This post is by Phil Price.
Andrew recently gave a rave review to the whodunnit “Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone”, by Benjamin Stevenson (and he also loved the sequel, “Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect”).
I read EIMFHKS and, in short, I liked most of it pretty well but hated the ending. Below is an what I said to Andrew in an email. It has a pretty significant spoiler, not about the identity murderer but about a plot point, so I’m putting it below the fold.
[Whoops, for some reason the ‘read more’ tag isn’t working correctly, or at least it isn’t when I preview the post. I’m adding this filler here just to put some more space so you have a chance to avert your eyes before inadvertently reading the next several sentences before you can stop yourself.]
I read the book, based on your strong recommendation, and I liked the first 90% quite well. Wouldn’t have given it a rave review but would have mentioned it favorably in a conversation about whodunnits. But then the final scene was so ridiculous that it almost ruins the whole thing for me. I don’t mean the reveal, which was ridiculous but OK, hey, it’s light fiction, and it’s a genre whose veins have been so thoroughly mined that there’s not much else to find, that’s tolerable, although it would already have gotten me to take my evaluation down a peg. But the thing that really gets me is that we are supposed to believe that a large room catches fire so quickly that people can’t even get out of the room without being badly burned. In ten seconds the entire room is afire, and in twenty the floor joists are completely burned through and parts of the floor are collapsing. I can suspend my disbelief a long way, but nowhere near far enough for that.
Obviously it didn’t bother you. How did it not bother you? Maybe there’s a sense that of course it’s gonna be ridiculous, it’s a whodunnit and who really cares if there’s something nutty like an exploding room in a hotel? Or maybe there’s something meta going on, like “this guy said he’s going to be a reliable narrator, but of course he’d say that even if he isn’t one….who knows what really happened with the library and the fire, maybe that whole scene is made up, even in the world of the book, and that only makes the book better!”?
Still, even if some readers aren’t bothered by this sort of thing, some of us are. At least several people read the book before publication, probably more like dozens. Didn’t any of them point out that this scene is literally impossible and nobody will believe it? “Some people won’t mind, maybe a lot of people won’t mind, but it will ruin the ending for a lot of people so you should change that part”, didn’t anyone say that? Or did some people say that and the author refused? It would have been so easy to come up with another way to do what needed to be done to hit all the major buttons of the denouement. What a missed opportunity.
I suppose I should clarify that the “library” is not a building with hundreds of people in it, nor is it a maze-like warren of rooms like the library in The Name Of The Rose. It’s a room roughly the size of a living room, with about ten people in it. A room full of old paperbacks could indeed catch fire really quickly…but unless they are wet with gasoline the whole room isn’t going to be aflame in seconds. And we are talking seconds: the way the paragraph is written it’s one of those “everything happened so fast” scenarios where several things are happening at once and it’s hard to keep track.
Andrew suggested I post this on the blog so he can respond here, so, here it is.
I’ll also mention that I read the sequel, Everyone On My Train Is A Suspect, and, although it didn’t have any howlers like the exploding library, I didn’t love it. I won’t be reading any more by this author. Just not my cup of tea.
Upon Andrew’s recommendation, I read it. Sadly, I hated it. Self-referential in a painfully obnoxious style, with endless contrivances and poor character development. Worst still, I guessed the murderer in the first twenty pages. Thank you for your indulgence.
Phil:
I liked the sequel even more than the original. It did have a couple plot holes, though, so I could see why you wouldn’t love it. The other thing is that I read these books in French translation (I happened to come across the first one in a bookstore in Paris and I bought it for someone as a gift, then read it myself). I think I’d have liked them as much in English, but who knows? My French is ok enough that I can get most of the jokes, but it often takes me a few readings of a passage to figure out plot details, so maybe the plot holes don’t bother me as much when I’m reading the book through this sort of fog.
I ran your comment past my friend who read the book and she replied that, physics aside, Stevenson did set up the fire scene: earlier in the book there were places where characters commented how that room was full of dry wood and could blow up like a tinderbox. That’s not a full justification but it’s something, not a physics justification but a justification in the form of the plot, i.e. good enough for Agatha Christie, I think.
I can’t recall anything this physically impossible in anything I read by Agatha Christie, although I read most of her stuff more than twenty years ago so maybe I’ve just forgotten.
But, whether Agatha Christie did something this stupid or not, I just don’t understand why a writer would do this. Why not choose something within the realm of plausibility? If you need to get all of the suspects together and then have a really rapid fire, for reasons of poetic justice or whatever, you’ve got options. Ski resorts have vehicles that run on gasoline, they get refueled and serviced somewhere, you could do something with that. They use explosives to trigger avalanches, so you’ve got explosives at your disposal.
I’ve done some thinking about why certain things bother me and others don’t, in books or movies… a lot of it comes down to things outside my conscious control. The big sin is anything that makes me think “oh, come on, that’s ridiculous”, and that isn’t always predictable. I can still watch Star Wars with enjoyment, un-bothered by The Force, or faster-than-light travel, or the fact that C-3PO is designed with exposed wires in his belly, or sound in space, etc. I’m willing to swallow a universe in which such things happen. But when something seems “unrealistic” even in the world of the movie or book that I’m reading, that just kills it.
In EIMFHKS they are pretty much in our world, so all of the physics stuff has to pretty much work like the real world. The scene with the fire ruins it for me, like if they had someone jump from the ground floor of a building to the roof, or run a three-minute mile. Fine for an old Batman TV episode — in the world of Batman stuff like that can happen — but not in our world, or the world of this book.
Andrew, I know it didn’t ruin it for you, and I’m not saying it should. What I don’t get is: the writer and editor etc. know it will ruin it for some of us. Why not make everybody happy? Hit the key plot elements some other way. What’s the downside?
Phil:
Hmmm, you’re a physicist . . . Let’s take this away from physics for a moment. Suppose that the killing was done with a poison that had some unusual properties. I don’t know from poisons. (Agatha Christie did, but that’s another story.) Whether the poison is real, or invented, or somewhere in between, for the purpose of “fair play” it would be necessary for the author to introduce the poison in some way earlier in the book.
I think of Stevenson’s burning library as being like such a poison. Not being as physics-attuned as you, I didn’t think hard about how long it would take the room to burn. What was relevant to me was that he followed fair play by providing earlier hints to the room’s extreme flammability.
To put it another way: Yes, I accept that the burning room was a continuity violation–it’s just something that someone that might not be noticed by readers who are not physicists or firefighters. I’m assuming that Stevenson is not himself either a physicists or a firefighter, nor were his editors and other pre-publication readers. So the error slipped through.
I understand how you would find it hard to get past this continuity violation. It’s similar to how I’m hypersensitive to issues that are well known to me as a student of public opinion but are commonly misunderstood by journalists. I see these howlers in a newspaper or magazine article and I want to scream! But the journalists and editors just don’t know.
Phil, there’s a bunch of stuff that’s really jarring to me as a well informed reader / watcher that’s probably not to others.
The way firearms work in the movies (loudness, recoil, accuracy, rate of fire, reloading, silencers, etc), computer security (breaking encryption, guessing passwords, scanning retinas and thumbprints, etc), alarm systems, lock picking, jumps off buildings that should break your legs and pelvis, all sorts of things.
Lots of people just accept this stuff as the way stuff works. It’s kinda sad. But then people go to movies or read books to get out of the real world, so maybe it’s just annoying that I’m so hung up on that stuff.
If someone writes a scene that seems ridiculous to people who know a lot about firearms, they should realize they’re at least potentially going to lose those people with that scene. They might be willing to do that: if they think only 1% of the potential readership is going to be bothered — or even 10% — then that could be a price they’re willing to pay if they think the scene is especially cinematic so they don’t want to change it, or they need to finish the damn book and are not willing to put another week into thinking about a different way to handle it. I understand that.
But in the case of an ordinary room that catches fire so quickly that the floor starts to collapse in well under 30 seconds, (1) the recognition that this could not happen is not some relatively obscure fact, like that an Sig P320 doesn’t have a safety; this is something I would expect any result to realize immediately; and (2) I can’t think of any reason other than laziness to not rewrite the scene to make it a lot less ridiculous. No essential change to the story would have been required.
I have to admit, it’s striking to see Andrew suggest that only a specialist like a physicist or firefighter would be expected to immediately notice that a floor doesn’t really burn all the way through in under 30 seconds, and other people would have to think kinda hard about it…and then to also see Raghu’s comment (below) that although he had a “sense of unease” about the final scene, he didn’t put his finger on it until I pointed out the issue. To me it really is like having someone jump onto the roof of the house from the ground, as far as implausibility, but I guess I have to acknowledge that not everybody sees it that way. Or perhaps lots of people wouldn’t find it implausible if someone jumps onto the roof of a house from the ground, or anyway it wouldn’t bother them because they wouldn’t really think about it, they’d just accept it.
At any rate I don’t see this as comparable to featuring some obscure poison but getting the dosage wrong or the effects wrong, or having the wrong muzzle velocity of a rifle. But also: if you want to use poison in your plot, do some research and get it right! If your book has someone firing a rifle, talk to an expert or do some googling or something and find out how loud it will be, and how long it will take for the bullet to travel the distance, and is the shot something your character could reasonably have taken! Not that this is relevant to my main point, which is that you don’t need to do some research or talk to an expert to know that the fire scene is absurd.
Most films/books that have people being strangled show that happening quite quickly. I am told that it takes quite a while to actually strangle somebody to death. Now, this can easily be explained by scarce film time, but it is also a distortion of reality. Which does not bother me! I watch films and read books often for escape from reality. The distortions and inaccuracies generally don’t bother me. Most sci fi is so absurd that you could claim it is contributing to the general ignorance of the viewing public. It might be, but I’m not sure that bothers me. If people knew better – and if such inaccuracies (even absurd ones) bothered them – then films and books would be more accurate. The fact that they are not reflects a combination of ignorance and indifference. For me, it is more the latter than the former.
Phil:
I continue to think the best analogy is to reporting on politics. When I see an erroneous assumption about public opinion, it bothers me like fingernails on the chalkboard. But most people don’t notice these glaring (to me) errors, and when it’s pointed out to them, they don’t really care. That’s how I feel about the burning room. I’m a political scientist who studies public opinion, and you’re a physicist. We get annoyed by different things! And this is the case even though you know a lot more about public opinion than the average person, and I know a lot more about physics than the average person.
Then there’s economics. Most films and books get it totally wrong, and perhaps that only bothers the economists. On the other hand, most economists get the economics totally wrong as well. At least with physics, there is something resembling reality against which to measure accuracy.
I have not read the book but the idea of an entire room bursting into flames and the floor collapsing in 30sec does not sound implausible or impossible. I don’t think it would strike me as ridiculous or blatantly stupid, especially in the midst of an engrossing plot. Lots of things in movies / books – even LOTR – seem stupid if you stop to think about them.
The author’s job is to get you so engrossed in the story and so attached to the characters that you don’t notice things that seem over the top or implausible. This is what makes authors like Umberto masters of illusion. Authors / directors “hide” implausible action or even plot themes with other details by distracting reader/viewer with the character’s feelings and the tension in the outcome of a scene. Personally for me strong character development is what drives fiction. Once I become attached to or engrossed in the characters, it’s like having a fog over the actual physical environment in which the story occurrs. It doesn’t matter anymore.
I could pour a gallon of gasoline into my living room floor (which is made of wood), light it on fire, and the floor still wouldn’t collapse in less than thirty seconds. But ok, I accept that not everybody knows that, and that even people who do would not necessarily be bothered if that happened in a book.
But, as I have said several times and will repeat as often as necessary: the author and editor must know that -some- of us will be bothered by it! There is a clear downside to including something that a lot of people will know is ridiculous. What is the upside?
(By the way, not that this really matters, but in the book the floor is covered by a damp carpet that fails to do more than sizzle when a burning log is rolled into it — it’s the books that catch fire — and yet less than thirty seconds later the floor is burning like crazy and collapsing. But even without the carpet the scene is impossible).
Phil: “There is a clear downside to including something that a lot of people will know is ridiculous. What is the upside?”
The upside is a fast-moving scene that forces the characters to act rapidly, and that involves enough danger to set up not only the risk of harm, but the injuries that foil the villain. Sure, the characters could just stand around in a non-burning library and reveal the villain, but that wouldn’t be exciting. I’m sure it’s not easy to think up a realistic scenario that incorporates a climactic ending; I’m curious what you’d suggest! One could, of course, have a non-dramatic ending, but from the start it was clear that this isn’t that kind of novel. It’s a page-turner; we’re not reading Thomas Mann here.
Raghu, I’ve got no objection to a fast-moving scene, not even one with a fire. I forget, was there still a dead body stored in a maintenance shed at this point? I think there was. Maybe have the reveal take place in the shed, and have some oily rags and barrels of solvent that the bad guy can pitch a lighter into. Or there’s no electricity in the shed so they’re using kerosene lanterns, and the bad guy pitches one of the lanterns into something. Or, while everyone is focused on the narrator doing his slow reveal, the bad guy sees what’s coming and surreptitiously upends some gasoline behind some equipment, which nobody smells because their noses are all frozen.
Or do the reveal in the library after all, but set up some other reason for the room to explode so quickly. There’s an end-of-season fireworks display and the fireworks are stored in the library because [of some ridiculous reason that is at least not as ridiculous as what happens in the book]. Maybe one of the avalanche patrol guys came in to store stuff in the drying room, realized he still had some avalanche explosives on him, and he stashed them somewhere in the room rather than put them in the drying room where a patron might come across them.
Or do some other kind of climactic scene altogether: a chase across a frozen lake is a classic, so is a chase across slippery rooftops. (In the sequel (Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect) there’s a chase on top of a moving train, which would be a spoiler except the author mentions it in the foreword.)
If you’re creative enough to write a decent whodunnit, you’re creative enough to come up with another way to achieve an action-packed ending.
Phil, pretty sure we could get the desired effect with judicious application of liquid oxygen.
I also read “Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone” after Andrew’s recommendation! I enjoyed it, but my opinion of it wasn’t as high as Andrew’s. I wondered if the library fire scene was meant as a homage to The Name of the Rose! About its implausibility: I don’t know why, but I’m very unobservant of holes in plausibility when reading fiction. (Or in this case, listening to it.) I remember having a sense of unease having trouble visualizing the final scene, and your (Phil’s) writeup now in retrospect explains that! This often happens to me — the unease, not Phil saving the day — and sometimes later I realize what that sense of unease meant.
The other notable thing about the book is that I’m fairly sure it’s the only Australian novel I’ve ever read, which is a bit embarrassing.
Phil: I read it as well on Andrew’s recommendation, and I didn’t love it, but I must confess that the things that bother me in fiction aren’t physical impossibilities, so that the magical burning room didn’t really bother me. From a physical standpoint, I was far more bothered by (a) the rolling truck incident; and (b) the fact that nobody found a body that had committed suicide by jumping off a roof and was then conveniently covered by a snowstorm. BUt frankly, neither of those really troubled me that much either.
****BIG SPOILERS BELOW HERE STOP READING IF YOU MIGHT EVER READ THIS BOOK*****
The thing that *really* bothered me was the underlying non-kidnapping. Rebecca wasn’t kidnapped at all; her father, who killed her, used the gang to stage a kidnapping/presumed murder. Once the gang agreed to do this, the power they had over McCauley was near-total. This puts everything in thvery minor crimese plot in motion, and it makes no sense! The gang itself is guilty of very minor crimes, and they have a guy who can afford to play blackmail. They have almost no danger. Of course, you don’t learn this until the last page, but the surprise from this revelation makes you realize that the whole thing makes no sense. “A false kidnapping to cover up a murder. It was clever. Hire a well-known gang to put on the front….end a victim rather than a suspect.” The first step in that plan is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. THAT bothered me far more than rapidly burning rooms.
I don’t have a problem with the jump-off-the-roof thing, nor criminals doing something really stupid. But I agree those aren’t great. For me, in this vein the harder thing to stomach is the fact that big buses arrive and take tourists off the mountain, but somehow the cops can’t get there…and nobody, including the narrator, notices this incongruity.
Whatever. At any rate we are on the same page (as it were) as far as just too many plot holes and unbelievable occurrences. For you or anyone else who thought “well, it’s the author’s first effort, maybe his second book will be better”, I’ll save you the trouble: it isn’t.
I don’t know if this helps, but let me say that sometimes I’m on Team Phil regarding this sort of continuity violation.
I remember when I saw the movie The Conversation–that Gene Hackman classic from the 1970s. It was fine, but then at the end the entire plot turns on a segment of audiotape that Hackman listens to, that in the last scene sounds different than in all the rest of the movie. To me, that was a cheat that destroyed the entire thing for me.
Yeah, that’s a tough one. I loved the movie and wanted to keep loving it, but it’s hard to get past that scene. One post facto justification is to think that that’s Harry Caul replaying it in his mind and realizing that the way he had interpreted the language — “He’d KILL us if he could”, or whatever the wording is — could also be interpreted in a turnabout-is-fair-play way, “He’d kill US if he could.” But then what would that imply, that we’ve never heard the real recording at all, we’ve only ever heard it as Harry interpreted it? But even if I do find a way to interpret it so that it’s not a total cheat, it still had that “oh, come ON” effect of taking me out of the movie. So, yeah, that’s a good example of this effect being involuntary.
Funny coïncidence if nothing more, I read this review just before seeing an abandoned copy of the book in a (the!) bagel store in Brooklyn and then two days later I finished “The Cartographers”, by Peng Shepherd, with a fire happening in very similar circumstances, to the point I had to come back to this review to check Phil was truly speaking of “Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect”