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Does it matter if you guess the ending?

51kJSUiz08LJoan Smith thought After the Crash was ‘one of the most remarkable books I’ve read in a long time’, Maxim Jakubowski called it ‘a compulsive page-turner’ and Barry Forshaw said ‘Michel Bussi knows exactly how to keep the reader turning page after page.’ So I was expecting great things, and maybe that was the part of the problem. I did read it compulsively – but only until about half way through, when I ran out of steam and found I couldn’t – or rather didn’t want to – suspend my disbelief any longer. Yes, it’s a brilliant premise. A baby survives a plane crash in which everyone else dies and two families fight over which of them she belongs to. I won’t say exactly when I guessed the answer to this conundrum and the final twist in a very convoluted plot, because that might constitute a spoiler, but it was pretty early on. I hope I wasn’t going to be right, but I was.

This got me thinking about the challenges of writing for a crime fiction readership, which includes of course other crime writers. Like many other readers (and writers) I must have read thousands of crime novels, and these days I am rarely surprised by a plot twist, though I love it when it happens. Just at the moment I am especially obsessed with plots as I am plotting a novel myself, so maybe that too was part of my problem with After the Crash. I was too conscious of the machinery. Sometimes that doesn’t matter as long as I am enjoying other aspects of the book, the setting, the characters, whatever. In fact, I often reread favourite crime novels, knowing perfectly well who did it. But this time I did mind and I ground to a halt.

So how do you feel? Are you disappointed if the writer doesn’t manage to fool you, or are you happy to go along for the ride anyway?

 

8 Comments

  1. Martin Edwards
    June 9, 2016

    I love being fooled – in a fair way – by a twist I didn’t foresee, and always have. There are, though, plenty of books where I do guess the outcome and still enjoy the story greatly. Plots which are guessable and not gripping are a different matter….

    Reply
    • Christine Poulson
      June 10, 2016

      Thanks, Martin. This is how I feel too – and I think more and more that good characterisation is an important element in a gripping story. If you don’t care about the characters, you don’t care what happens.

      Reply
  2. moira @ClothesInBooks
    June 12, 2016

    I can live with guessing the ending if the book is a good one, but I do also absolutely love being shocked out of my seat! When I did a piece on great endings recently, I raked in some good suggestions in the comments, including ones from both you, Chrissie, and Martin above.

    Reply
    • Christine Poulson
      June 13, 2016

      I’m the same. It does take something to give me a shock and I love it, too. It is especially a treat for us seasoned crime fiction readers, who think we have seen it all before!

      Reply
  3. Susan D
    June 14, 2016

    Well, I don’t mind guessing the ending if it’s fairly clever (and therefore I must be too) but I get miffed when the solution sticks out a mile from the get-go, and both the police and the amateur sleuth are baffled. I wonder how stupid the author thinks their readers are.

    Reply
    • Christine Poulson
      June 14, 2016

      Same here. I hate it when the characters don’t notice something that is staring them in the face.

      Reply
  4. J F Norris
    July 12, 2016

    I can still be fooled by the “Old Masters” of the genre and I enjoy that. But I rarely am fooled in a modern crime fiction novel. They just don’t understand misdirection or clueing. AT. ALL. I see the twists coming a mile away — or to be more accurate pages ahead of the “big reveal”, sometimes *very* early on. This is also true of the new crop of crime movies and screen or TV adaptations of best sellers. I feel that the trend in modern crime fiction is that a twist is mandatory and for that reason I see through most of them immediately. When a surprise twist is compulsory to the plot rather than a natural outcome of the story telling then it paradoxically becomes transparent, especially to those of us who read the genre in depth.

    Reply
    • Christine Poulson
      July 13, 2016

      Yes, I agree, about being rarely fooled by a modern crime novel. This happened to me recently with a crime novel that came out recently and has been very highly praised by reviewers. A few pages in I guessed the twist. I hoped I wasn’t going to be right, but I was. It’s disappointing.

      Reply

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