A take-it-all-in hacktivist mystery. No spacetime for blink-and-you-miss-it shenanigans. Mild spoilers for A Murder at the End of the World below.

Imagine yourself an adolescent with no knowledge of British idioms, culture, reference points – British life, in general. Now imagine picking up a random Agatha Christie novel and reading the first couple of chapters. Would you latch onto it? Would its unapologetically English characters, class tropes, and personification of European vignettes resonate? Christie was my introduction to murder mysteries. As a high schooler, I must have read most of her catalogue. At times, the prose and characters were difficult to get a grip on, but worth grappling with regardless. The twists and turns so worth it.

Christie knew how to construct a setting, place characters in context, prescribe them motivations, interests, and suspicions, and lead the reader down several rabbit holes of possibilities. It did not matter if the cultural touchpoints were not always obvious or easily understood, at least to this reader unfamiliar with the world of twentieth century Britain at that time. The author was doing enough to keep you engaged and develop the people you were following. The strangeness of the stage provided plenty of intrigue.

Sometimes, she cheated. A clue left unshared or a spurious revelation plucked from speculation that could not possibly be confirmed until the author was ready for us to hear it. And Then There Were None was guilty of this; The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the exact opposite.

Not every mystery writer sprinkles their literature with puzzle pieces to the full picture. Nor do they need to. It may be fun to go through a Sherlock Holmes story with the aplomb and brilliance of the eponymous detective, but alas, that is not easy given the number of red herrings overlaid within the narrative. When entering the world of a murder mystery, we are also conditioned to be suspicious of everyone and ascribe intention or ulterior motives to every little action. We cannot let anything go. It is as much a game to play as it is a story to absorb. Pleasantly surprising, then, when we happen upon a thriller or murder mystery having gone in blind – now we have to re-read or re-watch it at some point; what clues did we miss along the way?

This brings us to FX’s A Murder at the End of the World, created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. With “a murder” in the name, the only surprises ahead are the ones you are expecting. It is a whodunit that primes the viewer to be doubtful of everyone and everything. Except this one actually plays nicely on the trope of revealing a grand master plan, instead dwelling on the evolving mess at hand.