Truth, Lies and GIGO

[nkafkafi]

> 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? 
> 

Neri:
Well, you are the mystery expert (I rarely read mystery books) so you
know better than I what is the standard. Take a few classic detective
and mystery books of various styles and count how many lies of this
type you can find. Is JKR within the norm or isn't she?

> Pippin:
> 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.

Neri:
You mean, the baddies are careful not to lie too much because it might
expose them? I'm not sure I'm convinced. After all, as you and Dave
pointed out, these baddies DO lie. It just that they rarely do it by
telling the lie explicitly. For example, Crouch Jnr. is already
pretending to be Moody, so why wouldn't he say: "they say I'm obsessed
with caching dark Wizards"? Instead he says: "they say old Mad-Eye's
obsessed with caching dark Wizards". This doesn't make him less of a
liar. It just makes him less of a literal liar.

> Pippin:
> 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.
> 

Neri:
Yes, HP is not a classic mystery. In fact, it is much more than a
classic mystery. Is there a previous example in which the main mystery
lasts over a whole series?

I think somebody would have solved the Crouch puzzle if it were
stretched over more than one book, so we would have had many months to
think about it and discuss it. There were many additional clues, like
Voldy saying in the first chapter that he'll have a faithful servant
at Hogwarts, or all the strange things that happened in the QWC. The
Crouch puzzle was very difficult not because there weren't enough
clues, but because these clues were scattered around with no apparent
connection between them. 

However, concluding about the nature of the whole-series mystery from
the single-book mysteries is an extrapolation. There's really no real
reason at all to think that the whole-series mystery will be similar
to the single-book mysteries.

For example, the single-book mysteries were mostly whodunits, but it
seems that the whole-series mystery is more concerned with "why",
"what" and "how" than with "who". I can think offhand about only one
official whodunit mystery in the series that was not solved in the
same book it was presented. This is of course "who heard half of the
prophecy in the Hog's Head?" and it's really not surprising that it
wasn't solved yet, as it was only presented in the chapter before last
in the last book. It is the "why", "what" and "how" mysteries that
stretch over more than one book, like (counting both solved and
unsolved ones):

1. Why did Voldemort want to kill Harry?
2. What really happened in GH?
3. Why was Hagrid expelled?
4. Why did the Sorting Hat want to put Harry in Slytherin?
5. Why does Snape hate James' memory?
6. Why does Harry's scar hurt when Voldy is angry?
7. What powers (besides parseltongue) were transferred to Harry in GH?
8. What was Trelawney's first true prediction?
9. What was the gleam in DD's eyes about?
10. Why did Snape change sides?
11. How does Snape spy on the Death Eaters?
11. Why can no teacher hold the DADA post for more than one year?
12. What's the story with saying Voldemort's name?
13. (OK, I could go on but you probably got the idea already). 


Neri