WHAT IS IT ABOUT CRIME FICTION?
Mystery, thriller and crime novels are the most read fiction genre, and have been for some time. However one source says that romance novels make more money. If both statements are true, it must mean that romance readers buy a whole lot more books per person than do mystery readers.
Whatever the case, I believe mystery writers and readers have something in common: they’re trying to understand, get a grip on, or gain insight into human behavior. What drives people? The most extreme of human motives–jealousy, greed, hatred, subterfuge, revenge, psychosis–and the subsequent extreme act of deliberately killing another person, bring human behavior into sharp relief. Perhaps we use these extremes as a way of understanding the wider world–or even the much smaller world of our own lives. Have you ever observed another person’s actions and thought, “Why on earth would he/she do something like that?” Murder is the ultimate questioner of motive. At the end of a murder mystery, it’s not only the satisfaction of finding out who- or howdunit that we all relish, it’s the fascination with why, because with a sudden flash of insight, we understand something about someone that we had never realized before.
Some readers like the game of figuring out who, among the suspects, committed the murder, and they are really good at it, which is fine. A mystery writer loves to hear that he/she kept the readers guessing, but someone is going to figure out whodunit, and that’s okay. I always joked that you could figure out the murderer in an Agatha Christie novel, but you’ll never guess the motive, which Dame Agatha will deliver in a five-page dissertation that will have your head spinning by the time she’s done. Wait, run that by again (frantically back-paging), whose uncle did what, when, with which inheritance?
I’m both a physician and mystery writer, and have explored the curious historical relationship between the two elsewhere. Admittedly, as a writer, I perhaps read mystery novels with too much of an analytical eye, which could prevent me from enjoying them more completely.
What are some of the reasons you read mysteries/crime fiction/thrillers–beyond just pure enjoyment? Or maybe that’s your only reason, which is good enough.
