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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27403
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27403
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm not sure if what you are describing is unreliable narrator at all. An unreliable narrator is not one who is mistaken about facts. An unreliable narrator is one who is deliberately deceiving the reader.

You say the twist is that B is really right about who did it. But how do we know that this is the twist? Since A is the narrator, how do we know that B was right. Does A finally tell us that B was right? In that case they are not an unreliable narrator, they are reliably narrating a story in which the jumped to a wrong conclusion and were finally convinced of the right solution. That sort of thing is pretty common in first-person detective stories.

Or does A maintain to the bitter end that A was right, while at the same time revealing enough evidence to convince the reader that B was actually correct? That is going to be extraordinarily difficult to pull off, and some percentage of readers are always going to be left confused. You had better be doing it for some reason other than as a gimmick or it may be torches and pitchforks for you.

But even then, this is not really an unreliable narrator, just a narrator who is honestly relating an interpretation of facts about which they are mistaken. A truly unreliable narrator would be one who is genuinely attempting to deceive the reader, or one that is genuinely delusional. That is obviously pretty hard to pull off in the context of a detective story. It raises the question of who they are attempting to deceive and why (which presumes a narrative addressed to someone other than the reader) or of why this person's delusion are germane to the story being told.

The episode of BTVS when Buffy thinks she is a patient in an asylum and her friends and her vampire slaying are an illusion comes to mind here. But of course that episode is inconclusive. The whole series might indeed be the imaginings of mad Buffy. But does leaving the reader with similar doubts work for a detective story? Is that your intent?

Original score: 3