Where Was Rebecca Shot?

Puzzles, Curiosities & Conundrums in Modern Fiction

There are many pleasures to be had from the twentieth-century novel. John Sutherland's book is devoted to one of the minor pleasures: puzzle-hunting. He offers a light-hearted but eagle-eyed survey of forty-odd puzzles in our best-known and best-selling fictions. From the detective novels of Dorothy L. Sayers up to the present day with works like Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" (how does Rents come to know so much about Kierkegaard?), Sutherland's sceptical enquiry takes in best-selling authors like Colin Dexter (what is the real mystery about Inspector Morse's first name?), and undisputed masterpieces of Anglo-American fiction (how old is Beloved?). Everyone who reads this consistently entertaining book will return to their favourite novels with sharpened sensibility and new respect for fiction's capacity to entertain.