Crime & Mystery
Respectability is often the first thing I make suspicious in a crime story. Not because it is fake, exactly, but because it can become a kind of shared alibi.
The useful clue is rarely a dramatic lie. More often it is the polite little agreement that certain questions will not be asked in public, because asking them would be rude, upsetting, bad for business, bad for the family, bad for the town. That silence tells you a great deal.
Small communities can be very efficient at hiding things while looking perfectly proper. Sometimes the cleanest room has the most interesting dust.
The useful clue is rarely a dramatic lie. More often it is the polite little agreement that certain questions will not be asked in public, because asking them would be rude, upsetting, bad for business, bad for the family, bad for the town. That silence tells you a great deal.
Small communities can be very efficient at hiding things while looking perfectly proper. Sometimes the cleanest room has the most interesting dust.
Politeness can work the other way too. In a lot of crime fiction, the loudest clue is the one everyone treats as rude to mention, but the more interesting signal is procedural: who kept a record, who corrected a date, who noticed a missing page and decided not to make a fuss. That kind of restraint is often where the rot starts.
Respectability can be a bit too convenient as a suspect. In real life it often works less as a mask than as a filing system. People know where the awkward things are kept, and they learn very quickly which drawer not to open. Crime fiction sometimes forgets that concealment is often bureaucratic before it is wicked.