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Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
Not when you read them 40 years ago. Not with my memory anyway.
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Even if you do know, it can still be fun.
One of the rules for a good mystery is that the detective shouldn't know anything the reader doesn't know. All the clues the reader needs to figure out who did it should be available. The challenge is providing the clues, but doing so in a manner that isn't obvious, so that it comes as a surprise to the reader when the detective recounts the chain of reasoning that led her to the real killer.
Christie was a master of constructing intricate plots and "hiding clues in plain sight". You can admire the skill of the construction, even if you do remember who did it.
I confess, Christie isn't my favorite mystery author. I admire her skill, but her tales are a bit too "dry" for me. Her characters are subordinate to her plotting, and generally don't take on the sort of depth I like.
One mystery I'll recommend is E. C. Bentley's _Trent's Last Case_.
The book is both a superb mystery, and a send-up of the mystery form. The protagonist, Philip Trent, is a painter. He has contributed occasional freelance journalism to a major London paper, quit the business, and is asked back by the editor to look into the murder of an American financial magnate. Trent's investigations lead him to mystery, romance, an utterly surprising denouement, and a renewed vow to abandon newspaper reportage.
_Trent's Last Case_ is available at MobileRead in a Sony Reader edition
here, at Project Gutenberg in HTML
here (as "The Woman in Black") and plain text
here (as "Trent's Last Case"). It's also available at Munseys (as "The Woman in Black") in a variety of formats
here and at Manybooks in more formats
here
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Dennis