There is only one plot—things are not what they seem.

Thompson’s aphorism reduces narrative—especially crime and noir—to a single engine: misdirection and revelation. “Things are not what they seem” points to the gap between surface appearances (respectability, innocence, sanity, motive) and the concealed realities underneath. In Thompson’s world, that concealment is rarely benign: the “true” story often involves corruption, self-deception, or moral rot that the characters (and sometimes the narrator) work to hide. The line also gestures at a broader view of storytelling: plot is less about events than about the reader’s shifting understanding of those events as assumptions collapse and a darker coherence emerges.