In Police Procedurals and other works of Mystery Fiction, easy ways to solve crimes will quickly be eliminated. CCTV cameras were broken, guns and cars were stolen, etc. Anytime it does look like a vital piece of evidence has been found early on it will either be quickly contradicted or somehow made inadmissible in court.
This is because easy-to-solve crimes wouldn't be too entertaining to watch. (One can assume that they happen between episodes, when nobody's watching.) Also, smart criminals (who take precautions to cover their tracks) are more interesting characters than dumb ones.
Tends to overlap with Open-and-Shut Case statements. Compare Simple Solution Won't Work (after stating the simple solution, another character explains/shows why it won't work). Contrast Clueless Mystery (a mystery that the reader isn't given enough information to solve). In a sense, its opposite is Fresh Clue (something gives away that someone was here not too long ago). In other cases, it's the antithesis of Orgy of Evidence.
See also Destroy the Evidence, Jury and Witness Tampering, and He Knows Too Much for ways a character might directly dispose of a smoking gun.
Shares a naming trend of sorts with Clue, Evidence, and a Smoking Gun.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro: Double Subversion. There's a killer who is clearly caught on CCTV committing the crime, carrying the murder weapon which is found on her person, and who has prominent, obvious connections to her victims (they all "unfriended" her on Faceboo-... Er, Links). Yet somehow, the police are still unable to solve the crime. (Something to do with the crystal clear CCTV evidence, motive, lack of alibi, and clear connections to the victims being inadmissible in court!).
Comic Books
- Bookhunter: The thief Kettle Stitch is very good about this. Agent Bay realizes that an otherwise-perfect book theft has resulted in a missing circulation card that can be linked to Kettle Stitch's library card. Except Kettle Stitch anticipated this, and used a counterfeit copy of someone else's card, instead of her own. So Agent Bay investigates how said library card was counterfeited, and finds that Kettle Stitch hacked into the library's patron records computer system—but his attempt to trace her location fails, and she just erases all the evidence of her hacking from the system.
Fan Works
Ace Attorney
- I'm Phoenix Wright and THIS IS JACKASS
comprises several two-panel instances in which Phoenix has taunted various criminals with whatever indoubitable proof he's obtained about their culpability. Since this is outside the courtroom, their reaction is to neutralize him and steal said evidence. The creator's commentary frustratedly stresses that he does this every case.
Films — Live-Action
- Minority Report: Used in the opening case to show how resourceful the Precrime team has to be in order to stop murders. First, they learn that eight people named Howard Marks live in the area, so they have to apply Facial Recognition Software. Once they identify the right person, he turns out to have moved from his last known location, requiring the team to use GPS Evidence from the precog visions to locate the crime scene.
Literature
- Career of Evil: Strike has the Serial Killer narrowed down to four suspects (one of whom he writes off quite quickly). The killer's inner monologues reveal that he was raised by a man who called himself his father but really wasn't and that the killer has a son who was taken away from him. It seems like this information might narrow it down come the hero's background checks, but then it's revealed that it doesn't. All three men had a biological son who was taken away from them by his mother or another relative after they were arrested for their crimes. All three men were raised by men besides their actual father (as a result of Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe, Family Relationship Switcheroo and a stepfather). Then, later, it looks as if the field of suspects is down to two due to more monologues from the unnamed killer revealing he has a live-in girlfriend who he secretly despises. Only two of the suspects have been shown to have girlfriends, while the third lives alone. It later turns out that third one has a second alias he takes up at times, under which he does have a girlfriend.
- The Circle Opens: In Shatterglass, one of the major plot elements is that Tharian religious doctrine requires that the sites where murders take place be ritually cleansed, which as a side effect renders it impossible to scry for information about the murders.
- Gambit: Nero Wolfe's attention is focused on the only four men (besides his client's father, who has been arrested for the murder) with access to the murder victim before he collapsed of apparent poisoning, and it turns out a sixth man is guilty.
- Lord Darcy: A character once comments that detective work in cities would be a lot easier without all the anti-scrying spells placed on homes and businesses. Darcy comments that if these were not there, detective work would be non-existent—you could just call in a journeyman sorcerer to use some basic divination spells and the case would be solved in under an hour. He also mentions that this would also eliminate all hope of personal privacy, as any interested mage could scry into your house or office whenever they wanted, which is the reason that anti-scrying spells are placed on homes and businesses in the first place.
- Lord Peter Wimsey: (Dorothy L. Sayers)
- Busman's Honeymoon: The clues to the murder are all there when Wimsey and Harriet arrive at their new house, but it's dark, and they have to have the chimneysweep in the next day and "all the clues got destroyed in the muddle". Or if they weren't, they're removed in the cleaning-up process - some by the murderer, under the eyes of the sleuths!
- The Nine Tailors: The corpse has had its face smashed in (preventing identification by facial features or dental records) and its hands cut off (preventing identification by fingerprints) and is not carrying any kind of identification. As such, a significant part of the investigation is devoted to simply figuring out who the victim was in the first place.
- Relativity: In "A Better Place", the killer checks into a hotel and is actually caught on camera. But the camera is installed at a funny angle: In the ceiling, pointed straight down, and the killer is wearing a baseball cap. As a result, his face never appears on the screen at all.
- Rising Sun: The security cameras should make solving the case easy. Except the one videotape of the crucial time and place is missing, and when it's returned, it turns out to have been tampered with.
- Rivers of London: In the first book, it's reported that the only point where they should have got a clear shot of the perpetrator is actually a camera blind spot. Eventually, Peter realises that there is no way there should be a camera blind spot that big in central London and double checks himself, only to find it was one of his colleagues that was caught on camera.
Live-Action TV
- Criminal Minds: Downplayed. Evidence found is usually pertinent and useful (they just don't always know what it means).
- Columbo: This trope is generally part of the series' setup. Most episodes begin by showing someone perpetrating a carefully-planned murder, then seeming to dispose of or cover up all evidence that would trace the crime back to them. As the episode proceeds, we begin to see Detective Columbo pick up on minor clues or contradictions that the killer didn't or couldn't anticipate, which the killer then tries to hide or convince the detective to disregard. Sometimes the final, damning piece of evidence isn't revealed until the last minutes of the episode.
- CSI: While the cast can fingerprint the air, there's one episode in which a literal truckload of evidence is stolen in the first five minutes. They get it back, but the chain of custody is broken so none of it could be admitted.
- House: Noncriminal examples occur frequently. If anyone is cured near the beginning of an episode, they're either not the patient of the week, or they only seemed to be getting better. Justified, since House's team only handles the most complicated cases: "I look for zebras instead of horses because other doctors eliminate all the horses."
- Law & Order: The important evidence usually does exist, but legal mistakes in handling it mean it can't be admitted in court.
- Law & Order: Some episodes play this straight, while others subvert it. Many of the subversions take the form of "the criminal's identity is obvious, now the problem is catching them." In other cases, there is some kind of legal strategy the defense attorney can use to suggest the defendant isn't actually guilty, or there were extenuating circumstances, or... In one noteworthy episode, the initial crime (a burglary of a safe-deposit-box company) was solved quickly, but recovered property led the detectives to reopen a twenty-year-old robbery/murder case.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In the various L&O franchises, multiple pieces of evidence are tossed for various (occasionally contradictory) reasons. The worst offender is arguably the season 8 finale, "Screwed", where more or less ALL the evidence against the defendant is tossed because of a corrupt cop at the evidence room tipping the defense off to "questionable practices" in gaining the evidence, then "losing" the rest.
- The Lincoln Lawyer: A key witness in Season 1 comes out of hiding to meet with the titular defense attorney, only to be run over by a distracted driver in a Diabolus ex Machina before he can give his statement.
- That Mitchell and Webb Look: In one skit, the police try to find the "Identity Killer". The killer, among other things, puts t-shirts with a photograph of himself on his victims, leaves his driver's license and passport on the scene, and he hangs out at the police station while detectives debate the case.
- Pushing Daisies:
- The dead person (almost) never has complete or accurate information about the killer (many of them are murdered by masked killers, or with bombs and such that keep them from seeing the killer up close). The first victim shown in the pilot did, but that was necessary to demonstrate how the plot worked and wasn't the only murder of the episode. The one time the victim says "My wife did it", he's a polygamist.
- "Bitter Sweets": Subverted. The perp gives clear, concise information that quickly leads to the killer. it's the SECOND murder, for a different reason, that's troublesome. The victim from that one also knows who killed him, but because he was drowned in a vat of taffy he's unable to coherently say the name before Ned touches him again.
- "Robbing Hood": Gustav Hoffer knew who killed him, but was so busy talking about something else that his minutes ran out. Rollie Stingwell also gave them an actual name, but it turned out to be the wrong person entirely due to the killer being disguised. Erin Embry knew who her killer was, but Ned had taken a 10-Minute Retirement and sworn off necromancy for the episode, so they couldn't ask her.
Roleplays
- Empire: If there is an off-screen, especially magical, way for the militia to prove the guilt of a player character then the lead will turn out to be a dead end.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney: This seems to happen in every. Freaking. Case.
- Cases 1-2, 1-3, and 1-4 all feature Phoenix making the exact same mistake: showing a vital piece of evidence to the person it incriminates. On two of these occasions, it results in him immediately losing the evidence in question, and only the fortuitous arrival of Detective Gumshoe keeps it from happening the third time as well.
- In Case 1-5, everyone in the court watches a security camera video and then Phoenix and the prosecutor freak out when it turns out that the most important parts of what happened are not shown. This is also a justified instance, as the culprit was the one whose job it was to manage the cameras, so he knew how he could avoid being seen.
- If the crime has any direct witnesses, they will almost always turn out to have completely misinterpreted what they saw. They are usually outright lying the other times.
- Any seemingly-critical photograph taken of the crime will turn out to be entirely misleading.
- Any drawn pictures will manage to combine bad witnesses with misleading or missing facts. So of course Larry Butz ends up drawing a critical piece of evidence for the trilogy finale.
- To be fair, the protagonists are defense attorneys, so their entire job is to prove that the people that the police think obviously did it didn't do it. Dismantling apparent smoking guns is a key part of the job.
