The best mystery books whose endings make you go, “Whoooooaaaa”

I loved this story because it had the rarest combinations: a great twist ending I didn’t see coming when I read the novel and a different but effective vehicle for the big reveal when HBO made it into a limited series. As I approached the end of the series, I was a little jaded, assuming they’d hew to the source material in a way that wouldn’t surprise me given my familiarity with the plot, so when they caught me off guard with their new ending, it was like I got to enjoy it twice!

Further, Gillian Flynn did a great job bringing her main character to life. It’s easy to overdo it with a character who’s this messed up (don’t ask me how I know that, LOL), and it’s even more difficult to keep you rooting for them. Flynn’s protagonist kept me turning the pages because I genuinely cared what happened to her.

I’m not only a mystery/suspense writer but also a fan of the genre, as I read or listen to about forty whodunnits a year, just under one a week. I tend to read these books with one eye toward the superficial story, yes, but I also study them from a technical standpoint, saying to myself, “Oh, I see what the author did there,” “Man, that was a nice way to frame that conflict,” or, “What the hell? I think the author wrote that chapter by getting drunk and taping crayons to their feet.” The point I’m trying to make is that the plot devices and metaphors tend to blur together after a while. 

But this book? Man, it stood out. I mean, Kat Rosenfield had me hook, line, and sinkers with the book’s opening line, “My name is Lizzie Ouellette, and if you’re reading this, I’m already dead.” It's a great opening line and one that gives you an inkling of where the story might be going, right? Wrong, trust me; the twists just kept getting better from there in a way that was truly original.

I have a hard time understanding why this book didn’t do better than it did commercially because it was a well-executed technical endeavor. Even more, than the really well-done twist ending, the biggest thing I really liked about Alex Pavesi’s book was that the story was told through the eyes of an editor as she reads a series of short stories.

I experienced the stories in real-time with her, but at the end of each, she critiqued them, with the result being an ongoing series of, well, let’s call them easter eggs for me. Again and again, throughout the whole book, she kept pointing out details I’d missed in each story that had a deeper meaning. It’d be easy for this format to get old, but it never did, at least for me. Then, should we take these stories and piece them together as bricks in the wall for the overall story? Well, I was just really impressed.

Also, it probably didn’t hurt for my enjoyment that I pictured Danny Devito as Grant McCallister. I love that guy.

Three things landed this book on my list.

First, I love the ol’ book-within-a-book mystery trope, and this is probably the finest example I’ve encountered. Again, an editor reads her dead author’s book for clues, and I got to experience that in real-time with her. Second, the central clue around which the story revolves—the dead author’s note explaining why he ostensibly committed suicide—and its role in resolving the mystery was one of the most original formulations I can remember in recent years. It was nicely done. Finally, the story within the story hearkens back to the Golden Age of detective fiction, an era for which I have a soft spot (as a glance at the amount of Agatha Christie on my bookshelves will attest).

Since finishing it, I’ve recommended this book to a half-dozen people and have yet to have somebody tell me later that they weren’t happy with the selection.

As the rest of this list hints, mystery stories involving unhappily married couples aren’t my usual go-to when picking something to read, nor is it something I particularly enjoy writing about. Maybe that’s a good thing, given the standard advice of “Write what you know,” but generally, the formula (and trust me, it is a formula) bores me. 

But at the time I came across this book, I was dabbling with the idea of writing an alternating-first-person-POV book in the way this novel does (as an aside, check out Lucy Foley’s books for other great examples of that device if you’re a fan of it too). I saw the acclaim the book had received and figured, hey, Geneva Rose must have done something right; maybe there’s something there for me to learn here. So, I started the book planning to listen to it mostly as a lesson in this technique.

I have to say, though, that this was really enjoyable. There were lots of twists and turns, and while Rose plays a little unfairly with the reader, withholding some key information until the denouement, overall, it worked. And there was just a really great twist ending. It was nicely done.