This week we’re taking a break from my crime fiction short stories – which, if you missed them, are here, here, and here – and I’m offering my thoughts on why we all love mysteries. I’m drawing the line here between mystery/crime fiction and non-fiction about a real crime/criminal. I think we consume crime fiction and crime non-fiction for totally different reasons. Even if there is some overlay, the Venn diagram is not a complete circle. This essay concerns why we love crime fiction. I’m also drawing another line between mystery-based crime fiction and horror-based crime fiction. Think the difference between Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles (which this essay would apply to) and Harris’ Hannibal (which it wouldn’t). Both fine novels, but very different in the reader’s experience. With those ground rules set, let’s get to the business of why we love mysteries.
Parker Peevyhouse recently wrote an excellent essay which you can find here laying out her “rules” for writing successful mysteries. I fully endorse not just her essay (which is a fine read) but also the rules within it. Her piece also provides a good jumping off point for why we love crime-based mysteries. After all, the vast majority of mystery stories deal with a crime (usually homicide but not always).
1. We love to play detective
Who among us doesn’t fancy themselves a Sherlock Holmes? Who among us is not so convinced of their superior logic, keen eye for detail, and unemotional assessment of human nature that they just know they’d make a fine amateur detective should the need arise? No one. My wife, a consumer of all things crime related except her husband’s mystery novel (ouch), regularly suggests that she is basically a seasoned homicide detective because of all the crime-related podcasts and shows that she absorbs.
Who among us doesn’t fancy themselves a Sherlock Holmes?
I think this relates in part to the qualities we ascribe to detectives (either amateur or government-employed). We assess detectives to be tough, street-smart, possessors of keen intuition, and clear-eyed about the world around them. In other words, they never, ever fall for the “first month is free” deal and end up paying $250 for a subscription to a service they will never use again. They never go multiple dates with someone only to learn the “morning after” that they live in their mother’s basement, are dreadfully hung up on an ex, and possess a samurai sword collection. Fictional detectives don’t fuck up like we do. That’s one of the reasons we aspire to those heights of rational discernment: we wish we didn’t fuck up like we do. Fictional detectives give us aspiration. It’s wish-fulfillment for those of us who’s discernment is not always razor-sharp.
We could be detectives after all, in ways that we couldn’t be fighter pilots or Olympic athletes. Detective work doesn’t require supernatural hand-eye coordination or exceptional lung capacity, at least not in the way we read or watch it. Detectives, more or less, look just like us with skills that seem approachable to us. That’s part of the allure. Detectives are like us, only a little better.
Consuming a mystery and working diligently to figure out who the culprit is before the big reveal is a chance for us to be better than our normal selves. Smarter. Tougher. Streetwise. A chance to prove that we too could bust crooks for a big city police department or solve the closed-door mystery in the charming Cotswolds’ hamlet. We have the stuff, as illustrated by our ability to solve the mystery in the novel we’re reading before we’re told the solution by the author.
It’s also roleplaying that we can all do without risk. Because if we’re wrong, it’s not a big deal. No one is getting arrested. We either praise the author for writing a mystery that has befuddled us or bitch that the author cheated by withholding facts from us that would have easily made the difference in us solving the mystery.
Because we’re so smart, you see. Streetwise, even.
2. We want high-stakes without having high-stakes
Let me explain what I mean. Most mysteries involve a murder so let’s use that as our model mystery. Being in close proximity to person being killed is about the worst thing we experience as humans. When we realize that a person is killed by someone who intended to kill them then that person naturally poses a threat to others in the future. You. Me. Your Aunt Sadie. In short, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Someone is dead, and the killer poses a threat to others unless stopped. By us. The adrenaline and blood rush from such a situation needs no exposition.
However, most of us will never be in such a situation. Most of us have regular-ass day jobs working in an office, selling something to someone else, writing some corporate foolishness, or taking care of our loved ones. Or all of the above. By engaging in a murder mystery, we get to psychologically experience those high stakes. If you are traveling along with the protagonist, you are – by extension – traveling along the arc of those high stakes. We get the thrill of the chase and the transferred flush of emotion from the pursuit of a righteous cause. These are psychic experiences that we don’t get in our regular life filling out TPS reports, picking up our daughters from play practice, or answering the eternal question “what do you want to do for dinner?” The high stakes of a murder investigation feel so foreign to us but in a way that feels exciting. One of my favorite parts of a mystery is after the reveal: will the killer be held accountable? How? Arrested? Killed? What will happen to resolve this situation? Because I’m invested in the stakes.
Someone is dead, and the killer poses a threat to others unless stopped. By us. The adrenaline and blood rush from such a situation needs no exposition.
However, we don’t really want those high stakes. It’s a helluva thing to accuse someone of murder. Once you point that accusatory finger, wellsir, something’s going to happen. The accused may be arrested and face decades in prison based on little old us, and our assessment of the facts and circumstances. But what if we’re wrong? Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun at all. Someone got locked up in prison because we thought mustard went bad after six months and the freshness of the mustard meant that the killer is he.1 However, if we use our sharpened powers of detection and assessment – honed from many hours of watching detective shows on Britbox, listening to podcasts, and reading Michael Connelly – and come up with the killer to hand to the authorities, then we are committing ourselves to putting that person in prison maybe forever. That’s a boatload of pressure for a person who can’t remember to cancel a subscription to Audible after using the free downloads.
Consuming a murder mystery gives us the thrill of the case but gets us off the hook for being wrong. We’ll never be wrong when we read a mystery novel because the detective will always pick the right culprit (even if we don’t). We get the high stakes without having the high stakes.
3. We like conquering serious obstacles
It’s axiomatic in writing that you have a protagonist and the struggle or obstacle the protagonist faces on the way to the resolution. A story without struggle is not only very interesting, but also not a story at all. We like struggles in our own lives but usually they are of the humdrum, workaday variety. Unless you’re neurosurgeon or something (in which case, I happen to have an amazing newsletter that you could support with your largesse), the obstacles we face in our world aren’t, well, that exciting. No one is writing a novel about what you intend to pack for lunch, or how you should respond to that puzzling text sent by your romantic interest, or how long you have to stay at your sister-in-law’s dreadful baby shower before sneaking out the back door.
But a detective who has to fight through obstacles to bring a killer to justice? Now that’s a song we can all dance to. Those obstacles are legitimate and can take on a variety of forms. Maybe the detective has their own mental issue or substance abuse concern. Maybe the detective faces real danger like threats against their life as they pursue the culprit. Maybe the detective is plumb out of leads and has to manufacture some momentum by pulling the right string with the right informant at the right time. Maybe it’s a combination of all of those, plus some added in.
But a detective who has to fight through obstacles to bring a killer to justice? Now that’s a song we can all dance to.
Conquering these obstacles as we are side-by-side with our fictional friends gives us a feeling of accomplishment. We have came, we have seen, we have conquered. And if we actually figure out the culprit before the reveal, well, who among us hasn’t muttered “I knew it” from the comfort of their couch or whilst curled up in bed. It’s a glorious feeling, ain’t it? That rush of vicarious accomplishment is a real joy. It’s one of the motivators for why we play along with crime stories. One of the reasons we enjoy it so much is that it wasn’t easy. We had to pay attention. We had to be sharp. We had to use logic. We couldn’t get distracted by the red herrings or false trails the author left for us. By beating those obstacles, we felt that accomplishment.
All mysteries must end and almost all of them end satisfactorily (at least the ones that sell the most books do). Which brings us to our final reason of why we love these crime stories.
4. We love resolution
For most of our life, the ending remains unresolved. Will our relationships work out in the end? Will our children grow up to be people of goodwill? Are we in the “right” job or doing the “right” work? Even if we have some inkling of the answer, the resolution will be years in the making. The classic slow burn. That’s to say nothing of the buckets of unresolved issues just floating around the margins of our lives. Are UFO’s real? What’s up with Bigfoot? What happened to Atlantis? For crying out loud, there is a popular show out right now called Unsolved Mysteries! Plenty of opportunities in pop culture for us to torment ourselves with the unknown and possibly unknowable.
But not in a good crime story. A good crime story comes with resolution, and we dig that. Let’s break resolution into roughly two camps. In the first camp, is the culprit is unmasked and held accountable for their dastardly actions. If the storyteller has done their job, then this is profoundly satisfying. We revel in the killer’s comeuppance, the moment where the tables turn, and they find themselves on the wrong (for them) end of justice. If the storyteller has invested us in the stakes of the crime and has painted a compelling picture of obstacles to be overcome, then the ultimate solution to the protagonist’s problem is gratifying for us to read. An investment in our time that has paid off.
A good crime story comes with resolution and we dig that.
In the second camp is that the culprit is not held accountable but in a way that is still somehow satisfying. One varietal of this device is the good ole’ cliffhanger. Does Dastardly Dan get away or does Dudley Dooright stop him? Buy the next book/watch the next episode and find out? I enjoy a good cliffhanger as much as the next person and I find that anticipation for the next installment can be a worthy resolution of the one I just enjoyed. (Note: Netflix and other streaming services routinely stooge us with cliffhangers but don’t deliver on the next season. I’m looking at you, Mindhunter.) Another varietal is the more complicated ending to a mystery that is satisfying in its unsatisfactory-ness. Sometimes the villain is revealed to be not much of a villain at all, and the resolution leaves us questioning the worthiness of the pursuit. A classic example is Dennis Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone (the novel, not the movie). If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. If you have read it, then you know what I’m talking about. An ending that leaves us questioning our own motives can sometimes be amazingly satisfying: it makes us think and leads us to greater consciousness. It’s also exceptionally hard to pull off (see: the ending of Game of Thrones) and the chances of sticking the landing are far outnumbered by the chances of inglorious failure (Bran the Broken? Get outta here.) But when it works, it works.
Why do all these things matter? Well, perhaps they don’t. However, if you look at the bestselling and best overall mysteries (not quite the same thing) then they all provoke most, if not all, of these experiences in the reader. I can confidently say that all of my favorite mysteries allowed me to play detective, gave me the chance to feel high stakes without personal risk, enabled me to enjoy the feeling of overcoming an obstacle, and resolved in a satisfactory way.
Let me also say that this is not an exclusive list of why we love mysteries. There are plenty of other things that mystery writers do that provoke a love of their story outside this list. For example, setting can be a fantastic way to draw someone into a mystery. I am a huge fan of the late Henning Mankell, the Swedish crime fiction writer who invented detective Kurt Wallander. His novels are largely set in Sweden (usually Ystad) and he transports the reader to that location excellently well. I want to go to Sweden someway mainly because of Mankell’s novels (Stieg Larsson would also like a word).
I’m sure you have mysteries that are set in particular locations or settings that draw you into those works – the cozy mystery economy is hinged on this particular idea. All of that is more than fine, but I find it to be very dependent on the individual reader: if you like icy Sweden then you’ll be drawn in by Mankell. If you hate the cold, then it will sound miserable and turn you off. What I’ve tried to identify in my list are things that are more universal: if you love mysteries and crime fiction then you can (hopefully) identify with the ideas on this list.
Now comes the fun part: what do you think of this list? Please tell me how much you hate it and/or all the ways in which I’ve disappointed you. Truly, I’m sure you all have some things that I haven’t thought of but would readily agree to if a persuasive case is made.
Why do you love a mystery?
Unopened mustard can last for three years. You can look it up.
By George! I think he got it! Your explanations resonate with me.