The Lovely Bones/Fridge
- Fridge Logic: Remind me, why didn't anyone even think of asking around once the identity of the murderer was known?
- In the novel, Hal Heckler (Lindsey's boyfriend's older brother) does make a point of asking passing motorcyclists and truckers to keep an eye out for Mr. Harvey or anyone matching his mannerisms and description. About midway through the book, he does come across someone who claims Harvey killed a friend of his, but due to the nature of the story, the pieces never all quite add up.
- The biker said that Harvey killed his mother and that she was the woman he claimed was his fake wife. She was also the only adult Harvey ever killed.
- In the novel, Hal Heckler (Lindsey's boyfriend's older brother) does make a point of asking passing motorcyclists and truckers to keep an eye out for Mr. Harvey or anyone matching his mannerisms and description. About midway through the book, he does come across someone who claims Harvey killed a friend of his, but due to the nature of the story, the pieces never all quite add up.
- One critic of the movie pointed out this little tidbit: why the hell does a single middle-aged man (complete with paedophile glasses and a dodgy moustache) who makes dollhouses for a living not jump straight to the top of the suspects list?
- Remember, the movie takes place during "a time when missing children's faces didn't appear on milk cartons, or be a prominent feature on the evening news. Back then, people didn't think that this sort of thing could happen."
- This troper hasn't seen The Movie, but the novel explains well how Harvey deflected the police's suspicion: he acts as pathetic as possible complete with a fake dead wife story, purposely looking like The Woobie in front of the cops. The dollhouses even enforce his pitiful masquerade because "his wife" loved them. The sob story along with Jack's Hot-Blooded determination, and correctly asserting to the police that Harvey IS in fact the killer repeatedly without visible evidence, help Harvey out too.
- Jeffrey Dahmer. Similar time period of killing; he, too, looked the part of a Serial Killer, yet when the police came to his apartment after his victim ran away, they suspected nothing. Unassuming, white, middle-aged man, respectable, polite - what's there to suspect?
- The movie does have Harvey put on a show of being a nice, normal (if withdrawn) guy, when the police come to question him. When Jack starts to insist at the end that Harvey is the killer, he has already bothered the police with so many leads that they don't take him seriously.