Question! Answer!

Detective fiction is all about questions. Whodunit? Howdunit? Whydunit? Why-is-this-considered-detective-fiction-it's-nothing-like-oooooooh-now-I-get-it. There has to be some kind of mystery, an alluring question waiting to be answered, an answer which the tale should provide at the end of the story. Like I wrote in a post a few weeks ago, a mystery can take on many forms: from the conventional murder to the question of how an impossible crime was committed, to the more mundane question of why some person is always changing coins into money bills at the store. But to me, the genre will ultimately always revolve around the underlying mystery of a story and its solution, as well as the process from said question to answer.

I've been writing my messy thoughts about the mystery fiction I consume for about ten years at this spot, and I think that on the whole, I've remained fairly consistent in terms of what I like to focus on in my posts when discussing a work. What I personally enjoy best about detective fiction, is the core mystery plot, and the logical processes that lead to its solution, so obviously, I tend to write about how I experienced the work from that point of view. Of course, it's not like I therefore refuse to write about other subjects: depending on the work, I also enjoy writing about publication history (like in my review of Rampo's Yuureitou) or about the socio-economic and/or cultural elements in a certain work, like the role of modern consumer technology in my review of Nimannin no Mokugekisha or folklorism themes in the Toujou Genya series. But in the end, I only talk about those topics because they relate back to the core mystery plot, and my final thoughts about a certain work will rely far more on what I thought of the presentation of the mystery, the path towards the solution and the execution of the whole puzzle, than how the specific work incorporated the theme of say the rise of streaming services in the mid 2010s in its plot, or how well the characters were portrayed. Some people will for example be looking for believable portrayals of characters and immersive atmosphere in their mystery fiction, and obviously, those would be topics of interest to them which they'd want to see addressed in a review, but yeah, this wouldn't be the place. A detective novel could have the most utterly unbelievable characters ever and I wouldn't even make one note of it, if said portrayal was also helping a core puzzle plot rise to amazing heights.

A review should be a coherent body of text that lays out the author's thoughts on a certain work and at least for me, I try to do that by putting the work in context. With context, I mean my own personal experience up until that point: all the other works I've read/seen/listened to/etc. up until that point, all the things I know about the various topics addressed in said work etc. It's basically comparing a work to everything I have seen before, not in a 'which is better' way, but to see how the various works do things the same or differently, and trying to identify what common themes work or don't work, and why. Some people might prefer to view a work standalone, without actively comparing it with other works, but I find that hard to do, especially in a genre that is explicitly built upon the shoulders of those before. It's the same with videogames for me, where for example you can easily compare game mechanics and perhaps say the idea of using one single A button as the Jump button like in Super Mario Bros. is better than having to push seven buttons in a very specific order before a character will jump. In a genre where we see the same tropes over and over again, it'd be weird not to compare them, and see what works (and to go a step further, to identify the underlying factor that indeed makes it so enjoyable).

But to finally come to my main point for this post: it's actually such a contradiction that while I do try to contextualize a work in a review and point out what works and what doesn't, I also go lengths to not spoil anything to the reader and thus not explicitly contextualizing the work. For yes, I wanted to write something about the topic of spoilers. Given that detective fiction is about questions, giving the answers beforehand would obviously be spoiling the game. Therefore, I do try to avoid spoiling anything in my reviews, as I certainly don't want to ruin the reading experience of anyone. I certainly wouldn't want to know who the murderer was or how it was done before I start reading a story, so I'm not spoiling it for someone else either. But that does making the contextualization process difficult at times. At one hand, I want to compare the main trick of novel A to similar ideas seen in novel B, C and D, and note how they compare and differ, but I also want to avoid spoilers, so I end up writing very vaguely about the tricks and solutions of a novel, and make non-specific allusions to other works, because obviously, explicitly stating that novel A has the same trick as novel B would be spoiling both works.
 

But as everyone knows, spoilers are never a clear-cut case. What I consider a spoiler, someone else may not and vice-versa. Would saying there are more murders than one in a certain novel be a spoiler or not? Would mentioning the fact that the topic of snail breeding is addressed in the story be a spoiler? Would noting that a novel contains multiple false solutions be a spoiler? It's never a definite yes/no answer, and there are also times where I myself am not sure whether I should mention something or not. I wrote a review of a very well-received novel for example, where I explictly mention and talk in-depth about a story element that the publisher and many others do seem to be avoiding, but I thought, and I still think, that it's necessary to discuss that story element because a) it's too important to not too and b) I think more people would become interested in the novel knowing this story element beforehand, rather than not being informed of it, which adds the risk of someone ignoring the novel even though they would've liked it if they had known about the "secret" story element.

Last year, I reviewed the manga Astro Lost in Space on the blog, which I really enjoyed as a mystery science-fiction series. Recently, a colleague reviewed the series too for a different kind of publication (not mystery-related), and it's written from an angle I would never have even considered. Mind you, I am certainly not saying it's a bad review: by addressing story points I myself would consider spoilers, she's also able to dive deeper in the work and discuss themes of the work I personally also find interesting (themes I could also relate to the mystery genre), but don't dare write about in fear of spoiling the reading experience of someone else. Obviously, she did not think that discussing those story elements would interfere with the enjoyment of the work. Everyone has different ideas about spoilers, but you can't 'undo' spoiling a suprise for someone, so in the end, I try to err on the safe side, because I don't like to be spoiled myself either. It's one thing to give someone a clear warning and choice if they want to be spoiled about something (spoiler warnings, writing the spoiler in code), but even here on this blog, I've seen commentators just throw spoilers about random stories in the comments without any warning. Which probably is a more extreme example of how everyone sees spoilers differently. But yeah, I'd really appreciate it if everyone would try to err on the safe side of the line.

I will just go on approaching spoilers the same way I've always done here, with short summaries that barely make it to the first murder/crime/mystery and vague allusions about similar concepts and tricks used etc. I guess that if I could do a review once in a while where I write openly about spoilers, but the problem there is that I'd probably be making references to a lot of other stories, so those would be spoiled too ("Novel A utilizes a trick that can also be seen in Novel B, but it's significant to note that in Novel A, the string was red, and not blue like in Novel B, for...."). So that would still be somewhat troublesome. There's no one solution to this, and ten years into writing about mystery fiction, I'm still not sure what goes and what doesn't.