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Post by dans on Dec 28, 2019 21:16:25 GMT
I'm transcribing a detective story from a 1940s comic, and there's a big hole in the plot. Detective goes to see a condemned murderer in prison to see if he will tell where he hid the loot from his last robbery. Prisoner says he didn't have the loot; his buddies not only took the money but framed him for the murder. Then he asks the detective for a favor - ask my wife to say psalm for me; the psalm on page 555 of the bible I gave her. Detective says sure, dead man's last wish and all. On the way to see her, he gets nabbed by the mob boss, who threatens to torture him to find out what the killer told him. Detective doesn't tell the mob anything and manages to escape. When he reaches the wife's apartment building it is on fire, the fire set by the mob. He rescues her, and sees her bible, so he rescues it as well. When he opens it, page 555 is missing; the semi-conscious wife tells him that the person who set her apartment on fire tore out that page.
So - he was alone in the cell with the murderer when he heard the 'page 555' clue. He didn't tell the mobsters what he knew. And yet, they ripped out that specific page from the wife's bible and then set the building on fire to kill her and destroy the evidence.
How did they know what page to tear out of the bible? If they knew in advance, why did they kidnap him and threaten to torture him?
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Post by redsycorax on Dec 28, 2019 22:40:54 GMT
Depends on the sort of detective story that you want to transcribe. If it's set on a world slightly different from our own, one convenient answer might be 'one of the mobsters is a telepath' and plucked it out of the detectives mind. Or, more simply, the mobsters had a half-formed idea about what was involved in this context and tortured him to try to get the information out of him. Although they fail, the detective inadvertantly left a clue about the concealed information in the Bible, in invisible ink most probably. Or some form of mnemonic or cipher. Or, an adjacent mob-affiliated prisoner was only able to contact the mobsters after they had assaulted the detective, providing them with the information while he was en route to the criminal's wife. They may have simply been closer and got there first.
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Post by dans on Dec 29, 2019 1:50:05 GMT
It's actually a Fawcett Comics story, from a character that appeared in WOW, Slam Bang, and Master Comics and I'm going to post it in the Earth S forum here. So no telepathy. I figure what had to have happened, but didn't get written into the story, is that somebody related to the mob must have overheard, but the mob didn't get that information until after the detective escaped from them.
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Post by DocQuantum on Dec 29, 2019 17:26:40 GMT
See, this is what I love about this group! We figure out ways to fix plot holes and continuity errors in published stories.
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Post by lee on Dec 29, 2019 19:24:39 GMT
Well, this group did do more to repair the original Crisis than most of the writers hired after the fact.
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Post by redsycorax on Dec 29, 2019 20:42:15 GMT
Using Occam's Razor on this, the most logical solution is probably the imprisoned mobster one. Let's also say that the imprisoned adjacent mobster was a plant and was keeping an eye on his dying former associate for his colleagues on the outside.
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Post by dans on Dec 30, 2019 0:27:58 GMT
Yeah, I decided to make a prison guard a fink... him getting the information out seemed like the easiest way to get the information to the mob boss...
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Post by redsycorax on Dec 30, 2019 20:25:52 GMT
Yeah, I guess that would work too. Good thinking, dans.
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Post by sandy on Mar 26, 2020 0:36:37 GMT
How do you know the mobsters ripped out the page? Is that clear from the story or could it have been someone else?
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Post by dans on Apr 2, 2020 21:34:44 GMT
How do you know the mobsters ripped out the page? Is that clear from the story or could it have been someone else? The wife told the guy when he crashed into her burning apartment and saved her. It actually seemed like a strange thing for someone who is barely conscious and about to be burned to death to say... but the writer had to make the point somehow I guess, and comic book characters are always saying things no normal person would ever say in order to advance the plot. It also seems strange that they would rip out the page rather than take the whole Bible - but then, how would the good guy figure out what was on that particular page?
It also seemed like a pretty flimsy clue. What if there hadn't been a Green Pastures Cemetery in town?
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