Mysteries in real life.

I'm working on a mystery novel, and I think I was like to start sweating blood working out the plot. You have to keep it moving, keep it interesting, keep it sensible, and keep it mysterious. The mystery genre is so well-trodden that it's hard to keep a fan guessing, but that's the writer's job. 

Unlike the Great Lileks, who writes mysteries as his characters lead him, I have to have it all plotted out in advance, lest I contradict myself, make a huge mistake, and hear about it from readers later. I have to know what all the characters are doing, even when they're off the stage. So I write page after page of notes until I have a workable outline. Even then I have to make changes on the fly, when I realize someone's motivations don't work, something happened for which there is no adequate explanation, or some guilty character's alibi really would exonerate him. It's beautifully complicated.

There are several kinds of mysteries, such as the whodunit, which usually features an eccentric genius as a hero who cracks the case, or a police procedural, which shows in a more realistic manner how the police solve crimes. TV crime shows are probably split between these two sub-genres. There are others, like the thriller, which is really a crime novel rather than a mystery, and cross-genre mysteries that are mysteries combined with romances, Westerns, SF, or fantasy (my favorites of all time being Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories). (Sorry, Mr. Asimov.)

My hero is no genius of a detective, but he will be required to use his wits and his powers of observation to solve the case and stay alive. But powers of observation are seldom as magically developed even in experienced policemen as they are in characters like Hercule Poirot or Psych's Shawn Spencer. I had a lesson in this in my youth from -- where else? -- something crappy I saw on television.

Whodunnit? was an absolutely dreadful TV game show that ran for five weeks as a late-season replacement in 1979. The object of the game (hosted by Ed McMahon) was to guess who committed the crime shown in several acted-out film clips. Celebrity panelists like Jack Klugman, who solved TV mysteries as Quincy, M.E., and lawyers F. Lee Bailey and Melvin Belli, would examine the clues, ask questions... and have absolutely no idea who committed the crime. At least that's how it worked in the episode I recall dimly. At the end, McMahon would go over all the clues that were in the scripted portion, and everyone missed everything. It was an embarrassment for all involved. 

I understand that this was based on a British show that had a more successful run; I've never seen it but I hope their panel of detectives was more observant than ours. 

I also remember an episode of PBS's American Playhouse called "The Great Whodunit." It featured some terrific actors like Gene Barry (who had solved TV mysteries in Burke's Law) and Howard Duff and Geraldine Fitzgerald, and starred TV's least believable action hero, William Conrad.  

Conrad was a brilliant actor; his voice work as Matt Dillon on the radio version of Gunsmoke is still outstanding, can still put a chill up your spine. And his comedy work as the frantic announcer for Rocky and Bullwinkle is an amazing roller-coaster of chaotic fun. But he came to national prominence when he stepped in front of the camera as hard-boiled and really fat and really expensive detective Frank Cannon. Audiences loved him so much that he went on to star in two other mystery series, both of which required less physical activity: Nero Wolfe and Jake and the Fatman (he did not play Jake). And, unfortunately, he appeared in this American Playhouse episode.

Part of the problem with the episode was that it was a collection of whodunits with Conrad and Barry as a framing device, playing themselves but also sort of playing detectives...? The mysteries seemed kind of stupid to me, sub-Encyclopedia Brown -- and I was a kid. The whole thing was a mixed-up, lifeless mess. But let me quote from an IMDB reviewer who nails it:

It has been a very long time since I saw this extremely cheap, studio-bound, videotaped omnibus of alleged mystery stories, but it has continued to stay in my memory as quite possibly the worst attempt at televised mystery programming ever done. Somehow it managed to attract an extremely professional roster of star names, all of whom play themselves... that is, if they were really private detectives instead of actors (both Barry and Conrad are forced to intone that the cases they are now working on are the most baffling of "my career," as though they really work for Pinkertons). The solutions to these mysteries range from the simply hackneyed to the grotesquely obvious to the downright bizarre. Somehow Barry, Conrad, Fitzgerald and company managed to hold straight faces through all of this, though Heaven knows how. There must be an outtake reel somewhere in the world that is absolutely priceless.

What does this all tell me? That in real life it is exceptionally difficult to solve mysteries based on observation of minute details. Also, that it is exceptionally easy to screw up whodunits if you don't know what you're doing. Then you wind up with a "whatdidIdo?" instead.