# What's the most convoluted/improbable murder mystery plot in fiction you've seen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 1, 2026, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685 "2026-05-01T02:09:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2026, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/81 "2026-05-09T23:41:25Z")
I’ve been watching _Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot Mysteries_ recently, and I’d be hard pressed to pick a most convoluted. I do think _One, Two, Buckle my Shoe_ is a candidate. Important man in the government kills his dentist, so that he can pretend to be a dentist and kill someone by administering an overdose of novacaine. Along the way, he sends the dentist’s assistant a telegram to get her out of the way, and hires her boyfriend as a gardener, so he can be the suspect. In general, though, I am more amused by the frequency that Poirot is in close proximity to a murder, and sometimes, a little skeptical about some of the clues he finds. In one episode, he goes to a flower show, and an older woman hands him an empty seed packet and tells him her name urgently. The next day, her letter shows up, and when he goes to investigate, finds she is already dead. But the empty seed packet has words that point them to a Catholic Church, I believe, and later, when he’s truly desperate for a clue, he realizes that the flowers pictured are “stocks” like the “stock market” where the murderess has gambled away all her money. Really? In the limited time the woman had to pick out the right seed packet to give him? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2026, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/82 "2026-05-10T00:42:29Z")
> [@Eureka](#): > > Important man in the government kills his dentist, so that he can pretend to be a dentist and kill someone by administering an overdose of novacaine. > > Along the way, he sends the dentist’s assistant a telegram to get her out of the way, and hires her boyfriend as a gardener, so he can be the suspect. My favorite Columbo episode is the one where Dick Van Dyke wants to kill his wife, and so hires a guy to purchase a camera and pretend to want to buy some properties — so Dick can break into the guy’s motel room and steal said camera before visiting one of said properties with said wife, so Dick can tie up his wife for a ransom-note photo before shooting her with Gun #1 — before then having the guy phone him so a witness will be sure to only hear the half of the conversation that sounds like a kidnapper is making demands while the guy is just getting instructed to go to a certain place at a certain time, so Dick can break _back_ into the guy’s motel room and replace the camera while also planting the periodicals he cut the ransom-note letters out of, so Dick can later arrive with a ransom-money briefcase and shoot the guy with Gun #2 and press Gun #1 into the suspect’s cold dead hand and shoot _himself_ with it. Simplicity itself! ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2026, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/83 "2026-05-10T00:47:54Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Simplicity itself! I think a divorce would be easier. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/84 "2026-05-11T14:43:37Z")
Would you believe I forgot to mention the work he put in to set up an alibi? ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/85 "2026-05-11T15:31:59Z")
Not to mention counting on the fact that nobody in the movie has seen the film Parallax View. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/86 "2026-05-11T15:57:06Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > In _The Problem of the Wire Cage_ a man is strangled in the middle of a tennis court but the only footprints on the court are those of the victim. Forgive me if someone else commented on this, but it appears to me that this is an aspect of mysteries that playwright Anthony Schaffer was poking fun at in _Sleuth_. At the very beginning of the play (and the first movie version) author Andrew Wyke is reading from his latest “St.John Lord Merridew” mystery “THe Body on the Tennis Court”. The solution in _Sleuth_ is different: The murderer used to be a ballet dancer with the Ballet Russes. After he murders his victim, he walks out onto the tennis court on the tape marking the divisions of the court _on his points_. He tosses the body onto the court, executes a neat reverse, and walks back along the tape, never setting foot on the clay. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/87 "2026-05-11T16:26:31Z")
In ballet, men do not dance on point. Except, of course, from [Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Ballets_Trockadero_de_Monte_Carlo) (didn’t Cecil talk about them once?) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/88 "2026-05-11T17:24:31Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > In ballet, men do not dance on point. Clearly another reason that scene is parody. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/89 "2026-05-11T18:24:33Z")
The murder plot in Hitchcock’s _Vertigo_ is certainly convoluted/improbable. Gavin Elster pays Judy Barton to impersonate his wife Madeleine, because Judy looks like her. Gavin asks Scottie, a police detective who was forced into retirement because of his vertigo, to follow “Madeleine,” whom he claims to suspect is being possessed by the ghost of Madeleine’s great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes, who committed suicide many years before Madeleine was born. There’s no chance of Scottie running into the real Madeleine because she lives far away from both Scottie and Gavin, and never comes to San Francisco, where most of the story takes place. Judy/“Madeleine” gets Scottie to fall in love with her, then tells Scottie about visions of hers that Scottie recognizes as being set in Mission San Juan Bautista, about a hundred miles south of San Francisco. Scottie takes Judy/“Madeleine” to the mission, where, driven by her “visions”/“possession,” she runs into the church and up to the bell tower. Scottie is unable to follow her because of his vertigo. When she gets to the top, Gavin is waiting for her with the body of the real Madeleine, whom he has already killed. He throws Madeleine’s corpse out of the tower, and it lands on a roof below. Scottie is so traumatized that he flees rather than try to get help, so he never sees that the body isn’t the same person as Judy/“Madeleine.” If someone wanted to get away with murdering his wife, would he come up with an absurd plan like this, that depends on things that are entirely outside of his control? IMO, Vertigo is a great film, perhaps Hitchcock’s best, despite the absurdity of the murder plot. As a study of obsession, it’s without peer. ---
**Author:** ![iamatractorboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iamatractorboy/32/21261_2.png) [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/90 "2026-05-11T19:06:05Z")
A brilliant film Almost as improbable/implausible is that an experienced detective would think that tailing someone in a car and parking about 20 yards behind them in an alleyway would be inconspicuous behaviour. I mean, come on Scottie (he doesn’t know that Madeleine/Judy knows she’s being tailed and is playing a role, so he should be a lot more careful!). ---
**Author:** ![Dropo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce7236/32.png) [@Dropo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dropo)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/91 "2026-05-11T19:07:09Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > IMO, Vertigo is a great film, perhaps Hitchcock’s best, despite the absurdity of the murder plot. As a study of obsession, it’s without peer. Putting aside my disagreement that _Vertigo_ is a “great film” (I don’t think Hitchcock ever made a “great film”) or his “best,” and adding that its murder plot is not only an “absurdity,” but clumsily told to boot, I will take issue with the last sentence. Have you seen the Argentinean film _Beyond Oblivion_/_Más allá del Olvido_ (1956)? As a study of obsession, I thought it put _Vertigo_ to shame. “The similarity of the plot theme of [Vertigo (1958)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/?ref_=tttrv_tr) and [Más allá del olvido (1956)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186380/?ref_=tttrv_tr), shot two years before in Buenos Aires, obsessed all Argentine movie buffs for decades. Finally the question was elucidated: the link between both films is the novella “Bruges-la-Morte” (1893) of the Belgian writer [Georges Rodenbach](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1059317/?ref_=tttrv_tr). [Hugo del Carril](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0140459/?ref_=tttrv_tr) adapted it directly. [Alfred Hitchcock](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000033/?ref_=tttrv_tr) indirectly, through a French novel entitled “D’Entre Les Morts” (1954) that its authors [Pierre Boileau](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0092267/?ref_=tttrv_tr) and [Thomas Narcejac](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0092268/?ref_=tttrv_tr) hatched a childish police plot about the double tragedy of Rodenbach.” - [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186380/trivia/?ref\_=tt\_dyk\_trv](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186380/trivia/?ref_=tt_dyk_trv) I would otherwise concur that _Vertigo_ is a most worthy addition to this thread owing to its “childish police plot.” ---
**Author:** ![iamatractorboy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iamatractorboy/32/21261_2.png) [@iamatractorboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamatractorboy)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2026, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685/92 "2026-05-11T19:09:50Z")
> [@Dropo](#): > > I don’t think Hitchcock ever made a “great film” That is quite the statement. And probably a debate for another thread! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-convoluted-improbable-murder-mystery-plot-in-fiction-youve-seen/1029685.md?page=4)