Mystery Writing

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Is Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid a complete or a completed mystery?

As a child, I devoured mystery and detectve stories: The Three Investigators (the name Jupiter Jones has stayed with me ever since), The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Hardy Boys, even Nancy Drew. Somewhere along the transition from childhood to grown up reading material, I moved to other genres: science-fiction, mainly, and then on to thrillers and fantasy. Apart from a few books like The Oxford Murders and Death on the Nile, I have seldom returned to mysteries. I rarely even watch them on TV.

But this week, I’ve experienced two very different mysteries: a Stephen King novel called The Colorado Kid and Colombo: Prescription: Murder, a play performed by the Middle Ground Theatre Company. 

The play was based on a television drama of the same title. The actor who played Colombo, John Guerrasio, perfectly captured Peter Falk’s mannerisms and idiosyncracies (”Oh, just one more thing” brought a cheer from the audience). But the play would not have been a success if Colombo hadn’t solved the mystery. If, instead, it had ended with a baffled Colombo shaking his head and saying, “I guess we’ll never know whodunnit.”

(SPOILER ALERT!)

However, that’s exactly how The Colorado Kid finished. Stephen King justified this lack of closure by repetatively having the characters explain that mysteries often don’t get solved - that’s why they’re mysterious - and then, in the afterword, by saying…well, much the same.

This lack of resolution gave the story a lazy sense of complacency; in the same way the final book in The Dark Tower series failed to resolve Roland’s story, so The Colorado Kid failed to resolve the Colorado Kid’s. King justified his Dark Tower ending by saying, “It’s the only one I had.”

But for the Colorado Kid, he claimed he had plenty of endings up his sleeve - he just chose not to play them. Why, though? It didn’t give the story an exciting Italian Job style cliffhanger; rather, it left me faintly irritated, as I often am when someone hasn’t done everything I’ve paid them for.

To finish my mystery splurge for the week, I watched Scooby Doo with my kids today. After Fred’s explanation, the unmasked villain snarled, “And I’d have got away with it if wasn’t for you pesky kids!”

And the mystery was completed.

Tags: mystery, stories, writing
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Children of men

Monday, March 8th, 2010

I watched children of men today. I know it’s based on a book by PD James, but I was struck by how formulaic it is. As soon as Michael Caine’s character appeared I knew he was destined never to see the final credits. He reminded me of Patrick Swayze’s sidekick/mentor in Roadhouse.

It’s a shame because the film’s vision was good…unremittingly bleak and grey with the future literally shrouded in fog. All very dystopian.

But none of the twists seemed very surprising, somehow. I think it’s an issue with film scripts in general and the rigid framework of first turning point etc they follow. I guess only the very best script writers avoid obviously signposting their screenplays.

Novels also follow formulas, of course, but I think they disguise them better. Or perhaps the formulas are easier to disguise in novels.

Tags: film, plot, screenplays, scripts, stories
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