I think I’ve finally realized why I like murder mysteries so much.
My mother adored Hercule Poirot and Perry Mason. Whenever she might be caught reading a book, you could bet Agatha Christie or Erle Stanley Gardner would be the author. I inherited her delight in the Belgian detective but have concluded that the invincible defense attorney is an acquired taste.
Incited by well-done television adaptations, I have found myself racing through the adventures of Harry Bosch, Walt Longmire, Cork O’Connor, Inspector Banks, and a few other current and former law officers who track down killers. And while Mason’s appeal as a defense attorney escapes me, I have relished every case that Mickey Haller and Andy Carpenter have tackled.
I have averaged consuming 84 books annually for the past six years, most of them audiobooks as I commute or otherwise cruise around northeast Wisconsin. That’s more than 500 books, and I would guess at least 200 of them have been murder mysteries.
Why? As I’ve been focusing in recent days about our culture of death and glorification of the exercise in mass murder called war, I thought about my appetite for detective and crime stories — what is their appeal to me? I drew three conclusions.
1. Among all genres of popular fiction, murder mysteries generally feature only one violent death, or perhaps a second or third as the killer fears discovery and seeks to cover up the original crime.
2. Each death is treated as an affront and an aberration.
3. And the goal is to apprehend and punish the killer, and preferably by putting him or her behind bars. A killer’s death is often depicted as an escape from justice.
Contrast this with typical behaviors in other mass entertainment. I am following the latest season of the TV show Reacher, and this week’s episode ended with a kill-or-be-killed showdown that claimed the fictional lives of three henchmen, but the mastermind got away to fight another episode or two. This was a defeat for the title character, who earlier in the episode had casually said of the bad guy, “We’re going to find him and kill him.”
Life is casually extinguished in these shows, usually in violent ways and as spectacularly as the writers can imagine. Is it any wonder why, out here in the world of non-fiction, so much violent death is condoned or even celebrated?
Harry Bosch’s creed, oft quoted when he’s asked why he’s trying so hard to find the murderer of some low-life, is “Everyone matters or nobody matters.” Reacher’s creed is “We’re going to find him and kill him.” That may be the essence of why I prefer murder mysteries to “action” thrillers and the like.
The death of a single human being erases a lifetime of experiences, an entire universe of insights and interactions and contributions to the human adventure. When a person dies, the world is diminished. This is the central premise of the murder mystery: The deliberate taking of a life is a tragedy and a crime.
And that, I think, is why I like to read murder mysteries.
