerns another secret.

This is the engine behind many effective red herrings. The misleading clue often points to something real. It simply points to the wrong wrongdoing.

Ask two separate questions:

What is this person concealing?

Does that secret explain the central crime?

The distinction matters. Otherwise, every adulterer, embezzler, blackmailer, addict, and person who claimed to enjoy the victim’s poetry would have to be arrested.

Do Not Eliminate Someone for Being Too Obvious

Experienced readers know the first plausible suspect is probably innocent.

Writers know experienced readers know this.

The obvious suspect may therefore be innocent, guilty, framed, pretending to be framed, or counting on you to think no competent writer would make the obvious suspect guilty.

Welcome to the genre.

Do not eliminate a suspect simply because the evidence appears too neat. “Too obvious” is not evidence. It is a theory about what an author would or would not do.

Instead ask whether the case is structurally complete.

Does the suspect have motive, means, and opportunity? Does the physical evidence actually connect the person to the crime? Does the theory explain the strange details, or only the large ones? Why would the suspect behave in ways that draw attention? Is the apparent stupidity genuine, accidental, or part of a double bluff?

The genre-savvy reader can become so determined not to be fooled that she talks herself out of the correct answer.

Sometimes the butler did it. This is hard on butlers, but statistically inevitable.

Look for What Is Missing

Clues are not always things that appear. Sometimes the clue is an absence.

• The dog did not bark.
• The victim did not resist.
• No one heard the car arrive.
• A woman described as inseparable from her phone did not answer it.
• A devoted son never asked how his father died.
• Someone who claims never to have met the victim knows the victim hated carnations.

Negative-space clues are powerful because readers naturally concentrate on what the author shows us. It takes more effort to imagine what should have happened but did not.

Ask:

• What would normally be present here?
• What reaction would I expect?
• What routine has been interrupted?
• What information should this person know?
• What information should this person not know?
• Who has failed to do something ordinary?

Sherlock Holmes’s famous clue involving a dog that did nothing remains memorable because it turns absence into evidence. A silent dog may tell us more than a room full of shouting suspects.

This principle also applies to character behavior. A person who reacts too strongly may be suspicious, but so may a person who shows no curiosity at all.

Murder tends to generate questions. The person who already knows the answers may forget to ask them.

Question the Assumption That Makes the Crime Impossible

Impossible-crime mysteries depend upon assumptions disguised as facts.

The room was locked; therefore, no one entered or left.

The victim was seen alive at ten, therefore the murder occurred after ten.

A witness recognized the victim’s coat; therefore, the person wearing it was the victim.

A voice came from inside the room; therefore, someone alive was speaking inside the room.

When a crime appears impossible, list the facts that make it impossible. Then examine whether each is truly a fact.

Usually, the solution does not require discovering teleportation, invisible assassins, or a previously unmentioned species of venomous moth. It requires discarding one false premise.

G. K. Chesterton argued that the aim of a mystery is not confusion itself but the eventual illumination—the moment when what appeared chaotic becomes suddenly intelligible. The darkness exists to make the arrival of light more satisfying.

That moment works because the solution often replaces a complicated impossibility with a simple explanation.

• The door was locked—but it was locked before the murder.
• The victim was seen—but not clearly.
• The poison was in the ice, not the drink.
• The dead man made the telephone call—but hours earlier, on a recording.

The reader’s task is not always to find a missing fact. Sometimes it is to stop believing one that was never established.

Read the Detective, Too

The detective’s questions are clues.

Notice what receives a follow-up. Notice which answer appears to satisfy the detective. Notice when the detective becomes interested in something that seems trivial, then refuses to explain why.

A detective who asks repeatedly about the weather is probably not considering a career change. A detective who checks everyone’s shoes may have noticed something on the floor. A detective who seems uninterested in the obvious motive may already understand it and be pursuing the piece that does not fit.

Also watch when the detective deliberately changes the subject. Sometimes the detective does not want the suspect to know which answer mattered.

The detective may make mistakes, particularly in novels with damaged, drunk, exhausted, lovesick, recently suspended, or otherwise commercially promising investigators. But the pattern of inquiry often reveals the shape of the problem.

Do not merely listen to the answers. Watch which questions the detective thinks are worth asking.

Do Not Confuse Guessing with Solving

You may identify the murderer on page forty because:

• the spouse is always guilty;
• the least suspicious person must be guilty;
• the most famous actor in the television adaptation would not have accepted a six-minute role;
• the character has received far too much page time to be innocent;
• you read another book with this plot in 1986.

You may be right.

You have not necessarily solved the mystery.

Solving means explaining the evidence. Why was the window open? How was the alibi manufactured? What did the missing cuff link prove? Why did the victim send an empty envelope to Belgium? Why did the parrot keep shouting “Tuesday” when the murder occurred on Thursday?

Naming the culprit is only one part of the solution.

Conversely, failing to identify the killer does not mean you read badly. You may have understood the characters, recognized the moral problem, noticed the manipulation, and appreciated the construction without assembling the final mechanism.

A mystery is not merely an examination, and the author is not permitted to confiscate your book because you selected the wrong suspect.

Finally, Preserve the Pleasure of Being Fooled

There is a danger in becoming too skilled at reading mysteries.

You begin examining every minor character for narrative utility. You assume any person described as harmless is carrying piano wire. You distrust twins, doctors, wills, train schedules, unlocked windows, locked windows, and anyone who serves tea without being asked.

Eventually, you stop entering the fictional world and begin inspecting its load-bearing beams.

A mystery is more than a puzzle. It is atmosphere, character, danger, justice, grief, humor, and the restoration—or failure—of moral order. W. H. Auden described the classic detective story as a movement from disruption and guilt toward restored innocence and order. That does not describe every crime novel, but it captures part of the genre’s enduring comfort: something terrible has happened, and the book promises that the terrible thing can be understood.

Read closely enough to participate, but not so mechanically that the book becomes an accounting exercise.

Keep theories. Reconsider alibis. Separate facts from interpretations. Notice absences. Distrust convenient explanations. But also permit the author to mislead you.

Being fooled by a bad mystery is irritating. Being fooled by a good one is a pleasure.

The ideal solution produces two reactions at once: I never saw that coming. Of course. It could not have happened any other way.

That is the peculiar magic of the mystery. Before the revelation, everything is uncertain. Afterward, everything looks inevitable.

So begin on page one. Continue until the end.

Just keep one eye on the gardener.