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The Sheep Detectives

 Anthony Horowitz speaks about the construction of "the twist" in a mystery novel. A good writer has to play fair--all the clues need to be available to the reader just as they are to the detective. In a well-done mystery, the clues seem to lead you down one particular path--but another path is just as plausible. In the new Horowitz novel, an actor playing Daniel Hawthorne is murdered. We first think that the actor was the intended victim. But what if the killer was going after the real-life figure the actor was playing--the killer saw the name "Daniel Hawthorne" on a trailer and became confused--? The killer then killed the actor, thinking that the actor was Daniel Hawthorne. We accept this conjecture. But the question is this: *Should* we accept the conjecture?

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