The Case of the Turning Tide

Foreword

The relatively few persons who have had first-hand dealings with real murder know that truth is not only stranger than fiction, but is much more exciting.

As one who has had intimate contact with several murders, who has also done some writing and some reading, I tried to find out just why this was so. I haven’t found all the answers, but I think I have found some.

It is the difference between milk and meat.

Our so-called “murder mysteries” are escape fiction, and have become highly standardized through too much usage. Attempts to “create suspense,” “plant” clues, and above all, to “surprise the reader,” have robbed the reader of far more than they have given him in return.

In this book events are permitted to stream across the page in just about the way they would have happened in real life. Such clues as the reader will find are the ones that are there naturally. And if the reader isn’t “surprised” in the conventional manner by having the characters who seem painted the blackest with the brush of guilt turn out to be the most innocent, while the real murderer is the one person who has seemed “as pure as the driven snow,” I hope he will at least be entertained.

Reading it over, now that it is finished, I can find numerous technical errors — according to the standards of escape literature. I find that I also get some of the thrill which was inevitably associated with every real murder case on which I ever worked.

If the reader can get a taste of this “meat” he will feel compensated and I will be amply rewarded for the extra effort this book has cost.

Erle Stanley Gardner