I was finishing up a great book today where one of the overarching plots is a mystery that’s never solved by the characters, but all of the clues are pretty much present for the observant reader to figure out what was going on. It’s not a Mystery genre book.
Are there any other books out there that contain a mystery that’s never solved within the book, but all of the information is there for astute readers to figure it out on their own?
I’m not necessarily talking about capital-m Mystery books, though one of those would be interesting, too. It just seems that the key clue in Mysteries is too often witheld from the reader’s knowledge until the pivotal moment when all is revealed.
In Charles Palliser’s victorian-era novel The Quincunx the mystery behind the ancestry of the main character is left to the alert reader to puzzle out.
Children’s author and illustrator Graeme Base has a book called The Eleventh Hour. It’s the story of an animals’ birthday party at which all the food is stolen, and is told as a book-length poem: the culprit is never revealed, but each page is a sumptuous and elaborate illustration which contains hidden codes, clues and cyphers as to the villain’s identity - for instance, one page has a musical score on a piano which is one piece of the puzzle. In order to work out whodunnit, you have to decipher each clue - there are about twenty - and then put each piece together. Fiendishly elaborate, breath-takingly clever, and often mind-bogglingly taxing.
I’ve just looked this up on Amazon, and your description and the preview are enough to convince me to pick it up. It looks utterly fascinating. It reminds me of *Masquerade *by Kit Williams, though that book was specifically presented as a contest to be won through solving a mystery. I suppose *Masquerade *could fit the OP as well, as the location to the missing treasure is never stated in the book, but is revealed through hidden clues.
Oh, it’s well worth it: God only knows how much time he spends on his illustrations, but they’re all fully painted and amazingly intricate, just packed with tiny clever details. He has a fantastic alphabet book called Animalia, in which every letter gets an alliterative sentence like “An Armoured Armadillo Avoiding An Angry Alligator”, with an entire painted page full of wittily hidden acorns, astronauts, abacuses, avocadoes, archangels, anableps… It’s ostensibly a kids book, but I’ve never seen an adult pick it up who hasn’t spent an hour or so poring over it and having to have it prised out of their hands. And “P” is a double page spread, and I’m still not convinced I’ve found everything on it…
There was a short story from about twenty years ago or so called something like “On the Beach.” In the first half, it described the everyday antics of several mundane beachgoers. Except at the end, it was discovered that so and so was having an affair, someone was passing secret documents to a Russian agent, and someone was being murdered because they knew too much. High drama everywhere.
If I recall correctly, it won a writing prize or two. Anyone?
[QUOTE=Scissorjack]
Oh, it’s well worth it: God only knows how much time he spends on his illustrations, but they’re all fully painted and amazingly intricate, just packed with tiny clever details./QUOTE]
I would just like to report that I, as an actual child, who loved (and still does) mysteries (and Mystery genre things), was given this book by my parents when I was about 10. We spent a good couple of weeks working it out as a family - fond memories! I was so incredibly proud of us when we figured it out!
The illustrations were absolutely stunning, I agree.
Probably not quite what you have in mind, but in several Sherlock Holmes stories, the great consulting detective decides not to publicly solve the case or, rather, not to present the culprit to the police, when he thinks it would cause an even greater injustice to do so. Here’s an example: The Boscombe Valley Mystery - Wikipedia
I must have read Daniel Pinkwater’s *The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death * a hundred times when I was a kid. In fact, it’s still one of my favorite novels. But not until a few years ago, reading an essay on Pinkwater, did I realize that a very good case can be made that almost everything that happens to the kids on their bizarre adventures – from the “aliens” to the mysterious super-villain to the Avocado of Death itself – is part of an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the parents of the kids. Looking at it this way, it’s not even a sci-fi/fantasy story any more, since all the apparent fantasy elements are part of the hoax.
This realization totally floored me, and when I went back and read it again, it makes perfect sense. The cool thing is, the kids in the book never realize all this, and since it’s told from their point of view, chances are the kids who read the book won’t get it either. Only Pinkwater’s older readers are likely to catch on. It’s a clever ruse, and I’ve never read another book that does something like that.
I’ve read the full comic book series Dallas Barr, which is about a 100+ year-old dandy/james bond/smartass who lives in a world where immortality can be bought 10 years at a time. (After those 10 years, the treatment will cause almost instant death, unless you manage to buy a next one. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.) Dallas has many adventures, but there are some things that are casually alluded to;
In the second book of the series, our hero has farewell sex with his one true love, Maria Marconi. She refuses to take any more immortality treatments, basically choosing death. Dallas vehemently protests, but she walks out of his life anyway. Two books (and decennia) later, it is revealed that Maria at some point has been pregnant. In the final two books, Dallas falls in love with a cute young thing, Sarabande Garibaldi. Much love and sex ensues. Sarabande at some point mentions her mother, who died when she was still very young. She tells that what she remembers of her mother was her “que sera, sera” attitude and confesses later on “I was always more a Marconi than a Garibaldi.”
After hearing this, Dallas appears to be surprised, but no further mention is made of the situation, ever again. Our main guy doesn’t seem fazed at all by the situation, and because the clues are so few and far between (books and decenia apart), many people propably won’t even know what’s going on.