Word: whodunitism
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...that Peter was a "dismantled Roman wreck," having studied unsuccessfully for the priesthood; that his father was a seaman, his mother a pious termagant, his brother a "great, rearing, clumsy bucko." Why was Peter in jail? The question involves a real novelist's art-the reverse of the whodunit, which is to disclose the crime and disguise the motive. Halfway through the book, when all the motives are clarified, Peter's crime is disclosed: he has killed a woman and stuffed her mouth with banknotes...
...paperback, $1.75), is based on the author's notion that "the world is neither significant nor absurd. It is. That is the most remarkable thing about it." Proceeding from this Istentialist view, Author Robbe-Grillet, hero of Europe's avant-garde critics, has written a sort of whodunit in which the question of whodunit is never answered. To a French offshore island comes Mathias, a watch salesman. Little is told about him, but it is soon plain that he is close to insanity and that his special aberration, like that of Lolita's Humbert Humbert, involves young...
...popularity contest altogether. No BBC program, according to TAM (Television Audience Measurement Ltd.), is now a serious contender for the ten regularly top-rated shows. In the most recent survey, the U.S. export oater called Wagon Train led the pack, followed by a typically British whodunit series (Murder Bag) featuring diabolically clever homicides. One other U.S. show made the list in the No. 10 spot: CBS's ad-lib courtroom drama, The Verdict Is Yours (TIME...
...story, it would be unfair to report that Ilona, the slinky Hungarian blonde, really has nothing to do with the plot, or to warn the reader about the sneaky German archaeologist who thinks he has found a piece of a Dead Sea Scroll. But the book is less a whodunit than a witty who-said-it-in Author Davey's phrase, a shakerful of "the martini of human kindness." Very dry, too, without unnecessary olives...
...solution is an ingenious blend of religion and psychology. He argues his case with subtlety and a nice sense of drama (he is a playwright as well as a novelist). The only difficulty readers will find in his book is that it starts off with the bang of a whodunit and then tails off into the world of Germanic near mysticism. I'm Not Stiller is already a European bestseller and has been hailed as a masterpiece; perhaps it is more accurate to describe it as the first novel since World War II that has tried to exploit...