Solving some murder mysteries

In early December, I turned to whodunit fiction as a reprieve from the built-up exhaustion of a long year and the more recent stress of writing about the horrors of war in Israel and Gaza. But why, if that was my goal, would I find solace in such an inherently violent genre?

I realize now that it was what I really craved and found in abundance in these novels solutions. At the heart of this genre are not the murders that accelerate the plot, but the process by which they are solved – and especially the promise that they will happen.

The Detection Club, a literary society, was founded in 1930 by a group of prominent British mystery writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and GK Chesterton. Members had to take an oath vow with the promise that their fictional detectives would “find out well and truly the crimes presented to them, with the help of whatever reason you may wish to grant them,” and that their mysterious solutions would never rely on “divine revelation, feminine intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo'. , Jiggery-Pokery, coincidence or force majeure.”

It's a telling promise: No one cared what kinds of crimes needed to be solved, or who had to solve them. But when it came to solving the crimes, rules were rules.

That's what makes mysteries comforting, even when the events they depict are gruesome. Unlike the horrors of the real world, or even less formal forms of crime fiction such as thrillers, the mystery genre promises readers an ending in which their questions are answered and some form of justice is done.

This week I read: “A place of execution” by Val McDermid, is a perfect example of this. The crimes at the center of the book are heinous. In fact, they were approaching the limit of what I can tolerate reading, because I have a hard time with depictions of violence against children. But the promise of a resolution at the end was just enough to keep me reading.

It was a promise that the book kept, albeit not in a typical way. The first part is a relatively formal detective story, in which a young police officer, on his first big case, confronts an isolated community that is hostile to outsiders like him, but through courage and perseverance manages to find the perpetrator. But then McDermid dismantles those conventions with a twist that tears apart the detective's clever victory, leaving even more unanswered questions than when the story began. What seems like a solution to the mystery at the heart of the book begins to look like yet another gruesome crime.

She introduces a new sleuth who solves the mystery again, this time accurately. And it was that double satisfaction of seeing the crime solved and then solved again that made me realize how much these novels are the literary equivalent of those Instagram accounts that publish sped-up videos of overgrown lawns being mowed into submission: they present you with a mess you never knew existed, then offer the vicarious experience of solving it, with the promise that order will eventually be restored.

I like to think of myself as someone who is as concerned with messy chaos as I am with orderly solutions. After all, in my reporting I am often attracted to almost persistent problems such as systemic corruption and structural discrimination. I rarely write about solutions because the real world so rarely offers them. I think it's important to be someone who can face that swirling vortex of disorder without flinching, to see the fascinating story behind a house half-eaten by a jungle of overgrown grass instead of the easy pleasure of a mowed lawn.

But maybe as I immerse myself in the messiness of the real world, I find myself wanting the opposite of fiction. On a recent episode of “The Book Review,” a Times podcast, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh said he keeps a list of the books he reads in a year as a reminder of the person he was when he read them.

This newsletter is the closest thing to such a list, and it serves as a reminder of what I'm doing this winter, if not necessarily who I am: pursuing fictional security as a way to prime myself for encounters with an uncertain world.

Reader Comments: What you recommend

Ruben Valdivia, a reader in Miami Beach, recommends: “Lives less normally”, a podcast from the BBC World Service:

This podcast is one of my pleasures when I want to listen to fascinating stories.
Some recent episodes include “Love in the Time of Revolution,” which chronicles the love story of two Uruguayan guerrillas – one of whom later in life became that country's president. Another episode follows the story of Alex Wheatle, an award-winning author, and his relationship with his cellmate while in prison, which took his life in a different direction. And one of my favorites is the story of a family who were adrift in the Pacific Ocean for 38 days after their sailboat capsized.

What are you reading?

I want to thank everyone who wrote to tell me what you're reading. Keep the entries coming!

I'd like to hear about the things you've read (or watched or listened to) that you recommend to the interpreting community.

If you want to participate, You can fill in this form. I may publish your response in a future newsletter.