I’ve been watching a lot of British shows recently. I caught up on the most recent season of the Sister Boniface mysteries ( a spin-off of the Father Brown mysteries, which I also devoured) and am now watching Jonathan Creek. For those of you not familiar with the series, Jonathan is the brains who plans out tricks for a rather sleazy magician.
These series, plus others I’ve enjoyed – Pie in the Sky being notable – are billed as both humorous and serious. There’s an offbat blend to the mysteries with humor verging on the silly. The combination appeals to me.
Jonathan Creek always has mysteries, some appearing to be parnormal and others just impossible locked rooms. The more successful solutions for me are the ones where I say, wow! The less successful ones are the ones with a lot of explanation from characters about things I didn’t know so there wasn’t a fair chance to guess. This usually involves character backstory and complicated reasons people did odd things.
I still enjoy seeing the episodes unwind, and there’s usually a bit of humor about the magician’s latest failed escapade – either a publicity problem or an unfortunate attempt at romance, many times both.
When you’re reading a mystery, or even a fantasy which doesn’t seem it can be resolved, do you want enough clues you can figure it out with the character? Or would you rather be surprised by a solution that seems to come out of the blue, assuming you can see clues to it looking back?
I’m currently reading what I think is the last book in a young adult fatnasy trilogy where I don’t realy see how things can win up happily for some valued seconary characters. I hope the author can pull it off. Really good YA with magic and empires that have very conflicting view of barbarism and civilization, with the heroine forced to progressively harder choices with ongoing consequences. The book is the Unbound Empire.