This isn’t exactly a big emotional wallop, but a clever little nudge: One of P. G. Wodehouse’s Ukridge short stories has the main character, a work-shy but indefatigable grifter and schemer named Ukridge, falling in love with a girl called Mabel, whom he unfortunately alienates by various forms of misconduct such as stealing her father’s top-hat.
The tale closes with the (temporarily) broken-hearted Ukridge telling the first-person narrator, a longtime and long-suffering friend of his, that he should use these tragic events as the plot for one of the short stories that he writes:
Which reminds the reader that the title of the story is in fact
The brilliant late 20th century thriller writer, Ross Thomas, was very good at this. Try the first chapter of his Edgar-Award winning 1985 novel Briarpatch, which ends with “Someone just blew away the landlady.”
The hen read the rest of the novel. Genius stuff.
Disclaimer: The five Ross Thomas novel which followed Briarpatch were edited by me. He was possibly the most fascinating human being I ever worked with.
As someone noted above, Christie is copied a lot. However, in this case, it is fair to note that this EQ novel was published 6 years before the AC novel.
Fredric Brown was noted for tricks he pulled on the reader, especially in his mysteries. Get hold of the collection Carnival of Crime.
My favorite is the story where the victim of the crime is the reader. It’s “Don’t Look Behind You,” originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for May 1947. It appears in Carnival of Crime, in several “Alfred Hitchcock” story anthologies, and elsewhere.
One of the very finest examples I know is in ‘Walking On Glass’ by Iain Banks. The book contains three separate narrative strands, one of which is a fairly standard Boy Meets Girl story. Graham meets Sara, really likes her, is hoping that maybe things will get romantic. This story contains a twist that kicks like a mule, particularly if you happen to be male and can identify with young Graham. The way Banks lays the trap and then springs the surprise is hugely impressive.
I’m not going to provide a spoiler because the twist is just too good to give away. Also, because it wouldn’t work. Just giving it away here in a line or two wouldn’t convey any of the majesty, the subtle brilliance with which the ‘trick’ is pulled off in the book. You have to experience it for yourself. Sorry.
N K Jemisin’s The Fifth Season. Her chapters rotate between a handful of main characters, each of whom has an ongoing story arc. The main main character’s tale is written in the 2nd person. (“He stares at you. You keep walking…”)
There’s a thread in common linking these characters.
They are the same person at different stages of her life
I could’ve sworn I mentioned this in this thread but apparently not.
The most virtuosic yet manipulative literary trick ever is in “The Athenian Murders” by Jose Carlos Somoza. To even hint at the nature of the trick would give the game away.
I agree, it’s horrible. Maybe at the time, people were not accustomed to books, or movies, or shows, or anything, that showed the inner depravity and perversions of a really fucked-up protagonist, and so it created a huge stir and skyrocketed Roth to the top of the A-list. But today it just reads like a rant that might be posted in a forum for sex addicts.
Another Ellery Queen with a great twist is Cat of Many Tails. A serial killer has struck multiple times, with a wide variety of victims: men, women, rich, poor, middle-aged, young, etc. In every case, the victim (despite publicity) let the murderer into their home. Ellery Queen figures out what the victims have in common…
They were delivered by the same doctor. He confesses to the crimes.
And then… Judge insists on appointing him a lawyer, who discovers the doctor was working at the hospital every single night a murder took place. His wife, who couldn’t have children of her own (and her husband wouldn’t let her adopt) was the killer. She committed suicide (and so did he) before the police could stop them.
Queen (or rather, Theodore Sturgeon) pulled off another virtuoso twist in The Player on the Other Side, where someone is blackmailed into murder. The identity of the blackmailer is a complete surprise, even though the clues are all there.
