I have always loved mysteries, probably because I worked my way through the entire Hardy Boys series in the second grade. I was hooked early by secret panels, hidden staircases, stolen jewels, mysterious strangers, coded messages, and the absolute certainty that two boys with flashlights could outwit every adult in town.
Eventually, I moved on to Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Lawrence Block, John D. MacDonald, and a host of other great mystery writers. The best of them understood something important: a mystery is not just a crime story. It is a puzzle, a game, a contest between the writer and the reader. The writer lays out the clues, hides the truth in plain sight, and then dares the reader to arrive at the solution first.
Good mystery books are still being written, and it is not hard to find one. If you are looking for your next mystery, I would recommend subscribing to the newsletter from The Mysterious Bookstore, the “World’s Oldest and Greatest Mystery Fiction Specialty Store,” run by Otto Penzler. You can find them here.
What I cannot find, or at least cannot find very often, is a good mystery movie or television mystery. There are plenty of television shows and movies that call themselves mysteries, but most of them are not mysteries at all. They are police procedurals, character dramas, revenge stories, thrillers, or episodes of “watch the star solve the case while everyone else stands around looking suspicious.” They may have a corpse, a detective, a lab report, and a confession, but that does not make them mysteries.
They all seem to fail in the same ways.
First, they frequently are not actually mysteries. In the opening act, we often see who commits the murder. We watch the killer creep into the room, pull the trigger, push the victim off the balcony, or poison the wine. Then the rest of the episode consists of the detective slowly discovering what the audience already knows. That can be suspenseful, but it is not a mystery. It is a waiting game.
There is nothing wrong with that form, exactly. Columbo made an art of it. The pleasure of Columbo was not guessing who did it. The pleasure was watching Peter Falk’s rumpled, shambling, apparently harmless detective worry the murderer to death with “just one more thing.” But Columbo worked because it knew what it was. It was not pretending to be a whodunit. It was a how-will-he-catch-him.
Too many modern television mysteries give us the murderer early and then still expect us to pretend we are solving something. We are not. We are just watching the hero catch up.
If a familiar actor shows up in the first ten minutes, has no obvious reason to be there, and then disappears into the background, you can safely arrest him immediately. Television cannot resist this pattern. The famous guest actor is never just the victim’s lawyer, the dead man’s neighbor, or the slightly rude restaurant owner. He is there because the show paid for him, and, by heaven, they are going to get their money’s worth in the final scene.
This is especially true when the actor is just famous enough to be recognizable, but not famous enough to be above doing one episode of a network crime drama. The moment he appears, the mystery is over. You do not need fingerprints, blood spatter, or motive. You need only ask, “Which guest star has the strongest IMDb page?”
Third, the suspect list is usually too small. A real mystery needs room to breathe. It needs several people who could plausibly have committed the crime, several motives that overlap, and several clues that point in different directions. In a good mystery novel, almost everyone has something to hide, even if only one person is hiding murder.
Television usually gives us three suspects, and one of them is obviously innocent because he cried too much in the interrogation room. One is too obvious, one is too sympathetic, and one is the guest star. That is not a mystery. That is a seating chart.
The problem is partly time. A television episode has perhaps forty-two minutes after commercials. In that time, it has to introduce the crime, interview witnesses, include a lab scene, give the regular characters something to do, provide a red herring, solve the case, and leave time for a final emotional conversation in a dimly lit office. There is not much room for real detection.
Fourth, the structure gives the game away. Television mysteries are often built on a rigid rhythm. The first suspect is wrong. The second suspect is also wrong. The third suspect seems impossible, then suddenly becomes obvious after a late-breaking clue. Someone lies. Someone else says, “I should have told you this earlier.” The detective sees something tiny, stares thoughtfully into the middle distance, and suddenly knows everything.
Once you know the rhythm, you are not solving the crime so much as reading the clock. At minute twelve, the angry spouse did not do it. At minute twenty-four, the business partner did not do it. At minute thirty-five, the sweet old friend says something odd, and there it is. Cue the confession.
The formula is so familiar that it drains the story of tension. We know the first explanation is wrong because it came too early. We know the second explanation is wrong because there are still eighteen minutes left. We know the killer will be revealed at the exact moment the episode needs to start wrapping up.
Fifth, the detective often knows more than the audience. This is a fatal flaw. A fair mystery lets the audience reason alongside the detective. We should see the important clues, even if we do not understand them at first. When the solution is revealed, we should be able to say, “Of course. I should have seen it.”
Too many television mysteries cheat. The detective notices something the camera did not show us clearly. Or a lab result appears at the last minute. Or the hero remembers a detail from an earlier conversation that was not emphasized enough for any sane viewer to retain. Then, in the final scene, the detective explains everything as if the solution had been obvious all along.
That is not mystery writing. That is withholding evidence.
Agatha Christie, at her best, played fair. Rex Stout played fair. Ellery Queen practically invited the reader to stop before the final chapter and solve the case. Television usually does the opposite. It hides the usable clue, then congratulates itself for revealing it.
Sixth, character drama replaces detection. Many television mysteries are less interested in the murder than in the detective’s personal problems. The detective has a divorce, trauma, a drinking problem, a dead partner, a troubled daughter, a dying father, a corrupt boss, or all of the above. The murder becomes a coat rack on which to hang the regular character’s weekly emotional burden.
Again, there is nothing wrong with character drama. We like detectives with personality. Sherlock Holmes had cocaine, a violin, and a tendency to be insufferable. Nero Wolfe had orchids, beer, and an unwillingness to leave the house. Travis McGee had a houseboat and a deeply complicated view of paradise. But the mystery still mattered. The character did not replace the puzzle.
On television, the crime often exists only to illuminate the detective’s feelings. A murdered teenager reminds the detective of her own daughter. A dead soldier reminds the detective of his time in the service. A poisoned husband reminds the detective of his failed marriage. By the end, the killer is almost an afterthought. The real climax is the hero staring out a window, having learned something about grief.
Finally, the solution must be simple enough for one episode. A good mystery needs misdirection, motive, opportunity, timing, character, and surprise. It needs the solution to be unexpected, but inevitable. That is hard to do in a novel. It is much harder to do in forty-two minutes with a B-plot and recurring cast obligations.
So television reduces the mystery to something simple. He lied about where he was. She wanted the inheritance. The brother was jealous. The business partner was stealing. The victim knew a secret. The killer made one mistake, and the detective spotted it.
That may be enough for a crime show, but it is not enough for a real mystery. A real mystery should make the audience lean forward, not merely wait for the reveal. It should give us the pleasure of suspicion, deduction, failure, and sudden recognition. It should make us think we might solve it, then punish us for being overconfident.
Television rarely does that anymore. It gives us crimes, detectives, corpses, and confessions, but not mysteries. The machinery is there. The puzzle is missing.
And that is why, when I want a mystery, I usually go back to books. The corpse may be imaginary, but at least the game is real.
