Whoddunits and the Mystery Plot Structure
One of my absolute favourite forms of storytelling is the whodunnit. I grew up watching Columbo, revelling in the moment Peter Falk would turn and give the classic "One more thing" question that would capture the killer's critical mistake. When I got a bit older, Monk and Psych were constantly on my television, and any movie that had a hint of a mystery to it would capture my attention.
The whodunnit is a fascinating bit of plot structure that has its seeds all the way back in some classic crime novel structures, like Sherlock Holmes. Tzvetan Todorov, a structuralist literary critic and sociologist, among many other things, wrote about the structure of the whodunnit as consisting of two different narratives happening in one story. The first narrative is that of the murder - it tells of the events of what happened, how it occurred and why. The second narrative is the detective solving the story of the murder, piecing together each of the pieces and ultimately catching the murderer.
Columbo presents these narratives side-by-side. The beginning of every episode presents the first narrative - the murder. It shows the viewer the potential of the perfect murder, a seemingly well-covered up murder which has the drawback of the bad guy seeming to win within the first half hour. The second part of the show is Columbo piecing it all together, gathering small facts and interviewing several characters, slowly getting together all the information that was presented to the viewer in that first part of the show, culminating in the confrontation and arrest of the culprit.
But Columbo is naturally structured a little differently for a Whodunnit. Typically, the audience is just as unsure of the culprit as the detective-character. Agatha Christie's Poirot, for example, has the more typical mystery plot structure of the whodunnit, where the second narrative - the one where the detective solves the murder - is also intricately tied to the revealing of the first narrative. We, as an audience, follow Poirot, who - through a series of interviews - shows us the second narrative through an slow discovery of the first.
They key of the Whodunnit, however, is the knowledge that each of these narratives are fragmentary and inherently not significant when on its own. It's when they become joined together that the narrative is finally complete and full. Neither section of Columbo would be as successful as the whole picture if presented on their own. Similarly, Poirot's narrative fragments lean on each other to present one full and complete picture made up of fragmentary bits and pieces.
And ultimately the second narrative, the one in which the detective determines the truth of the first narrative, is tied to the presence of the audience. The audience discovers the first narrative at the same time as Poirot - we are living alongside him, gathering all the information in the same way, and therefore - theoretically - able to come up with the same solution.
Columbo also reflects the importance of the audience member, although in a different way. Unlike traditional whodunnits like Poirot where the audience is discovering the solution along with the detective, Columbo presents the solution before the detective is even present, but the second narrative of discovery being ultimately tied to the audience is still true. Even though the direct nature of the events, and who committed the crime, is known to the audience, the ultimate reveal for Columbo is not who did it (or "whodunnit") but rather, how they messed up. Every piece of information uncovered by Columbo is not a nugget for us to solve with him, but rather pieces of a puzzle for us to guess what it will be that will actually be their undoing.
The whodunnit's essential plot structure includes the audience on every part of its even most basic format. The second narrative, which is always present in all whodunnits, ultimatley utilises its connection to the audience. Its through this second narrative that the audience is drawn in, and given the feeling of some sort of power and control over the narrative as it is explored and revealed. We can be just as intelligent as Sherlock Holmes, given the opportunity and the means.
Whodunnits always capitalize on their inherent connection to audience by often presenting a type of meta-element to the narrative. These narratives are being written as we read them - there is always a reason for the fact they are written, and the writing process is tied into the narrative of the piece just as much as the rest of the narrative elements. Dr Watson's writing of the crimes as they occur, for example, becomes just as much part of the uncovering of a Sherlock Homes story as the actual murder mystery. The whodunnit exists as a genre in the intersection of the author, the characters, and the audience.
One of the best examples of the contemporary whodunnit, which built on all the understandings of the mystery plot structure of traditional narratives and all that has come after: Knives Out.
Knives Out is the ultimate whodunnit for our contemporary times, but one that builds on the nostalgia and memories of narratives past. It uses the well-trod complicated components of the mystery plot structure of previous crime dramas, but does it in a new way while never losing any of the components that built the whodunnit the way it is.
Knives Out has multiple streams of narratives happening at once. We start as an audience after the death of Harlan Thromby, a mystery writer and patriarch of his large and complicated family, and are almost immediately thrown into the typical mystery trope of the interview.
The interview is the important part of the whodunnit. Its the part of the story where our second narrative - the one where the detective and audience collectively discover the first narrative - begins to happen. Knives Out shows this actively to us by playing us the interviews as their told, showing the different characters' perspectives. Each of Harlan's children, for example, remember being directly behind him when he blows out his birthday candles, for example. But each one shows a slightly different aspect of the picture of the evening, each contradiction or difference painting a picture to the audience about who this person is, what their concerns are, and potentially where they may be lying.
And this is partly where we see how Knives Out plays on audience expectation and participation in ways that whodunnits typically do. While the story is not being actively written in the Dr Watson type of way, part way through the interviews the narrative shifts to be more echoing of the Columbo-style whodunnit where the audience feels they know the solution. In this flip, the point of view also shifts. In the interview stage, we follow the detective, but at this point, we start to follow Marta, Harlan's nurse and friend. Through the ever shifting nature of the points of view and the discoveries we find through each of these pairs of eyes, the audience has the tools to uncover the truth of the first narrative while following the second.
The whodunnit structure is a really fascinating and complicated. It's defined by its complication, and its fragmentary nature. Its one of the only genres where its fragmentary nature is actually part of what makes it satisfactory.