And I find that funny because of just how recently those genre conventions were codified, even Holmes didn't finish the process. I've read some Detective Novels from the 19th Century that were very popular in their time but would be considered rule breaking abominations today. That includes virtually everything written by Paul Feval.
But what finally prompted me to throw down was OverlySarcasticProductions Trope Talk on Detectives that dropped today. Red is usually all for acknowledging the flexibility of the Tropes she talks about. But in this one she went pretty hard on the "it's bad writing if it's impossible for the audience to figure it out on their own" idea.
And I realized something. People critique mystery stories regardless of the medium like they do Video Games because they treat them like games. They see them as a challenge to figure it out before the detectives in the story and if they can't they call it cheating. And that's fine when that is what the writer was going for. But when I watch these kinds of stories I'm never trying to solve the mystery myself, that's not my job that's the Detective character's job.
The main thing I care about in fiction are the characters, even in fiction that doesn't fit the literary definition of "character driven".
When it comes to your Great Detectives in the vain of Sherlock Holmes, it's about selling me on their over the top super deduction powers that I know don't exist in real life, make me believe it anyway. And what sells me on that is ultimately the charisma of the character rather then the actual facts of the case or plausibility of the deductions they make. And in a dramatized medium like Movies, TV and Anime that comes from the performance of the actor more so then anything the writers can write.
For Film Noir style Hard Boiled Detectives, or just following normal cops on a standard cop show, what character traits you're trying sell me are different but the gist is the same. Though in recent years I have slowly lost interest in any fiction that wants me to actually root for actual cops.
So no I never feel cheated by not being given the means to solve it myself. And this genre is in fact the one who's codified rules and conventions I most want to see shattered. That's why I enjoyed the Anime In/Specter which you can watch Dubbed on HBOMax, it gave us a Holmes style character who's objectives are completely different.
Update March 2024: Here's a follow up post I've made.
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