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Morbid Taste For Bones

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What do A Morbid Taste for Bones and The Man in the Passage have in common? They are both mysteries. Although both differ considerably in length, plot complexity, and setting, both accompany a sacerdotal sleuth as he solves a felonious offense. Despite their label, many doubt if these two mysteries are gripping enough to entrance the reader into reading the story to the end. What makes a mystery novel worth reading? Because the word “worth” is an analogous term, I will state my meaning to avoid confusion. When I asked what makes a story worth reading, I asked whether the reader considers it fascinating enough to continue to voluntarily read the book for the sole purpose of enjoyment. There are many ways that a mystery story can be worth …show more content…

Having a horrible atrocity with an unknown culprit, such as a murder mystery, causes the reader to desire justice to be served on the criminal and thus gives the reader incentive to find out the culprit and to observe his punishment at the end of the book. Consequently, having an unknown, violent, lawless offender as the criminal in a mystery story heightens its absorbing ability, and this aspect is present both these books. In A Morbid Taste for Bones, while a team of men searched for the suddenly missing main character Rhisiart, “Bened the smith, crashing through the bushes at Brother Cadfael’s left hand, uttered a great shout of discovery and dismay, and everyone in the wavering line halted and shook to the sound” (Peters, 68). Bened cried so because he had found Rhisiart dead with an arrow in his body. In The Man in the Passage, Father Brown, an innocent Catholic priest-detective, rushed to a passageway where “Aurora Rome lay lustrous in her robes of green and gold, with her dead face turned upwards” (Chesterton, 54). Aurora Rome, an actress, had supposedly been killed with a dagger which lay next to her, and it rested on Father Brown’s shoulders to expose the true murderer before someone was wrongfully harmed. In both these instances, then, a vicious murder becomes the book’s main plot, serving to inspire a sense …show more content…

By disdaining an omniscient viewpoint, not only does the mystery writer abstain from giving too much information to the reader too early on, but also allows the conflict to persist however long the author desires until the climax and resolution at the end of the book. If the mystery writer decided to either use an omniscient viewpoint or change viewpoints often, it would become increasingly hard for him to cloak a plausible plot, since doing so would almost inevitably eliminate possible suspects, pointlessly disrupt the detective’s search, and allow the reader to discover information which frankly the detective would probably never discover for himself. Thus, the single perspective of the detective is the only one needed. In A Morbid Taste for Bones, the reader only learns what Brother Cadfael himself learns, and often even less, since sometimes some of Cadfael’s major thoughts or actions are omitted until the resolution of the book in an effort to retain the greatest amount of suspense and ignorance possible for as long as possible. The Man in the Passage’s point of view is very similar, since the reader is only able to experience what Father Brown experiences. Furthermore, although Father Brown hints multiple times that he could

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