Trust as a Mystery Novel

In novels like Trust, I often find myself having to actively analyze the characters to a much greater degree than other books. For most framed stories/stories with multiple perspectives, this is by design. Novels like Trust are non-linear in progression and told through different voices, all with their own motivations and perceptions of themselves and others. It ultimately lies on the reader to fit the fractured pieces of each character together, and to judge for themselves the accuracy of this virtual character living in their minds. But there exists no character in Trust in which this process provides more of a challenge than Mildred. The same confusion readers feel in regards to Mildred's identity is shared by, what I argue as, every character in the book. No one truly seems to know her and yet every character has spun their own rendition of her and proliferated such as reality. Living such a high profile life and simultaneously having her personality diminished by her husband, none in Diaz's novel can claim to have understood Mildred wholly. The way I see it, Mildred is the main character of Trust; the same way Ida is to her memoir and Rask is to "Bonds." But unlike traditional stories, the reader never "meets" Mildred, but rather various simulacra of her created by the characters. Trust, however unconventional, is a mystery novel at heart. Like the mystery novels enjoyed by Bevel’s rendition of Mildred, Trust requires that the reader not be passive while reading. The ultimate “goal” of the novel is to gain an understanding of its main character - to pick up the clues and red herrings littered throughout and to emerge with the fractured bits of Mildred’s reality intact.

Trust is composed of four parts, each a written work attributed to one of its characters. Vanner’s “Bonds” introduces Mildred as Helen Rask, the kind-hearted, music-loving wife to Benjamin Rask. Mildred, as perceived by Vanner, lived an unassuming life, married to a man she didn't care for and forced to provide her own entertainment. Bevel’s Mildred presents itself as a more promising “lead” in the mystery at hand, as she is not shadowed under the pretense of a fictional character. Ida’s memoir, however, serves to flesh Andrew Bevel out and thus brings into question the validity of Andrew’s rendition of his wife. Ida acts as the novel’s detective, being drawn to the mystery of Mildred and even finding connection in the way she’s overshadowed by the men in her life. “At first, Bonds was not just literature; it was evidence. And I was not just a reader; I was a detective” (Diaz, 245). Establishing herself as the audience surrogate in this mystery novel, readers place their trust in Ida as she reads between Bevel’s lines, snoops around the late wife’s corridors, and visits the museum’s archives many years later. Upon stealing the journal, Ida remarks “who knows Mildred better than I? Didn’t I forge her a past out of my own?” (Diaz, 357). It seems the reader will finally get their questions answered, and Ida will be there to tape the pieces together for us. 

Where most mystery novels hand the bone to the detective and reward the reader with the dazzling reveal (which the reader may or may not have put any work into), Trust abruptly ends Ida’s narrative as she begins to read Mildred’s journal. The reader, who has actively picked up the pieces of Mildred’s psyche, must read her own words for the first time and solve the mystery without the help of the detective Ida. Some may want the answers handed to them like in other detective novels but Diaz doesn’t comply, and for one simple reason: for Ida to solve the mystery of Mildred’s identity and present it to the reader is for Mildred’s truth to be warped once again by another character.