Narrative causality as a detection technique

[ewx]

If you watch TV detective shows (CSI, NCIS, Law & Order, ...) then very often you can figure out who did it - or who actually did it, that quite often only being fully revealed after a lot of effort chasing/questioning/prosecuting/etc the ‘obvious’ suspect - simply by knowing the conventions of the show - sometimes as simply as counting characters and figuring out that the only point of a particular character's presence is to be the guilty party.

My suggestion, then: a story about a detective who knows that some such set of conventions apply to the world they're in and can therefore use them to figure out whodunnit (though of course, they would still have to find and interpret evidence, use interrogation skills, etc to actually construct a winnable case) simply by applying these rules.

Comments

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

Have you read much Jasper Fforde? There's a bit of that going on in his books, particularly the nursery crime books, though the bookworld ones have it to some extent too.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've not read any Jasper Fforde, in fact.

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

I'd recommend him, in that case. Very daft.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I'll second the recommendation of Jasper Fforde. I particuarly liked the concept of the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but I'm probably biased...

I'm afraid that all I have is First Among Sequels and The Fourth Bear, but you can borrow them if you get that far :-).

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I dunno, his style irritates me after a while. And the early books often didn't end properly - a case of sequelitis.

[aldabra]

Mmm, Scooby Doo was annoying me earlier, because you can spot the baddie by tone of voice as soon as they appear (and obviously the ghosts are mechanical and there's a smuggling ring behind it).

[james-r.livejournal.com]

It's just preparing the kids for Columbo.

[covertmusic.livejournal.com]

There's about five really, really dodgy jokes just dying to be made here.

(And I'd have gotten away with them if it wasn't for those pesky kids.)

[imc.livejournal.com]

they would still have to find and interpret evidence, use interrogation skills, etc to actually construct a winnable case

Which is pretty much the plot of every episode of Columbo, although in his case he figures out the culprit by intuition rather than by knowing the rules of the genre.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

There's a RPG comic - probably either KODT or OOTS, that involves the characters ascertaining that an NPC doesn't have a pre-determined (by the GM) name and hence is not vital to the plot.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Order Of The Stick certainly play with NPC names and the significance thereof. This strip (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0472.html) is a delightful riff on Nominal Importance (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NominalImportance).

[damerell.livejournal.com]

"The warrior is ruled out by his own testimony."

"What do you mean, Holmes? He has said nothing at all."

"Precisely, Watson. His player is not here for this session."

[sweh.livejournal.com]

The next stage would then be recognising that these rules are artificial and therefore the detective must be in virtual reality or some other artificial world (holodeck, robots, whatever) and fights to recover his memory and escape the trap.

[kaet.livejournal.com]

I think it's kind of genre defining to decide that you're in an artificial world/holodeck/matrix amongst robots etc, rather than catching religion; also that this is seen as dystpoic.

[cjwatson]

I saw a slasher movie once in which the characters figured out that they must be in a slasher movie and reacted accordingly. (I have a vague memory that it was an episode of "The Outer Limits", possibly Abduction, although the details don't seem quite right.)

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's being Genre Savvy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenreSavvy). Quite a few recent comedy horror movies have been like that :) As quoted on that page: "I know what happens to the black dude, and I'm getting out of here."

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

US detectives seem dimmer than European ones.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

How about Numbers? Although I've never really watched it.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Er, never heard of it...

[sbp.livejournal.com]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numb3rs

"A typical episode begins with a crime, which is subsequently investigated by a team of FBI agents led by Don and mathematically described by Charlie ... The insights provided by Charlie's mathematics are always in some way crucial to solving the crime."

[saf2285.livejournal.com]

I thoroughly suggest that you read Martinez's The Book of Murder, which goes some way to exploring this problem, and looking at the role of the author in the creation of crime. It's also just a really good book.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

It might have been interesting if they'd used that sort of format for the Agatha Christie episode of Dr Who. I thought the way they did it skimped on the mystery side of things because there wasn't enough time to develop that as well as the alien bit. But if Christie's conventions were used explicitly as a base then it would have been more interesting and even more referential!

[kaet.livejournal.com]

The most famous actor usually does it, particularly if they're in an apparently minor role. This is particularly true in modern ITV detective dramas where they have to be all RADA at the end. You have to be careful, though, you have to go by ITV fame which seems to be its own little bubble: thingy who used to be a vet on Heartbeat would rank way above Al Pacino, for example who, lightwieght B-lister that he is, has never been in Heartbeat, The Bill nor Emmerdale!

[kaet.livejournal.com]

One thing you'd need access to, I think, is post-editing sensations. I'm not sure how you'd arrange that, though.

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this is only something which works if the detective keeps to genre. If they attempt to change things by publicly acknowledging the conventions or trying to use them, then the genre shifts and they get into trouble with their detection rate. When they start hitting out against the conventions and being silly, load of acrobats could appear, or something like that.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

I've had the same thought. In CSI, where most episodes have two plots, there isn't enough time for anything but the tightest scripting and plotting (it's this necessary discipline that made CSI stand out from the competition back in 2000). In NCIS, about half of each episode is devoted to humorous banter among the regulars, with a similar effect on the detection plot.

Another consequence of the CSI formula is that there's not enough screen time for a courtroom scene, so each plot has to end with the guilty party waiving his or her rights under the fifth amendment and confessing, destroying any lingering shreds of plausibility.