About Kid Deth Violates the Rules of Mystery

About Kid Deth, the story of the boy on the run, can easily be put into the category of a typical mystery story. It has the key aspects of murder, suspense, simplicity, and realism. However, as with everything else, nothing is perfect. By nothing, I mean that one of the notes on mystery stories written by Raymond Chandler is violated.

This note is the idea of the inevitable solution. According to Chandler, the reader must finish the story with the feeling that they should not have been fooled. They should have seen it coming. The way the story came across, it seemed like it was going to fit the stereotype that “you cannot escape your past.” Taking this to be the inevitable solution, I believe Whitfield failed. He may have done it to keep himself from the norm, but if looked at completely on facts, he failed in his attempt to write an “actual” mystery.

Kid Deth was thought of by all to be a killer. Even though he had claimed he never carried a gun, there was something about him that made everyone think he was the criminal. From this, I came to the conclusion from the beginning that he was going to end up dead. This was not the case. It could be said perhaps that he was one of the only characters to remain alive because of the fact that he truly and honestly did not commit a murder. I am not convinced. I still think that in order to follow the notes of a mystery story, he should have died, according to what the people in the town already thought of him.

The solution is even less inevitable because of the confusion at the end. What really happens to Kid Deth? I thought he was off the hook because the detective thought he had grown out of his childish games. The reader is never really told the outcome, so how could it be inevitable?

For the most part, Whitfield followed the trends of an ordinary mystery story. In a way I think it is slightly impossible to take care of them all in one story. About Kid Deth is a mystery in my eyes, even though he had overlooked just one of the aspects to the classification of one.