Practice GMAT Critical Reasoning Question

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Authors writing detective stories frequently include a brilliant detective and an incompetent investigator who embark on separate paths in an attempt to solve a crime. The separate accounts frequently consist of the incompetent investigator becoming distracted by the criminals' well-planned attempts and the competent detective solving the case after a violent confrontation. Many literary analysts believe authors often choose this storyline in an attempt to provide readers additional complexity and challenge in solving the investigation.

Which of the following most logically follows from the statements above?

A)	A well-written detective story consists of an investigation being undertaken by a competent and incompetent investigator.
B)	Some authors use an incompetent investigator to show the complexities of an investigation.
C)	Authors never write stories with incompetent investigators who solve a case correctly.
D)	Authors can use the separate investigative accounts to make predicting the correct outcome of the investigation more difficult.
E)	Authors write stories with competent and incompetent investigators to show the complexity of real life.

Correct Answer: D

This question asks you to take the statements and draw a conclusion. One major trap in this type of question is an answer that is logical, but not supported by the statements in the stimulus.

The stimulus does not define what constitutes a well written story nor does it speak about what is a poorly written story. Consequently, it is difficult to make a statement like this that will logically follow from the stimulus.
Although this statement is probably true, it does not follow from the stimulus. Instead, the stimulus states that authors use an incompetent investigator to add complexity to the storyline (thereby making the reader's attempts to solve the case more challenging) not to show that investigations are complex.
While the stimulus states that stories "frequently" include an incompetent investigator who does not solve the case correctly, we cannot conclude an incompetent investigator "never" solves a case correctly.
This statement is quite similar to the final sentence of the stimulus and it logically follows from the stimulus. The statement that authors write in the way they do "to provide readers additional complexity and challenge in solving the investigation" provides the basis to conclude that authors write "to make predicting the correct outcome of the investigation more difficult."
Although this statement is probably true, there is no evidence of it in the stimulus. Instead, the stimulus indicates that the complexity is added not for its resemblance to real life but for its ability to increase the challenge posed to readers seeking to solve the case correctly.

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