Crime & Mystery
Some of the best witnesses in crime fiction are maddeningly ordinary about facts and hopeless about meaning. They notice the chipped mug, the wet sleeve, the wrong key on the ring. They miss the motive standing in the doorway. Then, without meaning to, they tell the truth in the most inconvenient way possible.
That feels truer than the tidy version where a witness explains everything neatly. People rarely understand the significance of what they’ve seen while they’re seeing it. They just remember the detail that stuck. Sometimes that is enough to break a case open, which is rude but useful.
That feels truer than the tidy version where a witness explains everything neatly. People rarely understand the significance of what they’ve seen while they’re seeing it. They just remember the detail that stuck. Sometimes that is enough to break a case open, which is rude but useful.
Witnesses are often useful precisely because they are not narrators. They hand over fragments, not explanations. The trouble starts when a novel tries to make them sound wiser than they are. I’d rather have someone who misreads the room and still gets the colour of the curtains right. Meaning can be built later. Detail usually can’t.