Knee deep in murders
Yesterday I was reading a post on the Ward Six blog called, "Why I don't read mysteries anymore." It struck a note because recently all I have been reading are mysteries. Chandler, Hammet, McDermid, Evanovich, Rankin, etc. Lots of mysteries. I agree with some of Rhian's objections to the genre listed in the post. I don't care for serial killers and in-the-mind-of-a-killer stories tend to fall flat. But mysteries represent some of my earliest young adult reading memories. Phyllis Whitney, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey (Brat Farrar, people! Oh, how I loved that book!) And there's lots of early, built-in tension. Will the puzzle be solved? Will the killer be caught? Of course, not all mysteries follow this narrative path. Thomas H. Cook writes mysteries that are more psychological in nature. They're more about how people react to a violent death or kidnapping. The tension has much less to do with 'who did it' than with 'is someone going to irreparably damage their family because of this'?
Having just reread Chandler's Lady in the Lake I was struck by how much his humor appeals to me. Sure, there's tough guys and sordid situations featuring loose women. But it's Marlowe's wry humor that brings me back time and again to those books. What a wiseass.
I myself would like to write a mystery, and not just because I want to hang out with other mystery writers. Though they do seem like fun people. I mean how can't thinking about murder for lots of days out of the year not translate into fun loving. Right?