Simple Mystery Plots, Part 5: The Real Story

I found another one!  (Two, actually; another one tomorrow.)

The mystery revolves around the fact that there are multiple versions of the truth (or conjectures of the truth), which are structured as separate chapters/sections of the book.

  1. A crime occurs.
  2. Various people try to solve the crime, or are called upon to give their version of the crime.
  3. The ending may not see any resolution into the crime, but into the nature of truth itself.  (But often the crime is solved.)
  4. Often the verrrry ending wraps up with an open-ended question of some sort, even if the crime is resolved.

This would be things like RashomonThe Poisoned Chocolates Case, Peter Straub’s A Dark Matter, or even things where things are pretty straightforward but multiple POVs chime in to move the story forward, a la The Woman in White or Laura by Vera Caspary.

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