It is strange that I have not yet become a big mystery reader, because most mysteries are all about a delay in recognizing the perpetrator of a crime.
Mysteries are popular, and all the crime dramas that are long time hit shows on prime time television reassure me that many other people really enjoy stories of delayed recognition. Will the first response teams discover the truth on the crime scene, or will it be the forensic lab specialists, or will the truth have to wait till it's time for the courtroom production of witness, cross-examination and verdict by a jury?
Detectives and attorneys are very popular as lead characters in fiction and drama. I bought a book called Reel Justice: The Courtroom goes to the Movies a few years ago that is a compilation of all the major motion pictures that dramatize a court proceeding, with summaries and ratings for each one.
My personal favorite courtroom movie is A Few Good Men which stars Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore. The two favorite parts of mine are when Kaffee is walking around his house with his special bat during a setback in the case, trying to think, and he riffles with his bat through his hanging clothing in his closet. And suddenly he recognizes something: Santiago's closet as a major clue to the crime. He had looked in Santiago's closet long ago for clues and he saw those hanging clothes, but he did not recognize them as clues till much later. And that sets everything into motion for a clever cross-examination strategy upon Jessup.
And Jessup on stand is my other favorite part, because it is the dream outcome of anyone who is seeking justice: the witness-stand confession made in a public place. We don't want a plea-bargaining game played out in the privacy of the attorney's office. Neither do we get full satisfaction from going all the way trhough to the jury verdict, they are sometimes wrong and it is not the same as a criminal owning up to the truth and announcing their own verdict. Jessup's scene is so satisfying because Kaffee brings him to right up to the edge of self-exposure and Jessup takes the leap. Jessup cannot resist or avoid telling the truth about what he did. That ending is most satisfying. We don't even really care about his sentence or punishment, it was enough that he was forced to relinquish his pompous self-satisfied confidence and reveal his infantile raging irrationality to everyone. Love it! I'll never get sick of this one. And as many times as I've heard people say "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth," I know I'm not alone in loving this movie.
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