Why Read Mysteries?

 I've been a bit less regular in writing here than I intended for a couple of reasons of late:  the first being that I read a few contemporary books by living authors that I didn't like. Nobody reads this blog and I expect few ever will, but I'm still not sure if I want to be putting total pans up on the internet for anyone to stumble upon. I reserve the right to change my mind in the future, but for now, I'm keeping ungenerous thoughts to myself. The second reason is that the string of duds led me to a palette cleanser genre swap to my other favored genres of fantasy and non-fiction history. But I'm feeling reinvigorated. I got a dedicated audio listening device, and I'm back on mysteries with full force. I'm very excited about my current read (my first ever by Christianna Brand), but since I'm not done with that yet, here's a short and sweet meta post with my answer to a question I'm often asked:  why read mysteries? 

Over the decades, many have tried to articulate the appeal of mysteries. P.D. James argued that the appeal of the genre is the solution of puzzles, “order brought out of disorder.” This leads into the Foucauldian notion that the mystery genre reasserts societal order. I’m not sure this is completely wrong, I probably wouldn’t argue against it. In some cases it is likely correct and there's nothing more to it. But it is too tidy for my taste, and it doesn't ring true to what I find compelling about the genre.

Before getting into that, perhaps a pause for a definition:  what even is a mystery? I have more thoughts about genre differences that I'll probably unpack over time, but broadly, I feel pretty strongly that in order for a book to be shelved in mystery, there should be a solution. If there’s no solution, put it in thriller or suspense or literary fiction. In the romance genre, readers are firm in their expectation of a HEA (happily ever after) or, at a minimum, a HFN (happy for now). I feel similarly about mystery:  it’s okay to have some ambiguity or uncertainty, but I do expect solutions. 

And the solution is key for me. I don’t feel like making broad statements about the appeal of mysteries for everyone across all of time, but I do feel quite confident in articulating the appeal that I find in them, though it’s not the only appeal. I do like mysteries for the comfort of assured solutions, and I'm not ashamed of it. I don’t think this has anything to do with a passion for societal order as it currently exists. Instead, I am interested in justice, something that in the real world is quite rare. I’m someone who has been the victim of two crimes:   one that received the dubious justice of a plea deal and one that did not and never will. I like mysteries for the catharsis they provide, and for their fantasy of justice. Or at least the fantasy of a world in which investigators care enough about victims to solve crimes. 

For me, the justice in a book doesn’t have to equal prosecution, and they’re demonstrably not synonymous in detective fiction or mysteries, either! Last year, I loved Tana French’s The Searchers, a book with a central theme of what constitutes justice and whether it can be provided by the police. But heck, the idea of community action against crime is hardly new:   no spoilers, but the question of what justice is possible after the system fails is something that Christie visited a few times. Those are some of her most enduring books for a reason, I think. 

It’s odd to me when mysteries are framed as some sort of oppressive genre that inherently exists to uphold the status quo. Sure, there are definitely mysteries that are and do; for example, there are police procedurals that primarily function to issue copaganda. But it’s also a genre that may place power in the eyes and hands of outsiders and the oppressed. It’s a genre that may look unflinchingly at violence and victims and acknowledge the pain and rage and loss created by crime. It’s a genre that has, for at least 100 years, been thinking pretty deeply about justice, systems, violence, and human nature!