Liars and Saints

 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? I was raised on Agatha Christie. In college, I discovered PD James, who is like the upgraded iPhone version of Agatha Christie. Depending on the day, I might tell you that PD James is my all-time favorite w...

  When Glenn Close was campaigning for "The Wife," she would tell a story about her mother, on her deathbed: Stricken, Close, Sr., looked around and said, "Wait. In my life....I never *did* anything...." This could have inspired the makers of "Good Luck to You, Leo Grande," which has Emma Thompson fighting against a ticking clock. Thompson plays Susan Robinson--yes, the writer jokes about "Mrs. Robinson"--a person in her sixties who would very much like to have one orgasm before her seventieth birthday. This story is deeply, deeply sad, and Thompson is well aware that she isn't just making a sex comedy. In the "Oscar reel" moment (although this film isn't eligible for Oscars), Susan Robinson recalls having been twenty; she was a kid on a family vacation, and a waiter began to seduce her late at night. But a noisy car disrupted the scene. Susan has thought about this night, on a daily basis, for forty years. As Emma Thompson reci...