Have you read The
Floating Admiral? If not, you might want to add it to your To-Be-Read List.
It’s not a new release. In fact, I found it at a used bookstore several years
ago. Nor is it the best book I’ve read. But speaking as a writer and a reader,
it’s just one of the most fascinating.
Here’s the story behind the book:
It was written by the Detection Club*, a group of fiction
writers including Agatha Christie, GK Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Baroness Emma
Orczy and others. (Okay, I’m just saying that I would have loved to be a part of their get-togethers. It’s a good thing I
never had to choose between being part of the Detection Club and the Inklings.)
At any rate, members of the Detection Club got tired of
hearing police officers say, “Well, it’s easy for your fictional detective
because he/she knows who the murderer is from the very beginning and gets to
follow the clues that you conveniently leave for them.” So the writers set
themselves a task: to write a murder mystery where the writer didn’t know the
ending. To accomplish this, they decided to have multiple authors, each of whom
wrote one chapter of the book.
Whitechurch wrote the first chapter and sent it to the next
writer. The next writer read Whitechurch’s chapter, and then wrote the next
chapter and sent both on to the next writer. And so it went chapter after
chapter until the final author wrote the last chapter and solved the mystery. And
voila, they wrote a book without knowing who the murderer was.
What makes it even more fascinating is that at the end of
the book, each author included his/her own solution. After the authors wrote their
chapter, they wrote a sealed solution explaining who they believed did it and
why. It makes for fascinating reading because, of course, each writer had
vastly different ideas of who did what and why. Some of the explanations are
short and simple. Some are complex involving time tables, mistaken identity,
marriage licenses, tides, etc.
Okay, writer friends, doesn’t this sound like tons of fun?
Anyone out there want to try something similar?
*Here’s the Detection Club oath of membership.
