Thespian Musings: I Always Know...Whodunnit

I love mysteries.

 Period Mysteries, contemporary mysteries, thrillers, spy stories, murder mysteries, whatever. I've read all the classics--Agatha Christie, Inspector Campion, Wilkie Collins; and the contemporaries like Anne Perry, Dorothy Gilman, Deanna Raybourne, the Bourne Trilogy and Jack Ryan.

I've seen Knives Out six times.

I binged both Sherlock and  the Sherlock Holmes series from the 80s.

I own several of the Marple re-boot episodes(partly because I adore Geraldine McEwan and Julie McKenzie).

If I see and Anne Perry novel on the shelf it mine.

Which is a problem.

But not for the reasons you think.

My problem is I always  know "whodunnit".

Always.

Like pages and pages and minutes and minutes before everyone else does.

Watching the Poirot films used to drive me bonkers because I figured out who the killer was like twenty minutes into the film,

and then the detective took up the last thirty minutes of film in dissecting the case before the Grand Reveal...which wasn't actually so grand anymore.

And I'm pretty sure this has a lot to do with the amount of mysteries I read/watch coupled with my writing background.

Which is fine. 

 I can count the number of plot twists I missed on the figures of one hand.

That's one normal sized hand.

With five normal sized fingers.

But two of them are Christopher Nolan films, so that's ok.

Christopher Nolan is brilliant!

I digress...

Instead of spending the film or book trying to figure out whodunnit, I spend the rest of it watching the killer/villain get away with it.

Which is sometimes so much more interesting!

I knew who the killer was in Knives Out ten minutes in--

--the murder actually happens like thirty seconds into the film, it'd be on page one, maybe page 2 of the script--

--and then spent the rest of the film watching how they almost got away with it.

No spoilers.

Have you seen it?

SEE IT!!!! IT'S SO GOOD!!!!!

And because I can figure out plot twists faster than anyone in my family(which makes sense cause none of them are Stage and Screen Artist people) sometimes I end up watching them figure it out rather than watching the movie.

You know what?

Sometimes that's more fun!