Mystery Essays
You ask, "What do I love about reading mysteries?"
Because no matter where I am--it may be a Sunday night, for instance, in the middle of winter and I'm living in Louisville, Kentucky and I have to go to work tomorrow--if I can shovel my car out of the snow and scrape the windshield and it has enough antifreeze and the battery is strong enough ... But it doesn't matter where I am, or what the circumstances are, because all I have to do is open a book and I am suddenly on Battery Row in Charleston, South Carolina on a spring morning just as the azaleas come into full bloom, and I have matters of the utmost importance to attend to--matters of life and death--perhaps my own.
If I am lucky, by the end of the day good will triumph over evil, I and those dear to me will have learned something about ourselves, and there will be a little more love and peace in the world.
That is what I love about reading mysteries.
Janice Beasley
Charlotte, NC
<back to Cathy Pickens:Writing Mysteries>
What's not to love about mysteries?!
They're like novels on steroids--sure they've got the well-developed characters who interact in a well-wrought plot, but these characters actively engage the reader. They grab readers by the lapels and pull them into the book to help them solve their predicament, which usually involves a murder. Theirs is a matter of life and death, not mere relationships--talk about escapism! The mystery reader can sit in a cozy, secure place and yet be in the midst of evil incarnate.
Mysteries with a strong sense of "place" (like Cathy Pickens's Charleston or Laura Lippman's Baltimore settings) add an extra spark of reality to the story, further immersing the reader into the action.
But what I love best about mysteries is the race to beat the fictional sleuth to her conclusion. The "who" of the "dunnit" is often (though not always!) fairly easy to determine, but the "why" or motive generally requires some solid logic and imagination, for me anyway. I just don't find that kind of mental exercise in typical non-mystery fiction.
So thanks, mystery writers, for keeping me on my toes and taking me along as a companion gumshoe!
Cathy Sabol
Baltimore, MD