The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

The camera that Eleanor hides outside her office door is a motif that highlights The Misleading Nature of Appearances. When Maggie first spots the shelf of cameras, magnifying glasses, prisms, and other detective paraphernalia, she thinks of “at least six Eleanor novels that were about […] seeing things in ways no one ever has before” (68). Even the tiny, unmoving, blue dot of the camera’s light is hidden amidst the many reflections from Maggie’s flashlight, and Maggie must learn to see things in a different way before she can discern the camera’s presence. Specifically, she realizes that the camera’s light doesn’t look “the way light looked when refracted through a prism—it was the way light looks when reflected through a camera” (209). Once Maggie sees it in a way she couldn’t have before, she recognizes the clock for what it is: a hiding place.

In addition, the hidden camera also demonstrates The Long-term Effects of Gaslighting. Maggie is elated to realize that she has the perspicacity to find and follow one of Eleanor’s clues. Her jubilation is so intense because she is finally breaking free of the attitudes that Colin’s gaslighting caused her to internalize: the false idea that she is somehow inept and paranoid, looking for secrets where none exist. This time, however, her suspicions that there is something significant about this shelf are accurate. Her inner healing is taken to the next level when Ethan credits Maggie alone with the discovery, telling her, “‘I’d say you just blew the case wide open.’ Not we. You” (211). By honoring Maggie’s shrewd observation, Ethan effectively negates much of Colin’s past derision, making Maggie feel “high on adrenaline […] and the all-consuming rush of being right” (211). With this internal and external validation, she revels in the feeling of once again trusting her intuition.