The odd comfort of a murder mystery.
The odd comfort of a murder mystery.
How do these stories reassure us when things get tough?
Raise your hand if you’ve ever passed the time while sick with a Law & Order marathon. I spent a large portion of my late twenties and early thirties with increasingly debilitating bouts of tonsillitis, flat on the couch, lulled by that aggressive “Dun-dun” tone.
What was it about watching various configurations of characters track down murderers that soothed the feeling of broken glass in my throat?
I’ve been considering this question this past week as a series of scary vet visits, topped off with a cat in the specialist hospital this weekend, has had me tearing through a mystery novel (Murder on the Lusitania) at top speed.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that mysteries don’t pretend everything is OK. When we’re having a rough time, we don’t want to read or watch stories about people who are sailing through life. We want to feel mirrored, or even feel that our terrible situation isn’t as bad as things get. And what could be worse than murder?
Beyond this, we want to hope that things can get better. That a solution will be found. If we watch this detective, or even a relatively normal person not so different than ourselves, solve the crime, can’t our own problem be solved as well?
Lying on the couch, far less stylishly than the woman pictured here I’ll admit, and following an undercover detective on the trail of a thief and killer aboard the maiden voyage of the Lusitania, gave me hope that the vet on the trail of the problem with my fourteen-year-old cat was also finding clues and would ultimately solve the issue.
We read about problems that feel, and may be, unsolvable on a daily basis. We’ve been inundated with it all our lives, but in the past few years they’ve accelerated.
The distraction of a story where problems are challenging, but solvable, is such a comfort. It may feel impossible to untangle the knots at first, and the killer may not ultimately come to justice in every case, but we as the reader will know what actually happened by the end.
With this interpretation in mind, providing this comfort to other readers feels less like a silly game and more like a profound privilege I very much hope to pull off.
I’m pleased to report that the planning phase is nearly complete for this story. It is time for drafting to begin. There will be challenges along the way, but I’m excited to take those on.
Stay tuned for news about the next stage of Oh! Murder, coming in the next week.
In the meantime, when and how have mysteries comforted you?
image: Giulio Salti, “Siesta”
I am a big comfort re-reader and re-watcher, but my biggest comfort in the past few years? Air Crash Investigations. It feels like one little section of the world where they're still allowed to use logic, to ask why, not just what, and to look at broader systemic reasons rather than a surface level tickbox.