In a post on CrimeReads, Adam Hamdy says that a limited point of view is the key to the existence of crime fiction.
Taken to an extreme, an omniscient point of view would reveal a murderer to the reader at the outset. That would make for a short, unsatisfying novel, Hamdy says. Instead, the detective – the POV character – begins the story from a position of ignorance, with the reader following along. “The reader’s satisfaction comes from seeing the detective piece together the puzzle, an endeavour that’s hard to portray without the detective’s limited perspective blinding her or him to the secrets of the crime,” Hamdy writes.
But it’s not only the protagonist’s perspective that matters. “Classics such as Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie go further than blinding the detective,” Hamdy notes. “Each of the characters has a limitation that gives them an incomplete picture of the truth, and it is by examining the crime through these flawed perspectives that the detective-reader can piece together the truth.”
The unreliable narrator also serves a purpose in crime fiction, with Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd a notable example that inspired many novels to come. In his novel, The Other Side of Night, Hamdy uses first, second, and third person, as well as journal entries, letters, and court documents to narrate his story.
The important thing is that you play fair with your reader. “Good use of perspective will usually conceal something from the reader, but it should never aim to trick or bamboozle by hiding something that would naturally be revealed from that perspective,” Hamdy says. And of course, a simple single POV also serves. “A tight, restricted perspective can be used to brilliant effect to ratchet up the tension and heap pressure on a character, which all translates into a thrilling experience for the reader,” Hamdy writes.
