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That week my book club read a mystery and the killer turned out to be a talking parrot
So my book club in Dayton picked this 300 page mystery for our March meeting and we all finished it in like 4 days. The whole thing builds up to the detective cornering the suspect in a lighthouse, real tense stuff, and then the last page reveals the murders were done by the victim's parrot who learned to use a letter opener. Nobody said a word for like 30 seconds and then my friend Dana just goes "I want my 12 dollars back." We spent the next hour arguing about whether that even counts as a twist or if the author just gave up. Has anyone else read a book where the ending was so random it felt like a different person wrote the last chapter?
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harper2543d ago
I used to defend endings like that, honestly. I'd say well the author surprised you, isn't that the point, and my sister would just stare at me. But "the author just gave up" is the right call here. A surprise only works if you can look back and see the clues were there the whole time, and a parrot with a letter opener is not a clue, that's a coin flip. I read a book last year where the killer turned out to be a guy who showed up on page 290 with no name before that, and I finished it feeling cheated instead of shocked. Dana earned her 12 dollars back. Letting a story break its own rules isn't a twist, it's a shrug.
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