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That key bit of a mystery...
Mar. 25th, 2018 07:52 pmI was thinking yesterday about the little thing you get in all good mystery books/films/series. In my mind I call it a prestige (as in 'An illusion; a conjuring trick; a deception, an imposture' OED) but it could equally be called a bit of misdirection. It takes the form of a clue or scene or piece of information where the reader or viewer is being sent in one (the wrong) direction, without noticing that they could branch off in the right one.
I always look out for the 'prestige', and 95% of the time I spot it - then that usually leads to getting the solution. For example - SPOILER ALERT - in Shetland I'd guessed the key bit would be the holiday snaps on the memory stick, rather than the video, although I thought they'd point to somebody else. Sometimes that misdirection seems too clumsily obvious on the page or the screen, an example being the recent Endeavour that featured Crossroads Motel, where the information that the victim had used her sister's name produced a radiant lightbulb moment.
Hooray for non-obvious moments of misdirection!
I always look out for the 'prestige', and 95% of the time I spot it - then that usually leads to getting the solution. For example - SPOILER ALERT - in Shetland I'd guessed the key bit would be the holiday snaps on the memory stick, rather than the video, although I thought they'd point to somebody else. Sometimes that misdirection seems too clumsily obvious on the page or the screen, an example being the recent Endeavour that featured Crossroads Motel, where the information that the victim had used her sister's name produced a radiant lightbulb moment.
Hooray for non-obvious moments of misdirection!
