Agatha Christie, the world's recognized queen of speculative fiction. She wrote more than 80 detective novels in her lifetime, translated into more than 100 languages, and sold more than 2 billion copies.
"The Curtain" is a work written by Grandma a year before her death, and it is also the curtain call of her detective protagonist Poirot.
When I turn to the last few pages of The Curtain, I feel very similar to reading the end of Keigo Higashino's "The Devotion of Suspect X", and you have to read it word for word, slowly, and very hard.
Because the power of the few pages of the ending is so powerful that only at a slow pace can the mind and emotions keep up with the rhythm.
The power of "The Dedication of Suspect X" is the impact of X on the pure, crazy love of the heroine, driving her cold, at the expense of spontaneous combustion, tragic and short.
The power of "The Veil" is the exquisite method of perfect crime, and the tangled choice of ethics and morality, which brings shock, in order to enjoy the pleasure of killing, it will not hesitate to drag everyone into hell, dark, deep, and chilling.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01. A simple version of "Zodiac Killer"</h1>
Conan and Kazuri Kaneda, all kinds of bizarre mysteries, in the end, can not escape the protagonist's fire eye golden eye, it can be said that as long as it is a case that can be solved, it is not perfect.
The model of perfect crime that I understood before was that the criminal method was extremely subtle, flawless, and no one could break through the mystery, and Grandma's book subverted my understanding of this, and there was originally such a more perfect method (100 words omitted here).
From this, if the criterion for a perfect crime is to escape the punishment of the law, is there a pattern of simplifying the complexity: no mystery, no skill, if the object of the crime is random, no motive, no association to follow, no witness, and no report from the chaoyang district masses. Just think, is there still a possibility of detection in such a case?
The zodiac killer, there is still no solution. And a "simple version" of the zodiac killer, if you omit the IQ crushing and provoking the police bridge section, how should the detectives do it? After all, it is difficult for a woman to cook without rice, and no matter how strong her logical reasoning ability is, she will be helpless in the face of the embarrassment of having nowhere to start. It is terrifying to think that the perfect crime can be achieved in such a simple way.
Although the silver case that had been sealed for many years was finally solved after more than twenty years, thousands of other unsolved cases were still sealed in the thick dust piled up in the archives of the criminal police team of the Public Security Bureau.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02</h1>
Some things seem to be automatically blocked by people's mindsets. When you are suddenly mentioned, your first feeling will feel ridiculous. But if you think about it, you will be horrified to find that, oh my God, it seems that this is really the case, it is too terrible.
"Everyone is a potential murderer," the phrase in the book, is a typical example.
If someone said this to me, my first reaction would probably be to respond with a reply: "You are sick." But after scolding, think about it calmly, and you will feel a chill on your back.
On the Internet, casually strolling around, Weibo, forums, news, as long as there are comments, everywhere is "X dead you", and there are various X methods.
In real life, whether it is a Jiangnan-style scolding battle of "moving your mouth and not moving your hands", or a northeast-style hand-to-hand combat of "why do you have to do it with your hands", when the battle escalates, you will more or less have the impulse to neng kill the other party.
When you encounter a thief, you will want to fight "death"; when you meet an enemy, you will want to "die"; for people who are not pleasing to the eye, you will be eager to let them disappear from the world... Of course, all these cruel thoughts are suppressed by basic human nature and reason at the beginning of the thought, but it has to be admitted that most people, sooner or later, strong or weak, have experienced such thoughts.
Impulse is greater than reason, and people with weak legal concepts may degenerate into murderers. And those ordinary people, when they are depressed, or mentally fragile, when some external force provokes, confuses, and magnifies their demons, puts on the mask of disguised justice, and guides them in the direction of the demons.
The "murder case of a ship at sea" that was lifted a few years ago, and the "96 Nanda Massacre Case" that has been repeatedly mentioned in the past two decades but have not yet been solved, just to unveil the tip of the iceberg of countless dusty cases, it is enough to make us realize that the darkness of the world cannot be underestimated.
Perhaps, the distinction between ordinary people and murderers is not as clear as we think.
We instinctively dare not think about this, nor do we want to think about it. But not touching it doesn't shatter the darkness, "If you are light, it is still darkness." "Facing the truth and bravely facing the darkness is the only way to the light."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >03. Unsolvable entanglements</h1>
"When you find that the law is powerless against criminals, can you punish criminals in lieu of the law?" The conflict between the rule of law and morality is an incomparably difficult problem.
I won't discuss it in depth here, but I think of another similar question, which was discussed in an episode of "Strange Story": "Should Jia Ling be 'blown up'?" ”
This is a classic moral dilemma: "If the train continues to run, all the children in the car will die; if you change the direction of the train and one child will die, what should you do in the cab?" ”
Such a topic is by no means a simple judgment of right and wrong, but a philosophical problem that requires layers of exploitation and in-depth thinking.
Think again, the dark battles in Three-Body Problem 2, the Blue Space and the Bronze Age attacks on the Ultimate Law and the Quantum Sign. When the background of the Earth expands into space, will the choice of consideration change?
Further, the first axiom on which the "Dark Forest" theorem is based: "Survival is the first need of civilization", is the axiom itself really universal within the scope of the universe?
The above is a layer of in-depth chain of puzzles, triggered by Grandma's "Curtain". Friends who are interested in these questions, welcome to the world of reasoning of Agatha Christie.