The fantasy in the mystery

[limyaael]

So this is the other part of the mystery rant-this time, less about detective fantasies or detective heroes, and more about plots with political conspiracies.

Comments

[cygna_hime]

Point 6--the best source for this I've ever heard of is not fantasy, but pure mystery. There is one Agatha Christie story at least where it turns out that the point of view character, the one who discovered the body, the one we've been inside the head of since the get-go, is actually the killer. So you go back and look, and it's perfectly possible. It's as easy for the viewpoint character to mislead the audience as anyone else--easier, because he controls what we see and know. The villain doesn't have to tell you anything, or even that he is the villain. That's why it's mysterious.

[limyaael]

I think it was original the first time it was done. By now, that premise is a little like the locked-room mystery: people who read it will probably figure it out before the author wants them to, simply because they're familiar with it from other examples.

[limyaael]

That was what bothered me about Lynn Flewelling's Luck in the Shadows (which I liked in other ways, but which was also very much a first novel). The villains do obviously disgusting things, like vividly described necromancy, that are just there to enforce the idea they're the bad guys. And when Flewelling does try to keep information from the reader, like what the wooden artifacts they're seeking are really meant to do, it's very obvious. The heroes don't have any reason to know, of course, but the bad guys do know, and somehow maintain a deafening silence about them anyway. Other things, though, are explained in detail, when it would be better to leave them as a surprise.

[limyaael]

You're welcome. I would like to see more politics in fantasy novels, so I appreciate that people try to include them. Too often, though, they're just another variation on the villain sending incompetent henchmen after the hero: they make the baddie look dumb and the hero seem to survive because of that stupidity.

Sephiroth

[karenrei]

"Integral to the best conspiracy plots are, I think, the sense that somebody or something is doing things, but you don’t know what"

My favorite villain is surprisingly not from a novel, but a game - Sephiroth, from Final Fantasy VII. There's this frustrating sense as things go along that he:

A) Knows more than you
B) Is involved in things that you have no concept of but are anything but good
C) Is using you toward those ends, and whenever you try to take actions to counter that, it's exactly what he was hoping for.

I've never had a book, game, or movie convince me more of "This person needs to be stopped!" than of Sephiroth in FF7.