Do you read the last page of the mystery novel?

Not until I get there the slow way.

Nope. Even if I plan on not finishing a given book because I'm not enjoying it enough to continue on.

If the book is too dreary, or has telegraphed the conclusion too loudly, I read the last chapter and leave the book on the subway.

Well, that makes sense.

I'm not sure that I've ever read a mystery novel. But I frequently do that very thing if I am confronted with a suspenseful book/movie/TV show.

My reasons are that I just plain do not like the suspense of worrying about how things will turn out. I find though, that if I already know what is going to happen, I can sit back and enjoy the story as it unfolds.

I also dislike unhappy endings, and dislike them even more when I am surprised by them. Knowing what will happen ahead of time allows me to abort before I get sucker punched by an unhappy ending.

Way back when I began to be an avid reader and at least through my teens and perhaps my young adult years - I had never read the last page of any novel; at that age it would never even had occured to me to read the last page of a novel. Not until someone mentioned it to me one time did the thought even occur - oh you can flip to the back and read and see what happened. Not that I did it afterwards even after someone once mentioned it.

Some things you just don't do - and to me just doesn't occur to you to do. Like looking in someone's medicine cabinet. Never occurred to me that a person would do that --- until one day I saw it on TV. Again I still don't do it - but now the thought at least is there.

I hate it when tragedy triumphs; I'll agree with you there. That's probably why I never watched Titanic.