What is the crime novel with the most complicated plot?

[Xarote]

Would it be one of Agatha Christie's?

Also, I ask the same question for crime movies. I suggest Memento.

[Tapioca Dextrin]

The Godfather is a crime novel/film. Pretty dense, too.

Memento has a complicated structure, but a pretty straightforward plot.

[Annie-Xmas]

Ed McBain's "Downtown" and "Money, Money, Money" are both very complicated.

[plnnr]

"The Big Sleep"

[Hodge]

Easy, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. Almost impossible to follow but that doesn't matter to me, at all. What really matters is the gritty imagery and poetry of sleaze. This is a good thing, as legend has it when Howard Hawks (director of the 1946 movie adaptation) called Chandler to ask who the hell killed the chauffeur, Chandler reportedely replied "how the hell should I know? You figure it out" and then hung up.

[Exapno Mapcase]

The Big Sleep is really a series of separate novelettes that Chandler loosely strung together to make a full-length novel. It doesn't hold together because they weren't conceived as one narrative.

My nominee would be one of the Ellery Queen or John Dickson Carr novels from the Golden Age. Queen's The Egyptian Cross Mystery involves four murders with headless corpses, so that the identities of the murderer and murderees become hopelessly enmeshed. Carr's impossible crime books are the best of their sort ever written. The Three Coffins is so complicated that Carr actually takes a chapter off to give The Locked Room Lecture detailing all the ways a murder can be committed in a seemingly locked and watched room. You're still fooled by the ending.

If you don't want coherence, then there's Harry Stephen Keeler (http://staff.xu.edu/~polt/keeler/story.html).
Keeler's early work developed and perfected the concept of the "webwork plot," in which several strings of outrageous coincidences and odd events end in a surprising and utterly implausible denouement.

*elsewhere*

What is Keelerian writing like? Here's a sample from the first few pages of The Riddle of the Traveling Skull (1934), one of Keeler's more popular efforts: For it must be remembered that at the time I knew quite nothing, naturally, concerning Milo Payne, the mysterious Cockney-talking Englishman with the checkered long-beaked Sherlockholmsian cap; nor of the latter's "Barr-Bag" which was as like my own bag as one Milwaukee wienerwurst is like another; nor of Legga, the Human Spider, with her four legs and her six arms; nor of Ichabod Chang, ex-convict, and son of Dong Chang; nor of the elusive poetess, Abigail Sprigge; nor of the Great Simon, with his 2163 pearl buttons; nor of--in short, I then knew quite nothing about anything or anybody involved in the affair of which I had now become a part, unless perchance it were my Nemesis, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwümpel--or Suing Sophie!

[Harriet the Spry]

Dorothy Sayers has some mystery novels with very complicated plots. As in, you feel like you are being invited to whip out a pad and paper and work it like a logic puzzle. The Nine Tailors has some complicated theme about playing music on church bells. There is another, I think it's Five Red Herrings, that has all these train timetables in it.

And they all work out in the end, unlike Chandler.

[Ponder Stibbons]

Carr's impossible crime books are the best of their sort ever written. The Three Coffins is so complicated that Carr actually takes a chapter off to give The Locked Room Lecture detailing all the ways a murder can be committed in a seemingly locked and watched room. You're still fooled by the ending.
Really? I am most definitely going to read that.

[WordMan]

Not sure if these count since they are historical fiction with mysteries in them, but:

- The Name of the Rose - a code embedded into heart of the mystery
- An Instance of the Fingerpost - told through 4 narrators, 3 of whom, we learn in later sections, may not have all the facts or may be mis-representing their interests...

[CalMeacham]

It's not really what the OP asks for, but you might consider this --


I watched Anthony Schaffer's play Sleuth, and his mystery writer protagonist Andrew Wyke makes a reference to "The Poisoned Chocolates Case" -- "It's practically a textbook on the matter," he says, "A tour-de-force with six separate solutions."


I thought he was making it up, but years later I stumbled across a copy, and had to read it. (the mysteries referred to in Sleuth all are real, and worth looking into, it turns out)


It's a 1929 book by Anthony Berkeley, and well worth ther read. It actually has seven solutions (although one is a sort of duplicate), and is really a sort of textbook on the kinds and nature of evidence. The first couple of solutions aren't very convincing, but the leter ones are more involved and impressive. The novel, by the way, uses the format of a "club of detectives", eacj of whom contributes a solution. I once saw something like this in a 1960s Batman comic, which I now realize must've been paying an hommage to Berkeley.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poisoned_Chocolates_Case

[Hey, It's That Guy!]

I'd have to rank James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential and American Tabloid up there too, as far as complicated plots go.

[Mal Adroit]

Easy, Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.

I actually read The High Window first, and later found The Big Sleep to be a cakewalk by comparison.

[Evil Captor]

I'm not sure this is exactly what you're after, but almost all of Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer mysteries involve a series of seeming coincidences or unrelated events resulting in a murder, and in order to find the thread that relates the unrelated events he has to solve a crime that occurred decades earlier, generally within the lifetime of several of the current protagonists. Often he's investigating both crimes simultaneously so it can get really complicated, and generally the key to solving the crime lies in unearthing the real identities or relaitonships of the current set of characters/suspects. It's not the same thing as a formal logic problem as in a locked room mystery, but it's still fascinating to watch it unfold.

[thwartme]

I'd have to rank James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential and American Tabloid up there too, as far as complicated plots go.

I was just popping in to see if anyone had mentioned Ellroy. That's some serious convalutin' there.

[Exapno Mapcase]

CalMeachem, Anthony Berkeley, who also wrote as Frances Iles, is probably the most important and influential author of the Golden Age that nobody remembers today. He's not easy to find, but all his books are well worth it.

The Poisoned Chocolates Case is more of a stunt than a real novel, but if you liked it you'll probably love Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives. In it, the case is "solved" three times in his own distinct way by parodies of Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, and Father Brown, while Bruce's "hick" Sergeant Beef keeps saying "But I know who done it." And does.

[CalMeacham]

CalMeachem, Anthony Berkeley, who also wrote as Frances Iles, is probably the most important and influential author of the Golden Age that nobody remembers today. He's not easy to find, but all his books are well worth it.

[

Why do you assume that I don't know what I've just written about?


I do appreciate the suggestions. I'll look up Leo Bruce, of whom I havent heard.

[jsc1953]

Dorothy Sayers has ...another, I think it's Five Red Herrings, that has all these train timetables in it..

Wasn't that a Monty Python sketch?

[vetbridge]

When I read the OP, The Big Sleep sprung to mind. What about Mullholland Drive?

[Skald the Rhymer]

The Big Sleep. Nobody knows who killed the chauffeur, including the author.

But that's less a factor of the plot being confusing as it is the book not really being about plot; it's about mood, and corruption, and despair. And it has the best opening pages I've ever read.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Why do you assume that I don't know what I've just written about?

I was expanding on what you wrote for the sake of others who probably don't know.

[JoeSki]

What, nothing by Dashiell Hammett? How about Red Harvest, the basis for Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, and Last Man Standing? It starts off as a simple murder mystery, but as the book continues on you see the nameless main character pitting everybody against each other in a nasty little town called "Poisenville", like a politician sent straight from the deepest pits of hell. Most of the time I didn't know why one guy was trying to kill another.

I recently put down Fast One, by Paul Cain down because I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on

[Mal Adroit]

So Hammett, Chandler, and now Paul Cain all mentioned as blatant indecipherables, at least on occasion. Wouldn't this seem to point to a subtle disdain, if not flat-out disgust, these guys had for the mechanics of the genre that made them household names? (Cain wasn't a household name, but Fast One is regarded as something of a classic among hard-boiled aficionados.)

Maybe that's the crux of it, a hard-bolied thing. Tough boozers like H. and C. who couldn't be bothered with wrapping it up at the end in a pretty bow. You'd certainly never catch any of the golden age Brits (or even Ellery Queen for that matter) plotting so haphazardly.

[marque elf]

Inspired by the thread which mystery has the most complicated premise, I wondered which mystery/crime novel has the most elegant or cleverest premise?

My nomination is by Donald E. Westlake. It's called Dancing Aztecs. 2 small time hoods run a smuggling service through a warehouse at Kennedy Airport in New York. They are instructed, by a man with a Spanish accent, to pick up crate A and bring it to a certain location. The crate is one of 13 identical crates that supposedly contain copies of a valuable pre-Columbian statue, the Dancing Aztec. In fact, the real statue is in crate A.

They get to a garage where they are to drop off the crate and there are 2 men there. One is the man who set up the pick-up. The other is the recipient of the delivery. They pull the crate out of the truck and the man with the Spanish accent tells them they've got the wrong crate. They protest that he asked for crate and this one is clearly marked crate A. The man with the Spanish accent tells them that the crate is crate"Ah", not crate "Eh". They head back to the airport to get the right crate but it's already been sent to an art dealer. They're they were unpacked and shipped out to the people who had ordered replicas, one of whom now has the real statue.

This sets off a frantic scramble on the parts of several competing groups, it doesn't remain a secret very long that someone has the real one, to find the real Dancing Aztec.

[Mal Adroit]

My nomination is by Donald E. Westlake. It's called Dancing Aztecs.

You, my friend, have just given a shout out to one of my most loved books ever. :) I'm still hoping it's given it's proper due on the screen one day.

[Gangster Octopus]

I defintely gotta agree with L.A. Confidential. You need to read it to understand what an outstanding adaptation was done to make into such an excellent movie. Ellroy himself never thought it could be made into a movie.

[JoeSki]

So Hammett, Chandler, and now Paul Cain all mentioned as blatant indecipherables, at least on occasion. Wouldn't this seem to point to a subtle disdain, if not flat-out disgust, these guys had for the mechanics of the genre that made them household names? (Cain wasn't a household name, but Fast One is regarded as something of a classic among hard-boiled aficionados.)


Convaluted and confusing doesn't necessarly mean bad. I love Hammett and Chandler myself, and I'm sure many other formites responding in this thread do too. I like the introspective characters and cool dialogue. Plus, it's cool when a story is just on the edge of being apprehended and understood. You can almost make everything out in these books, but not quite.....I hated Fast One

[priapus]

Actually,there is a scene in The Big Sleep that has Bogart explaining everything to the cops..and it was a lot of explaining.Anyway,Warner Brothers decided to play up the Bogart-Bacall angle(since the attraction was adding a spark to the movie).The explanation scene was sacrificed.I saw it on some tv program but it was a few years ago.

[Skald the Rhymer]

So Hammett, Chandler, and now Paul Cain all mentioned as blatant indecipherables, at least on occasion. Wouldn't this seem to point to a subtle disdain, if not flat-out disgust, these guys had for the mechanics of the genre that made them household names? (Cain wasn't a household name, but Fast One is regarded as something of a classic among hard-boiled aficionados.)

Maybe that's the crux of it, a hard-bolied thing. Tough boozers like H. and C. who couldn't be bothered with wrapping it up at the end in a pretty bow. You'd certainly never catch any of the golden age Brits (or even Ellery Queen for that matter) plotting so haphazardly.

It has nothing to do with being hard-boiled or boozy. It has to do with the sort of story they were writing. Chandler, in particular, was writing about loneliness, and despair, and other things that are beautiful to read about, though not to live. He was evoking mood. He was speculating on how a good man can remain good in a world like ours, and still manage to do anything worth doing. He wasn't writing parlor mysteries.

(can you tell that I adore chandler?)

[priapus]

Actually,there is a scene in The Big Sleep that has Bogart explaining everything to the cops..and it was a lot of explaining.Anyway,Warner Brothers decided to play up the Bogart-Bacall angle(since the attraction was adding a spark to the movie).The explanation scene was sacrificed.I saw it on some tv program but it was a few years ago.
I just remembered it was a program On Bogart hosted by his son,Sam

[Mal Adroit]

Chandler, in particular, was writing about loneliness, and despair, and other things that are beautiful to read about, though not to live. He was evoking mood. He was speculating on how a good man can remain good in a world like ours, and still manage to do anything worth doing. He wasn't writing parlor mysteries.


The readers who were shelling out for them at the time, though, likely figured they were getting mysteries in the purest sense. And rightly so, since that's how they were marketed- more importantly, that's how Chandler allowed himself to be marketed. I'd be willing to bet that, dazzled as many readers may have been by Chandler's writing, their hardcore mystery itch felt more faintly rubbed than satisfyingly scratched.

Chandler was a great, great writer. He tried to have it both ways, though. As I say, his storycraft betrayed a can't-be-bothered attitude with the genuine whodunit (which I respectfully disagree with you about it having nothing to do with the American tough guy persona- it's no coincidence that these guys adored Hemingway), but he wasn't willing to roll the dice as a "mainstream" novelist. Which, as you point out, is what he was at heart.

[Skald the Rhymer]

The readers who were shelling out for them at the time, though, likely figured they were getting mysteries in the purest sense. And rightly so, since that's how they were marketed- more importantly, that's how Chandler allowed himself to be marketed. I'd be willing to bet that, dazzled as many readers may have been by Chandler's writing, their hardcore mystery itch felt more faintly rubbed than satisfyingly scratched.

Chandler was a great, great writer. He tried to have it both ways, though. As I say, his storycraft betrayed a can't-be-bothered attitude with the genuine whodunit (which I respectfully disagree with you about it having nothing to do with the American tough guy persona- it's no coincidence that these guys adored Hemingway), but he wasn't willing to roll the dice as a "mainstream" novelist. Which, as you point out, is what he was at heart.

I didn't mean that Chandler wasn't writing in the tough-guy persona, but looking at what I posted earlier, I can easily see how it would have been taken that way. So let me rephrase: the density of the plot of Chandler's work isn't simply because of the machismo wich that work undeniably shows.

[Miss Mapp]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Harriet the Spry
Dorothy Sayers has ...another, I think it's Five Red Herrings, that has all these train timetables in it..


Wasn't that a Monty Python sketch?

It is Five Red Herrings, and I can't read the parts that go on about train timetables without thinking of the Monty Python sketch.

I think the most complicated of Sayers' mysteries is Have His Carcase, in which everyone involved in the murder (which was originally set up to look like a suicide) seems to have at least one or two alternate identities, back-up stories, or false alibies. I love it as a mystery novel, but I can't really believe anybody would plan out a murder that way.

[jsc1953]

It is Five Red Herrings, and I can't read the parts that go on about train timetables without thinking of the Monty Python sketch.


Sketch (http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/timetabl.htm).

[Exapno Mapcase]

The readers who were shelling out for them at the time, though, likely figured they were getting mysteries in the purest sense. And rightly so, since that's how they were marketed- more importantly, that's how Chandler allowed himself to be marketed.
This is highly unlikely. Hardboiled mysteries had been around since the 1920s, when the genre began in the pages of Black Mask magazine. It became popular almost immediately and a number of big names - especially Dashiell Hammett - became famous by the early 1930s.

Chandler was part of the second generation of this crew, but still started in the magazine. As I noted earlier, The Big Sleep was comprised of novelettes first published there and put together as a book when he became a big enough name.

Although I suppose there could be a few people who thought he was a standard mystery novelist, by the 1940s there couldn't have been too many who didn't understand the difference between a private eye book and a whodunit. I'd also like some cites that his books were marketed as "mysteries in the purest sense". I don't believe it, but marketers have always had their heads up their asses so I suppose it could be possible.

[Rodgers01]

How about "A Shot in the Dark"? Inspector Clousseau was in way over his head on that one! :smack:

[AuntiePam]

Not a particularly complicated plot -- more of a convoluted mystery --but I was in the dark about the secret of The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. It wasn't at all what I expected. I thought I guessed it early on but I was wrong.

I never realized that manners and decorum and complying with the expectations of your social class could ruin your life. Guess I haven't read enough Jane Austen.

[Mal Adroit]

Although I suppose there could be a few people who thought he was a standard mystery novelist, by the 1940s there couldn't have been too many who didn't understand the difference between a private eye book and a whodunit.

I don't know, I think you may be assuming a lot. Even if Chandler is, as you say, technically considered a "second generation" Black Masker, the private eye novel by 1939 was still in its relative infancy. Remember, I wasn't referring to Black Mask readers, but the general book-buying population. Were there really enough tough guy detective novelists around by '39/'40 for these readers to, as you say, immediately distinguish a "private eye book" as something special and separate from a traditional whodunit? Short of going back in time to conduct a Life Magazine survey, my guess would be no.


I'd also like some cites that his books were marketed as "mysteries in the purest sense". I don't believe it, but marketers have always had their heads up their asses so I suppose it could be possible.

What I meant by "marketed as mysteries in the purest sense" was that they were being placed in bookstores and advertised to the general mystery lover. Again, I find any speculation that advertising campaigns for The Big Sleep, The Glass Key, Farewell My Lovely, et al. singled these works out as brooding, violent meditations on the state of modern man--that is, that their bookflaps touted them as much beyond being superior mysteries-- suspect*. And as mysteries, with all the discipline and craftmanship that term had come to signify by the late thrirties/early forties, they are more than a little flawed.

*From the inside flap of my 1943 Grosset & Dunlap copy of The Lady in the Lake: "Again Chandler proves that he is one of the most brilliant craftsmen in his field, and that his Marlowe is one of the great detectives of fiction." Riight. Just don't ask this brilliant craftsman or his great detective who killed the chauffeur in dat first book. Because when it comes down to it, neither of them could really give a sh*t!

[Interrobang!?]

A title that just occurred to me: The Red Right Hand (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0786704462?v=glance) by Joel Townsley Rogers, which ends with one heck of an amazing solution that nonetheless makes sense -- but really, only in retrospect.