Mystery stuff
Aug. 25th, 2006 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofthethreadHmm… I’ve been helping with writing checks for the family’s bills lately (father still has to sign them though) and I’ve come to the conclusion that both of my father’s checkbooks are messed up. One bank’s statements seem to say he has less in the account than the register says he should have. And the other bank seems to say he has more than what his records say. o_O; (No, it doesn’t seem to be just a case of recent checks not being cashed yet.) Ugh, I hope we don’t end up with bounced checks. -_-; *keeps her own checkbook in much better order*
I got some new manga over the weekend, including a couple of volumes of The Kindaichi Case Files. I had a lot of the older volumes but it’s been a while since I’ve read one. The latest one, House of Wax, has Kindaichi and his friend Miyuki visiting a transplanted German castle for a mystery weekend. As usual when they go on a trip, they end up stranded with a serial killer! You would think that after like a dozen times, they would be wary of going anywhere like this… XD; The plots usually have some clever twists but I wish the setups weren’t always so formulaic. Basically, they always go somewhere, meet about 8-10 other people, are cut off from the rest of the world for a few days, and end up with a few dead bodies before it’s over. It would be nice if they did something different once in a while; it’d make things more interesting.
As I was reading, I found myself wondering about the scenario. A party with a staged mystery or mystery investigation planned seems like a somewhat common setting for mystery stories. I recall Agatha Christie having a novel with a similar theme… *goes to look it up* “Dead Man’s Folly.” I wonder if she was the first to use that theme or if there was someone earlier. It’s also been done in Carolyn Hart’s Death on Demand series and a Nancy Drew computer game. I have the feeling that I’ve read more with that theme but can’t think of the books off the top of my head.
I got some new manga over the weekend, including a couple of volumes of The Kindaichi Case Files. I had a lot of the older volumes but it’s been a while since I’ve read one. The latest one, House of Wax, has Kindaichi and his friend Miyuki visiting a transplanted German castle for a mystery weekend. As usual when they go on a trip, they end up stranded with a serial killer! You would think that after like a dozen times, they would be wary of going anywhere like this… XD; The plots usually have some clever twists but I wish the setups weren’t always so formulaic. Basically, they always go somewhere, meet about 8-10 other people, are cut off from the rest of the world for a few days, and end up with a few dead bodies before it’s over. It would be nice if they did something different once in a while; it’d make things more interesting.
As I was reading, I found myself wondering about the scenario. A party with a staged mystery or mystery investigation planned seems like a somewhat common setting for mystery stories. I recall Agatha Christie having a novel with a similar theme… *goes to look it up* “Dead Man’s Folly.” I wonder if she was the first to use that theme or if there was someone earlier. It’s also been done in Carolyn Hart’s Death on Demand series and a Nancy Drew computer game. I have the feeling that I’ve read more with that theme but can’t think of the books off the top of my head.
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Date: 2006-08-25 01:33 pm (UTC)Kindaichi Case Files.... So that's another Japanese mystery series? I'll have to check it out!
Yeah, the scenario you're describing is very popular among mystery fans. Detective Conan has used it too, I think. At any rate, I know they used the "people gathered somewhere with a killer loose and bodies dropping" scenario. I used that myself in a DC fic (though I put a new spin on it by having it focus on the Black Organization characters, the antagonists, and forcing them to solve a mystery for once). XD
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Date: 2006-08-25 11:43 pm (UTC)