In his essay "The Art of the Detective Story" Freeman wrote that in the inverted story: "The reader had seen the crime committed, knew all about the criminal, and was in possession of all the facts. It would have seemed that there was nothing left to tell, but I calculated that the reader would be so occupied with the crime that he would overlook the evidence. And so it turned out. The second part, which described the investigation of the crime, had to most readers the effect of new matter." However, Binyon notes that Freeman is being too modest here, and that it was Freeman's art that kept the reader's attention in the second part.