Back in the mid-seventies, I took a course in Criminology. It was taught by a former F.B.I. agent who also had a police background and it was one of the few times I really looked forward to sitting in a classroom and listening to someone. I learned many things that later came in handy writing stories but I think I learned a lot more about making deductions and assumptions about things that happen in real life. I'll just mention two…
The instructor was often talking about how things worked in an actual criminal investigation and contrasting them to what you see in mystery novels, TV shows and movies. One difference he noted several times was that in fiction, there comes a point where the reader or viewer is more or less challenged to solve the crime before the person in the detective role does in the story. He said, approximately…
When you're at that stage when you need to figure out the puzzle, you know that you have all the clues. The writer made sure you have them so maybe you can figure out whodunnit before the hero of the story does. Or if you can't, at least when he or she reveals it, you can say, "Of course! I should have noticed that…" In real life if you're investigating a crime, you never know if you have all the clues. They don't all magically appear for you. There might not even be enough to solve the crime. As a reader, you know they're all there…somewhere.
Absolutely true. It's something to keep in mind when you have to solve some mystery — not necessarily involving a crime — in your life. You might not have enough information to solve it. And the other lesson I wanted to mention here is when he said, again approximately…
You've all seen movies or TV shows where the detective has to try and think like the killer. He puts himself in the killer's place and thinks things like, "Okay, the easiest point of access was the dining room window…then he would have walked through the kitchen…then he would have known what time the victim always got home from work because he would have cased the house…then he would have approached his victim from the right side as they walked down this hall…"
…and that kind of thinking is almost always wrong because the criminal was not logical. He didn't think like you. He might not have even been thinking the way he did on other occasions. He might have been acting with no coherent thought process guiding his actions…of it may have been one so bizarre that there's no friggin' way you could meld your mind with his and deduce it. In reading about serial killers or even in my way-more mundane existence, I have learned this to be true. Often, you just can't know…
Good thing to keep in mind if and when you try to figure out what Donald Trump is up to.