Dick,
Re your comments below:
"There should be a distinction between an outright lie and an
obfuscation. In his Burglar books, Larry Block will have his
narrator, Bernie, say something like: 'I ran a few errands
and ...' with the errands being crucial to the denouement. I
think quite a few, if not most, first person private eye
narrations indulge in that particular form of holding back
key bits of exposition. Otherwise, the professional sleuth
would have to arrive at the solution no sooner than the
non-pro reader. The Op, for example, has to know the real
villain behind the Dain Curse before he or she is exposed,
but Hammett would clearly prefer the reader be kept in the
dark as long as possible. My feeling is that the fair play in
these instances would be in providing the reader with enough
clues to arrive at the right answer regardless of the
endability or openness of the narrator."
Good points. An even better example, and one that was quite
controversial in its day (though it's certainly not
hard-boiled), is Agatha Christie's THE MURDER OF ROGER
ACKROYD.
The narrator, Poirot's new "Watson" with the departure of
Capt. Hastings, deliberately witholds fairly crucial info,
but, at the same time, carefully plants all the clues
necessary for the reader to figure out what's going on.
In the context of a mystery in which the puzzle/whodunit
element is crucial to the plot, this seems permissable to
me.
JIM DOHERTY
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