Why Do We Read Murder Mysteries?

Anne R. Allen is one of my favourite mystery writers, plus she hosts a Top 100 Writers Digest Blog (link provided below.) Anne is always worth reading, and this post is excellent in it's entirety, but I particularly draw your attention to the comparison to Mozart. (With a name like Melodie, how can I not agree? 😄)

Why Do We Read Mysteries?

by Anne R. Allen

I once met an aspiring writer who had been forced to move in with Mom after a year of rejections and other catastrophes. He dealt with his humiliating situation by criticizing his mother to anybody who would listen.

One of her great sins? She spent every evening reading mystery novels and watching BBC murder
mysteries.

Anne R. Allen, author

"It freaks me out that she's so bloodthirsty," he said. "Why does she want to focus on death every night?" He added, "They're so unrealistic. How can there be any people left in Midsomer with all those murders every week?"

I hear this kind of negativity from readers, too. "Why do you want to write about murder and death? That seems like such a downer. Why don't you write about something more comforting and uplifting?"

But here's the thing: mysteries are uplifting. The classic mystery doesn't focus on death, but what caused it. A mysterious murder causes chaos, but the sleuth finds out whodunnit, brings the culprit to justice, and order is restored. That gives us comfort, especially in times of stress.

Time Magazine reported that during the pandemic, booksellers had a hard time keeping Agatha Christie's novels in stock. People were consuming them like tranquilizers.

A Ride to Safety

I'm not saying that reading a murder mystery is entirely soothing and calm. It's also about confronting our fears. It's like going on a roller coaster ride. The ride may be terrifying at the time, but you know everything will be okay in the end.

Roller coaster riders are not thinking about real-life speeding dangers, or run-away trains, and we don't go on a roller coaster ride because we're having morbid thoughts. It's about the chaotic thrill, followed by a peaceful resolution.

The Challenge of the Puzzle

An article in The New Yorker a few years ago was highly critical of the genre, saying that we mystery authors don't have enough empathy for our victims. But mysteries are not for dwelling on gruesome or tragic deaths. They are puzzles to be solved. We aren't reading them for the emotional journey involved with rich old Aunt Augusta's demise, but to use our intellectual skills to solve a puzzle.

Reading a classic mystery is more like playing the board game "Clue" than studying a real-life killing. We don't empathize with Colonel Mustard or Mrs. Peacock any more than we do with the pawns in a chess game. We're there to solve the puzzle.

It's not a coincidence that a lot of mystery readers are also fans of crossword puzzles. They're both exercises for the mind. A lot of very highbrow literary types also enjoy mysteries. T.S.Elliot was a major fan, and wrote reviews of mysteries for the magazine the Criterion in the late 1920s.

Academics also love mysteries. I once spent a semester at the American Academy in Rome, and it had one of the best libraries of mystery novels I'd ever seen.

A visiting professor at the Academy compared the classic mystery to listening to Mozart. The form is stylized, he said, but there's lots of room for creative flights of fancy. And in the end, everything is resolved with a wonderful, pleasing piece of harmony.

Weeding Out the Bad Guys

It's our yearning for resolution - that orderly conclusion - that keeps us turning back to classic mysteries, especially in times of upheaval.

Literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote a famous article in The New Yorker in 1944 called "Why People Read Detective Stories." He was exasperated by the fact that his wife, Mary McCarthy, was always reading detective stories and recommending them to their friend, Vladimir Nabokov.

Wilson wrote that people like detective stories because : "Everybody is suspected in turn, and the streets are full of lurking agents whose allegiances we cannot know. Nobody seems guiltless, nobody seems safe; and then, suddenly, the murderer is spotted, and -relief!- he is not, after all, a person like you or me. He is a villain."

When the sleuth reveals the bad guy, everyone can feel safe again and stop suspecting Miss Scarlet over there in the library with that candlestick in her hand.

A Murder Mystery Restores Law and Order

I find I'm turning to mysteries even more in this time of political chaos. I live in a country where the principles of law and order have essentially been repealed.

People ask me why I'm "only" writing mystery stories when there are so many terrible things happening on a daily basis. They're often especially unimpressed that my ditzy etiquette expert heroine isn't "kick-ass" and doesn't carry a gun.

But when we live in a thugocracy where the smallest act of kindness or mercy can get a citizen fired, imprisoned, or deported, a show of good manners can be a heroic act of defiance.

Reading a classic mystery can take us back to a time of less chaos and more order - when the rule of law was respected by all. And even though some of us live in a country where bringing a criminal to justice may be an unrealistic fairy tale, it's a fairy tale a whole lot of us need right now.

Anne R. Allen is an award-winning blogger and the author of 13 funny mysteries and 2 how-to books for writers. Her bestselling Camilla Randall Mysteries are a mash-up of mystery, rom-com, and satire. They feature perennially down-on-her-luck former socialite Camilla Randall — who is a magnet for murder, mayhem, and Mr. Wrong. But she always solves the mystery in her quirky, but oh-so-polite way. Anne is the former artistic director of the Patio Playhouse in Escondido, CA and now lives on the foggy Central Coast of California.

Blog: https://annerallen.com/

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