Power Dynamics, the “Other”, and Our Need for a Satisfying Ending in Detective Fiction

Academic Paper-Spring 2025

Detective literature is often considered “good, clean fun” (Dobrescu, 43). When you read it, the detective is the “good guy” and at the end you are going to get your satisfying ending where the bad guy is caught. It’s all wrapped up in a pretty bow, or least that is what it used to be. Modern detective fiction questions these ideas. The first instance of what we can call detective fiction is Edgar Allen Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”. This story features August Dupin and his unnamed sidekick. Dupin is the perfect example of a “good” detective. His sidekick even describes him as a man who has a “special reasoning power” (Poe, 39). With his deductive powers, Dupin solves the murder and finds out the murderer was an orangutan (57). Poe, perhaps unintentionally, “others” criminals by depicting his murderer as an animal. As if, a crime like murder can only be committed by someone animal-like in nature; something Dupin practically says himself (56). Detective and crime fiction has a long history of “othering” criminals. Whether it’s depicting them as animal-like or simply making them different from the people around them. So is this genre of literature really “good, clean fun” or do we too often see “otherness” used as a tool against the suspects in these novels? I Have Some Questions for You, Knives Out, and Walkin’ the Dog all feature examples of the characters being “othered” and their status as an “other” used against him. 

Knives Out explores the idea of power dynamics and people using another’s “otherness” as a tool for themselves. The movie follows Detective Benoit Blanc while he investigates the death of Harlan Thrombey. Harlan is an exceedingly famous detective fiction author who has a large family. However, Harlan really only has one family member who he really cares about and that person is Marta Caberra. Marta is a home nurse who helps him take his medication and provides him companionship. This companionship is the reason why Harlan helps her stage his suicide upon realizing she gave him the wrong dose of morphine, which would have killed him before an ambulance could have gotten to his house. Marta is latina and her mother is an undocumented immigrant, she is the “other” in the Thrombey family. Knives Out does something interesting with the idea of the “other”. This movie shows the audience how someone might be threatened and framed as a result of them being different. The Thrombey’s only begin threatening Marta and suspecting her after she becomes a threat to them. When they believe they hold a position of power over her, they are nice. She’s one of the “good ones” in their eyes. Once she becomes the sole heir to the Thrombey fortune they do everything in their power to bring her down. The actual murderer, Ransom, even uses his position of power over her to try and benefit himself. A position he only gained by being a Thrombey, by not being as much of an “other” as her. 

Socrates is a character who is “othered” because he was convicted of a crime 30 years ago. Unlike Marta, Socrates is not pure of heart. He has violent urges. Throughout his story however, Socrates is questioned by the police frequently throughout the novel. The police explain that they do this because they expect him to be guilty

  “You know we got a quota down at the station, Fortlow,’ Beryl was explaining. ‘They us to solve one out of three murders and they expect one out of five of the perps to be put in jail. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Because you see if you killed once you probably will again. I mean it’s like a habit with you people’” (Mosley 59). 

Socrates is never allowed to change in their eyes. Once a murderer, always a murderer. This police officer is dehumanizing him and turning this man into a caricature. He is nothing more than a criminal. He is nothing more than a violent murderer. Here the police officer is using Socrates’ status as a convicted criminal like Ransom used his status as a Thrombey. In both texts, the one that is “othered” by the people around them are used as a tool to get what they want. Ransom wanted the Thrombey fortune and to get away with murder. Beryl wants to meet his quota. In, I Have Some Questions for You, a community wants a good story. 

The worst example of “otherness” we see in these texts is Omar. Omar was arrested for the murder of Thalia Keith 23 years before the events of I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai. Mike Stiles claims that Bodie and her peers' testimonies were the initial catalyst that led to his arrest, “What I mean is, the stuff they had on him—it came from us. Except the DNA, I guess But none of us thought, hey, I ‘m personally framing this guy. And—very much off the record—maybe we did. We might have set up a guilty guy, but we set him up” (Makkai 252-253). Once they connected him to drugs and found a bit of his DNA the police forced a confession out of Omar after 15 hours of questioning (218). Once the police pinned the murder on him with the little evidence they had, the town started further “othering” him. One of Omar’s family members, Sheila Evans, said this, “They made Omar out to be a bad person all-around. This one accusation wasn’t enough, they have to say he was dealing drugs, he was a violent man, he was sleeping with students. They paint a whole picture. They talk about him as if he came from nowhere, as if he had no family” (83). This “othering” could not have resulted in anything other than Omar being seen as guilty. Once they started treating him as a violent predator there was no hope for any real justice. Omar was not arrested because he murdered Thalia Keith. He was arrested because he was not a teacher. Omar was arrested because he was not white. He was arrested because they could loosely connect him to the crime and he was the bad guy the public wanted. The biggest crime Omar committed, was being the “other”. Bodie eventually realizes her own biased views had an impact on how she originally saw the case when she says this, “Because I’d fallen into the most obvious trap, finding it easier to imagine darker-complected Omar acting in Anger...overriding the fact that I knew him to be a sensitive person” (214). But Omar was the “satisfying ending” everyone wanted. His arrest and conviction was the closure the community craved because as Omar put it, “What they wanted was someone like me” (313). Someone who was not them. Rebecca Makkai hits the audience across the head with this message. Not once, but twice.

As soon as Bodie comes to terms with the murderer not being Omar, she blames Mr Bloch. Bodie had recently found out Bloch had a relationship with Thalia Keith. So she starts connecting details of the case to Bloch. She even describes to the audience in extreme detail exactly how it could have happened (278-281). At the end of the book she even lies to Dane Rubra because she was desperate to prove Bloch is guilty (340). It is not until they see some pictures of the mattress party (381), that Bodie realizes what she did. She did exactly what the public had done 23 years ago. She attributed a crime to a man who did not commit it because she felt like he must be guilty because he did another crime. He was manipulative. He preyed on young girls. So he must be a violent predator, right? As soon as she knew Omar was innocent she found someone else to turn into the “other” based on circumstantial evidence. She found her satisfying ending, her closure. But it was not Mr. Bloch just like it was not Omar. Both committed crimes, but just because they committed those crimes does not mean they killed Thalia Keith. In the same way that Socrates did not commit all of the crimes he was accused of despite being a criminal in the past. The “other” status of Socrates, Omar, and Marta is continually used against them for other people’s benefit. 

In detective literature, we often want closure. We want a satisfying ending. We want our story to be wrapped up in a big pretty bow with a killer that deserved what was coming to them. We see this in Christie’s The Murder of Rodger Ackroyd when Peirot convinces the suspect to kill himself. That was nothing more than Christie giving us an ending that felt right. Another example is Mitchell’s Speedy Death when Mrs. Bradley kills the suspect and stages her death like the initial murder. These stories give the audience satisfying endings. But does that satisfying ending mean we miss details? Does it ultimately make us more biased and quick to point fingers? I Have Some Questions for You, Walkin’ the Dog, and Knives Out all question the idea of classifying another person as an “other” and the effects of doing that. In Marta’s case, that gave the Thrombey’s free reign to use their power as rich white people against her. In Socrates’ case that gave the police the power to accuse him of crimes he had no connection to. In Omar’s case that gave the public the power to wrongfully convict him. In Mr Bloch’s case, his status as an “other” in Bodie’s mind led her to an incorrect conclusion. We often want bad people to do bad things. We want people we do not perceive as being related to us to be the criminals. These stories warn us against the idea of attributing guilt without strong evidence. They challenge the idea that a criminal has to be an “other”. 

Works Cited

Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Kindle Ed., St. Martin’s Press, 1926. 

Dobrescu, Caius. “Identity, Otherness, Crime: Detective Fiction and Interethnic Hazards.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 5, 1, 2013, 43-58. 

Knives Out. Directed by Rian Johnson. Performances by Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Doc Johnson, Toni Collette, LaKeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer, Katherine Langford, Jaden Martell, Riki Lindhome, Lionsgate, 2019. 

Makkai, Rebecca. I Have Some Questions for You. New York, Viking, 2023.

Mitchelle, Gladys. Speedy Death. Kindle Ed., Thomas & Mercer, 2014. 

Mosley, Walter. Walkin’ the Dog. Little, Brown, 1999.

Poe, Edgar. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Graham’s Magazine, 1841.