Loving Mysteries/Writing Histories
I love to read mysteries. I used to think of mysteries as the book equivalent of candy corn, my special treat which gave me a rush but not one which necessarily was feeding my brain. But as a now over fifty-year long reader of mysteries, I’ve come to realize that not only do mysteries feed my dopamine-driven need for the exhilaration of hunt and seek and find; they also most definitely feed my brain and my soul.
Well-crafted mysteries plunge the depths of human existence. After all, what moves us more to consider the meaning of life than the extinguishing of a life? A common characteristic of the kind of mystery series that I love is the isolated or damaged sleuth, fighting not only to find the answer to who killed the victim but also working out his or her own existential issues.
In novels such as Blood Harvest or Awakening by Sharon Bolton, or any of the Martin Beck mysteries by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the characters not only have to struggle with the case at hand but they also face personal issues: they feel like outsiders, they work in a hostile environment, they have relationship problems (lover, spouse, parent, child), suffer from addiction, have endured loss of a loved one, of innocence, of motivation.
For the sleuth, solving the mystery is almost a vacation for them, a release from dealing with all their personal issues…
