I’m a huge fan of PBS mysteries (though when they’re on late in the evening, I’ve been known to very frustratingly fall asleep shortly before the reveal of the whodunit!).  One thing I learned quite some time ago is never to miss the short scene that appears before the opening credits.  If I have to run in and out doing chores or work on fixing dinner while watching my show, I wait until after that opening.  Why?  Because that scene nearly always reveals significant details, either about the murder being investigated in the episode, or something that happened years earlier that’s crucial to understanding the crime.

It occurred to me recently that prologues in fiction can be just the same.  However, there exists a surprisingly widespread prejudice against prologues, with many people saying they skim them or skip them, and perhaps come back and read them only after they reach the end of the book—or never read them at all.  The explanation usually given for this is that many prologues are badly done ‘infodumps’ or scenes that attempt to hook the reader in a gimmicky way.  But a badly written prologue is almost invariably part of a badly written book, so why should the poor prologue take the blame?