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November 18, 2005

Foreshadowing from the Kane Club?

I had an interesting "chat" with Shaz from the Jamie Kane fan club today...

I've removed the name of the individual Shaz is talking about (and one other plot-related detail), to prevent spoiling anything important. (The fact that the Fan Club members aren't always the most trusting of people -- except for Saint Jamie, of course -- should come as no surprise to anyone.)

SHAZ: Hmm ...Talkin of weirdozZ (like my bRo), I wanted to pik UR brains 4 a sec.

RICHARD: Go ahead.

SHAZ: It's just that I've got this wierd feelin...a bit like the other day with ur star sign! I fink thers suMMit fishy about [XXX]...

SHAZ: ...last night I had a weird nightmare about [XXX]! we discovered s/he was involved in the plot to kill Jamie and s/he got us all arrested - what dya reck?

RICHARD: Well, [XXX] is an arse, and s/he's in love with [YYY].

SHAZ: Cool. Anyhoo, got2go. [snip] - byeeee!

SHAZ has logged off...

Now, obviously the Shaz-bot (kudos to anyone who can ID that reference from memory) wasn't programmed to parse my response to her. This leads me to believe that the entire purpose of the chat was to drop this little nugget of suspicion.

It's not Dostoevsky, but it is interesting how the various pieces of the Jamie Kane mystery are being laid out, which twists are being foreshadowed, and which complications are being used to obfuscate the solution.

Of course, foreshadowing can only properly be identified in hindsight or through re-reading, because you have to know what does happen to correctly label which signs of that future occurence were included in the narrative. So, it's premature to call this foreshadowing.

From a literary standpoint, this is pretty basic. But from an experiential standpoint (from the inside, as it were), this is really thought-provoking. I'm getting a whole new appreciation for the seductive power of the false lead. I'm not a big mystery reader, but it seems that red herrings all have to feel like foreshadowing to detectives, or else they would never be pursued (and thus proven to be incorrect).

As a detective on the Kane Case, and though I know it's almost certainly not relevant or meaningful, I'm itching to start tracking down Shaz's suspicions...

Posted by reparent at November 18, 2005 12:51 PM