Truth, Lies and GIGO

[pippin_999]

> Neri:
> I'll let Richard answer regarding his theory, which I 
don't wholly buy either, but regardless of the theory I 
think he had made a very interesting observation, which 
you seem to miss or explain away. As I understand it, 
he's not talking about ANY lie, but about a specific,
well-defined category of lies. These are lies that the 
baddies (all of them, not only Crouch Jnr., and suspects 
too) *tell* Harry, and through them JKR tells the 
readers, in order to fool Harry and us.
> Richard suggested that such lies do not exist in the 
series, which would have been an extremely odd finding. 
I already gave examples that such lies do exist, but 
they ARE surprisingly rare. So rare that it can't be a 
coincidence. JKR must be making a conscious effort to 
avoid such lies. 

Pippin:



You mean, the Ellery Queen style plot where the perp 
lies to the sleuth, but is found out because of a defect in 
logic or through ignorance of some little known fact
which only the sleuth is clever enough to spot? 

I think such lies are  avoided because they tend to 
spoil the book on future re-readings. You start 
wondering why no  one else noticed that, say, the
artist couldn't have died while out painting on the moor,
because he never would have mixed cadmium yellow 
and lead white.

JKR has said she doesn't like to reread mysteries 
because it's no fun once you know the answer to the 
puzzle, so I'm not surprised she would avoid structuring 
the plot around that style.

The Crouch puzzle is almost a classic fair mystery. If 
we had spotted the lie about Crouch disappearing, put 
that together with the missing polyjuice ingredients, 
and realized from the Tom Riddle grave that father and 
son may have the same name, we might have guessed (but 
not deduced) who the impostor Moody was. But the plot of 
the book doesn't hang on it, since Harry never figures 
it out. 

I do remember wondering why Moody was lying on
first reading, but I thought it was to keep Harry out of it. I
should have rethought that when it became clear he
wanted Harry involved, but by then I'd forgotten about it.


Pippin