Fair Play Whodunnit: Difference between revisions
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:7. [[Detective Mole|The detective must not himself commit the crime.]]
:8. The detective must not light on any clues which are [[Clueless Mystery|not instantly produced]] for the inspection of the reader.
:9. The stupid friend of the detective, [[The Watson|the "Watson"]], must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
:10. [[Twin Switch|Twin brothers]], and [[Body Double|doubles]] generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120614064919/http://www.mysterylist.com/declog.htm Other such lists can be found here.]
Though increasingly rare in modern mystery literature (and in any media outside of print), in the "Golden Age" of mystery, novels were almost entirely of this type (though even then, some were better about the "fair" part than others).
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** The anime is sometimes good about playing fair, and other times shamelessly cheats. It depends on the writer, though the show seems to cheat more nowadays than they did in earlier seasons. Any story based on the manga will still be fair play, though, ''unless'' something crucial is [[Compressed Adaptation|cut during the shift from manga to anime]].
* ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' has the mystery episode "Remote Island Syndrome". The first part of the episode seems to be a regular [[Beach Episode|fun-filled day on a private island]]. That episode secretly contains almost all the clues you need to solve the mystery presented in the second half, although if you don't expect the mystery, you could easily miss them.
** However, it's
== Comic Books ==
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* Played with in ''[[Deep Red]]''; an early scene actually shows the face of the murderer, but it's done so quickly - and before you know to look for it - that most people never catch on.
* The Japanese film ''The Laughing Policeman'' plays with this trope. Many clues are given from the outset, but many are so subtle at first that the detectives don't notice them at all until towards the end. It also subverts this by having someone {{spoiler|kill the [[Big Bad]]}} offscreen just as the cops plan to arrest him. This is only to reveal the ''real'' mastermind, the titular Laughing Policeman {{spoiler|who never gets figured out}}.
* Utterly twisted, warped and subverted by ''[[Murder By Death]]'', which is an elaborate parody and [[Deconstruction]] of classic detective stories, as well as an indictment of those which claim to be Fair Play but actually aren't. Even after all the detectives leave, the film continues to throw more clues at the audience, to the point of complete and utter [[Mind Screw]].
== Literature ==
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* Scott Turow's ''[[Presumed Innocent]]'' delicately scatters its clues amidst character development and the trial plotline—all the reader needs is in the text.
* The [[Lord Darcy]] mysteries are an interesting case, in that they violate Rule #2 (since some of the characters have magical powers) and still manage to play fair with the reader. However, since the universe the stories are set in [[Magic A Is Magic A|has consistent magical rules]], Rule #2 could be said to be broken in letter but not in spirit. In some of the stories the whole point is that everyone assumes an impossible murder was done by magic, and Lord Darcy explains how it could have been committed in a perfectly mundane way. Magic is mostly used for forensics.
* The ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books are like this; the mystery plot is deliberately littered with [[Red Herring]]s to lead Harry (and the reader, by extension) down the wrong path at first, but an acute reader can pick up on the actual clues and determine the true culprit before Harry does. For example, ''[[Harry Potter and
** In fact, many readers who had become used to Rowling's extensive use of [[Chekhov's Gun]]s and [[Chekhov's Gunman]] were able to figure out a couple of things the sixth book set up before the seventh book confirmed them: the identity of "R.A.B." and that {{spoiler|Harry himself}}
*** And even smaller ones, like {{spoiler|the barman of the Hog's Head in [[Harry Potter and
== Live
* ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]'' actually had quite a few, given that the killers usually revealed themselves by [[I Never Said It Was Poison|saying something only the killer would know or assume]].
* The occasional ''[[Law and Order]]'' spin-off (although not [[Law & Order|the original]], for reasons related to its structure) will do this, probably more or less by accident.
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== Web Original ==
* ''The Big Idea'' of the [[Whateley Universe]] is a Fair Play Whodunnit, even though the superpowers of the characters add complications over the usual detective story. The reader even has more information than Reach, the character who plays the detective in the story.
* From ''[[SCP Foundation]]'', the whole point of [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5002 SCP-5002]'s File. SCP-5002 is a mystery writer whose stories somehow become real, but after taken into custody by the Foundation, she herself is the victim - stabbed to death in her cell, the door locked, and no sign of forced entry. Who killed her? How did it happen? Did she actually [[Crazy Enough to Work| cause her own death by writing about it?]] Well, that's the Trope, ''you'' figure it out.
== Western Animation ==
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[[Category:Fair Play Whodunnit]]
[[Category:Mystery Tropes]]
[[Category:Basic Mystery Classes]]
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