Perplexing Plots

"David Bordwell has a brain I envy, one that makes connections and associations about books, film, and the arts that are breathtakingly unorthodox and exactly correct. I learned so much from reading Perplexing Plots about how crime narratives are situated in the larger literary and cinema spheres, and rejoiced in how much pleasure Bordwell's criticism provided, once more and always. -- Sarah Weinman, author of <i>Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free</i> My favorite of David Bordwell’s many important books, this is an engrossing tour of crime and mystery storytelling in literature high and low, with asides on film, theater, and other media. I’m in awe of its encyclopedic reach, erudition, analytic brilliance, clarity, and wit. It’s wonderfully instructive and fun. -- James Naremore, author of <i>More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts</i> Perplexing Plots is the most illuminating study of narrative technique that I’ve read. David Bordwell’s investigation of popular storytelling benefits from his exceptional breadth of knowledge and analytic skills. But what is especially impressive is his ability to present information and insights so persuasively—and so readably. An admirable achievement. -- Martin Edwards, author of <i>The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators</i> Bordwell's is the first-ever-historical poetics of cross-media storytelling in which inventions and conventions, the new and the old, the brainy and the brainless are considered not as successive stages of, as Mandelstam called it, a ""boring bearded development,"" but as complementary components of a creative symbiosis. -- Yuri Tsivian, author of <i>Approaches to Carpalistics: Movement and Gesture in Art, Literature and Film</i> Perplexing Plots is a must. Rare is scholasticism this engaging — you’ll put it down with more than a handful of authors to discover, not to mention the movies adapted from them. * Boulder Weekly * Bordwell’s work is exceptionally well-researched and offers fascinating examinations of plot devices, patterns, and structure in crime fiction. This book is sure to be enjoyed by fans of crime fiction and film noir. * Hometowns to Hollywood *"