[Quiet Man Cometh]

Originally Posted by Duchess

...2nd person does that. They literally force YOU to think of YOU doing the actions and in that situation. Which is why it can also work of mystery novels and crime solving books where YOU are the detective. That way there isn't a sense of knowing anything about the character that you personally wouldn't have access to.

That's the kind of writing that, for me, I can't stand, usually because the stuff that it's telling me I do or the options that I might pick are nothing like those I actually would choose, so it just becomes flat and irritating to me, a story about some hypothetical individual who is not me.

I agree though that first person isn't the way to go if one wants to feel like they're part of the story, as the narrator in a first person story can't be ignored. The best one can do, I think, is to decide who they relate to the narrator and the story they are telling.

I've never read a mystery book in which there was any intention for the reader to solve the mystery before the detective, but that may be my choice of authors. I read a lot of Agatha Christie when I was young, as well as a few of the Nero Wolfe mysteries. The information is presented through the detective so the reader usually gets any info at the same time as the detective. Or, if the author is evil, the reader only get some of the information so they can't solve it until the dectective brings it up. (There's an amusing movie called "Murder by Death" that deals with that very issue).