I read a lot of crime and detective fiction.  As such, I should be used to a surprising ending.  I mean, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?  You want to read to the end of a Whodunnit still wondering to the last few pages… well, whodunnit.  Sadly, though, this is not always the case.  A disadvantage of reading a lot of crime and detective fiction is that I begin to recognise certain tropes within the storytelling, which will often allow me to guess the identity of the criminal well before the final dénouement: the person with the most watertight alibi; the suspect who is too squeaky clean; rarely the butler.

Perversely, too, sometimes when there is a surprise ending it is because the final explanation is either illogical or arbitrary and, as such, feels more a swizz than a surprise.  Given this apparent intolerance to the genre, I’m beginning to wonder why I read crime fiction at all.

However, just recently, I read a crime novel with a genuinely surprising ending.  It was A Scandal in Belgravia, written by Robert Barnard, and first published by Bantam in 1991.  I don’t think that I am committing any spoilers if I say that it is a very well-written novel of politics, family intrigue and murder set in the 1950s and the 1990s.  Perhaps surprising in itself, it is not the revelation of the identity of the murderer, which provides the surprise ending; truth to tell, I had already guessed that well before the end of the book.

No.  It was the very last sentence of a mere twelve words, which totally sideswiped me.  Made me have to reread it.  Reread it again.  Go back and reread the previous few sentences.  Ultimately, made me go back and reread several other sections from earlier within the novel.

I came away from all this rereading smiling.  It was still a totally surprise ending.  No cheat; no swizz; just clever authorial sleight of hand, which I simply hadn’t seen coming.  Brilliant.  What is equally brilliant is that, as a reader, you can’t just cheat and turn to the last page of the book and get the surprise without having read all that has gone before (and don’t deny that the idea hasn’t just gone through your mind).

The last sentence of A Scandal in Belgravia makes me remember all the good reasons why I enjoy crime fiction all over again.

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow prefers to confine his surprises to the written word.