Re: RARA-AVIS: Surprise Endings

From: JIM DOHERTY ( jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com)
Date: 11 Nov 2005


Miker,

Re your point below:

> I never really understood Brigid's panic. I didn't
> think Spade's reason for believing her to be the
> murderer was anywhere close to what it would take to
> convict her of the crime.

Means, motive, opportunity, and a confession. That generally works in any court in the land.

But the point isn't whether or not Brigid would get convicted in court in real life. It's that, in the ocntext of the novel, her identity was concealed until the end, but the clues needed to identify her were available to the reader. This made TMF, structurally, a fair-play whodunit, but did so without vitiating the novelistic qualities that make it a classic.

JIM DOHERTY

                
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