What Makes a Good Mystery Adaptation? 

While mysteries are a central part of the book, there’s more to the book than the mystery. We don’t just read for the mystery; we want compelling characters we love (or love to hate).

But we also read for the overall tone of the book. If it’s a cozy mystery, we are going to expect that the adaptation is going to be true to that. 

Or the fun parts of the book make their way into the adaptation.

For instance, Magpie Murders has an unusual structure. There’s the outer story about Susan Ryeland, beleaguered editor of the curmudgeon author Alan Conway.

Then there is the inner story that Conway wrote about his famous detective Atticus Pund. Both stories are needed to tell the full story of the Magpie Murders; it wouldn’t be true to the book to leave one or the other out.

Thankfully, the television series stayed true to that spirit by showing both the inner and outer story. 

Another way to think of it was brought up by Livia Reim and Maya Haidar: Was the story read correctly? That’s a critical point.

Did the person adapting the book understand the book at its most fundamental level?  

There’s nothing like reading a book and then finding the screen adaptation missed the mark completely.

For instance, I’m still bitter about the film adaptation of the Monuments Men because it added a strange one-sided love story into the film that was not there in the non-fiction book.

It honestly ruined the film for me because it undermined one of the more important figures in the book.  

On the other hand, the A&E adaptation of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe captures the spirit of the books and novellas beautifully.

Maury Chaykin plays the reclusive genius detective, Nero Wolfe so well, and Timothy Hutton perfectly captured the fast-talking brilliant leg man and detective, Archie Goodwin.  

While an adaptation needs to be faithful to the tone and characters of the book, it does not need to be a strict interpretation of the original text.

Adapting one story to another will necessitate some changes. Books can spend a long time on its characters, plot, and setting but movies and tv shows don’t have the same luxury.

There’s only so much time on the screen. 

Some judicious editing needs to happen; characters may need to be omitted or even combined for the sake of storytelling.

Adaptations that follow the story strictly can feel very bogged down and sluggish. Some people may grumble that their favorite characters or scenes got cut from the screen adaptation but no work is going to please everyone.

But you don’t want an adaptation that is too reductive; if you take out too many characters in a mystery, it becomes a lot less interesting to figure out whodunnit.  

In Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep 1946 movie, the studio wanted more of Lauren Bacall in the film due to the success of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not according to Den of Geeks.

It’s a welcome change to have more of the astonishing fascinating character of Vivian Rutledge in the film than was in the book.  

In another noir classic, the writers made Sam Spade a bit more sympathetic in The Maltese Falcon than in the original book.

Granted, he’s pretty cold in the film but there’s a touch of humanity in him that makes you want to see him through the whole mess. 

While the first two sections could apply to pretty much any adaptation, fair play is a very important part of the mystery genre.

What makes a mystery fun to solve is when the author gives readers a chance to figure out themselves in time. You don’t want to solve the mystery in the first 10 minutes but you don’t want it to be impossible to figure out either.

Hiding critical clues from the reader (or viewer) is generally a bad idea. Writers don’t necessarily have to ascribe to Ronald Knox’s 10 Rules for Detective Fiction but the reader has to have a fighting chance. 

Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express does a nice job pulling this off. Throughout Poirot’s investigation, the viewers get bits and pieces of clues (and some red herrings) that make it possible for the viewer to figure out whodunnit.

Given the complexity of the story, it’s quite a feat to pull off. 

Most murder mystery enthusiasts read because they enjoy the detective, either professional or amateur. They like to see how the person views the world and evaluates the clues and the suspects.

But how do you translate this aspect to the big or small screen?

Valerie Burns, cozy mystery writer, summed it up best on her blog: “Few movie goers want to pay money to watch someone think. The audience needs to see the detective investigate and see how the detective processes the clues.” 

Burns cites BBC’s Sherlock as a really good way to adapt Sherlock’s thinking into a visual scene: “The producers do a good job of using technology to show the clues as Sherlock observes them, often having the camera zoom on clues and displaying words to give the audience a fair shot at solving the crimes. It’s a really good example of how Sherlock’s mind works.”

Not only does it show his thinking, it also allows viewers to have the same clues he does, which is great fair play. 

So these are just a few ways that mystery books can be adapted into movies and television shows successfully.

It’s a fine needle to thread but there’s great examples of movie and tv adaptations out there, even in the past few decades.