Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
That is, however, the whole point of a detective story, and the reason that most people read them.
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This made we wonder what percentage of detective stories have an
inverted plot. But, reading between the lines of my last link, I'm thinking that the percentage of detective stories that are inverted (you find out who did it first) is almost as low as you imply.
As to why else someone would read a detective novel, I hope they expose difficult to summarize truths about humanity, like other good novels. Sometimes I pick up one, set in a country I don't know much about, to get a bit of the national flavor. Beyond that, everything else equal, I favor ones written by people with first hand experience in law enforcement, on grounds I'll learn something while being entertained.
My desire to have the author write about what he or she knows goes even more for spy novels. I like to think the retired spy author is trying to tell us truths about his (usually it is a man) former life that could not be legally presented in non-fiction.
I know I'm missing lots of good books due to my obsession with realism, but, well, if I read fantasy, I'd be missing lots of the other kind.