Claire Morgan

‘The Signalman’ and ‘The Black Cat’

Mystery Stories.

In my opinion the most important thing to make a good mystery story is

suspense. The writer should have the reader wanting to read on and

asking questions right from the start. The description of the setting

and characters are vital to the mystery. It gives the reader the

emotions to really understand the atmosphere of the story. I don’t

think the atmosphere needs to be really obscured but some bizarre

features are needed to get an eerie and suspicious feeling. A twist in

the end throws the reader’s prediction off course, and brings the

mystery together. The clues should be laid out subtlety in the story

so at the end the reader can see what they missed as they were

reading. If questions are left unanswered at the end of the story it

keeps the readers thinking so they can imagine what happens. A death

makes the story more tragic and far fetched yet realistic making the

person wearier of what is going on. Being written in the first person

makes the story feel more personal and emotional so the reader feels

like they are actually in the story. Dialogue also adds to this

affect. Having the words of a person gives you a better idea of their

personality.

I have recently studied ‘The Signalman’ written by Charles Dickens and

‘The Black Cat’ by William Wintel. They were both written in the 19th

century. ‘The Signalman’ is a mystery story about a man getting

involved with a signalman. As he first calls down to the signalman, he

becomes part of the nightmare. The writer plays the part of the

detective as the story is written in the first person. He starts off

as just a passer by, but notices the strange, lonely man. He decides

to go down and speak with the signalman when he realises he will be

here again. He soon becomes very involved with the problems of the

signalman. After the man told the narrator about his sightings the

narrator tries to find explanations of the delusions. However the next

evening he returns to find out that he was wrong. At first, he thinks

he is seeing the exact same ghost that the signalman claimed to have

seen, but he soon realised that this was not. When he reached the

bottom of the cutting he was confronted by the dead body of the

signalman. As he watched while the evidence of the accident was

gathered the words of the driver echoed through his head. He had heard

these words before. The signalman had told him them the previous