Do you remember that scene at the end of The Sixth Sense when you find out Bruce Willis had been dead the whole time. Or in Fight Club, when Marla tells Ed Norton that he is Tyler Durden. I remember these moments, and the feelings that came along with seeing them for the first time, with a vivid clarity that is usually reserved for life-altering events. I remember that sensation that my mind had been totally and completely blown to smithereens, because to me a surprise ending is like winning the lottery...only without the millions of dollars.
As a result, I am constantly in search of books with great, surprise twist endings. There are plenty of them out there, some that succeed (like Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Chuck Paluhniak's Fight Club), some that do an okay job (like Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory and Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle) and some that frankly just fall flat (think Denis Lehane's Shutter Island, an overall excellent book, but an ending that didn't work for me).
The problem is that I'm addicted to that feeling you get when you realize everything you thought you knew was actually wrong. In looking for books with great twist endings, I end up acting like a heroin addict looking for that percocet that rolled under the couch. I scour the Internet, searching for "best plot twists" and "best surprise endings," and end up with a mish mash of books, some good and some bad. I've attached links to some of the Internet sites with these lists for your own perusal.
So what makes a great surprise ending? I think most important is this: not only does the twist have to be surprising, but it has to be unexpected as well. Put another way, the best twist is the one you didn't even know was coming. We all know to expect a big reveal at the end of a murder mystery, but who in their right mind expected to be shocked at the end of Fight Club? I certainly didn't. I just thought it was a movie about bucking conformity and unshackling ourselves from the material world. And, of course, Brad Pitt's abs. Who even knew there was going to be a twist at the end?
It was partly because of my love of great surprise twists that I actually took up writing myself. While I may not have recreated that sensation I had at the end of The Sixth Sense, I've at least created some surprise endings that I hope will make people stop and think. When my first novel, The Last Detective, comes out this fall, I don't expect M. Night Shyamalan to come banging on my door, but I think my readers will at least have a few goose bumps pop up that they weren't expecting.