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    20Jan, 2022
    Why Do We like Mysteries?

    Why do we enjoy reading mysteries so much?  It’s an interesting question to consider and that’s just what I did recently.  I gave it a lot of thought and this is what I came up with.

    I think one reason people love reading mysteries is because they are a safe thrill, kind of like roller coasters when you’re a kid.  They’re a safe adventure, as well.  Just as in any other type of book, we get to visit exotic or interesting places.  You can see the dark side of people, but you know that justice will prevail.  Good will overcome evil.

    Readers respond to books because they can relate to one of the characters.   With a sleuth, or amateur detective, we respond because we can become part of the solution.  We’re on the winning team, capturing villains, killers, and righting wrongs.

    On a more basic level, we read mysteries for the same reasons we read romance or women’s fiction or sci fi.  We love to escape into brilliant prose and fascinating stories.  We find ourselves instantly involved in the characters’ lives, and being there with them, feeling what they feel, seeing what they see, experiencing their emotional journey.  What happens is that our view of the world grows.  It fills up our loneliness and helps us figure out how to connect in the world.  We learn about how others live and see the world, opening up our perspective and experiences.

    Reading great mysteries, just like reading any other magnificent book, reality falls away and we become part of this fictional world that’s captivated our imagination.  It’s magical!  When we regret coming to the end of a story because we will miss the world or the characters we’ve become close with, we’ve truly experienced something magical.

    In mysteries, there are puzzles to solve.  The reader must piece together the clues, and if you do this one step ahead of the detective, booyah!!  You puff up with pride.  Smarter than Hercule Poirot is smart, indeed.

    Smarter than Stephanie Plum is not such a boon to the confidence, but we read Stephanie Plum for the slapstick caper, not the puzzle.

    More than the puzzle, though, mysteries help us cope with the psychological and emotional concept of death and our own mortality.  There’s an old joke that says there are only two things we can all be sure of: taxes and death.

    You can actually evade taxes, but you can never evade death.  It will come, one way or another.  In real life, we’re never prepared for death.  It is never rational and never easily accepted.  Ah, but in a mystery, death makes perfect sense–or at least it does by the time the sleuth has solved the crime and brought the killer to justice.  He or she uses brain power (grey cells, if you’re Hercule Poirot) to deduce the truth behind the facade the killer has created.

    Which brings us full circle to the idea of justice.  In a mystery, death is explained through reasoning.  A truth is discovered.  For just a while, death, the one thing we cannot escape and can never understand, makes sense and we can accept it.

     

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    15Jan, 2022
    Types of Mysteries

    There are four major types of mysteries.  Within each category, there are sub-categories (like paranormal or historical).

    A mystery must have certain elements to be considered a mystery.  Essentially, a mystery will have a puzzle or secret, or layers of puzzles or secrets, a setting that fits the type of book, a sound motive, red herrings, and clues.

    Most traditionally accepted mysteries have a murder. This is the element that compels people to keep reading. While some mysteries may not have a murder (or murders) at the center, the majority do. If you don’t have a murder, you may be writing a suspense. Something to think about.

    There are four major types of mysteries within the broad genre.  Within each category, there are sub-categories.

    A mystery must have certain elements to be considered a mystery.  Essentially, a mystery will have a puzzle or secret, or layers of puzzles or secrets, a setting that fits the type of book, a sound motive, red herrings, and clues.

     

    Cozy

    Traditional cozies have a likable amateur sleuth. Violence, gore, and sex generally happen off page. They are set in tight-knit communities and the sleuth is surrounded by a tight-knit group of people. There is a series arc which allows the sleuth to grow and change and develop within the community and relationships. And there is a murder with a puzzle for the sleuth and the reader to solve. The sleuth falls into the mystery by accident or circumstance and uses common sense/gray cells to solve the crime. Cozies are most often told in first person point of view. Agatha Christie is the grande dame of the genre.

     

    Hard-Boiled

    The hardboiled mystery is a detective story with attitude and action. It’s a tough mystery that takes place in a city or urban setting. It’s gritty. It’s violent. The blood and violence (and sex) takes place on the page. Usually the detective is a professional who’s been hired to investigate. A hard boiled mystery is most often told in first person with a bare-bones or abrupt narrative style. This is not your emotional mystery. Think Raymod Chandler or Michael Connelly, as well as Kinsey Milhone, a loner ex-cop PI.

     

    Soft-Boiled

    The soft boiled mystery falls somewhere between the hard boiled and the cozy. It’s not as violent as the hard boiled, but not quite as clean as a cozy. Many soft-boiled mysteries have humorous elements. The detective can be a professional or amateur, and is usually a woman. The setting tends to be in bigger cities (versus the small town setting of the cozy). Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books are soft boiled (with some caper thrown in).

     

    Police Procedural

    The detective/sleuth in a police procedural is almost always a law enforcement agent of some sort. The details of the mystery plot are the focus, as opposed to the heavier character development of the other categories. The term police procedural is used because the procedures are detailed and accurate. Rules must be followed and crime details are key. PD James Adam Dalgliesh and Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series.

     

    Beyond these four standard categories, you can drill down into private investigator novels, historical mysteries, romantic suspense, psychological, political, and legal thrillers, paranormal, westerns, and even SciFi.

    Think hard about the kind of details, pov, setting, level of violence in your book and how to categorize it. Not every book fits neatly into a category, but you should be able to see it in one of these categories (even if you have to push or shove a little bit!). Just a caveat, things that aren’t easily marketable–meaning your agent or editor doesn’t know how to explain what it is–are less likely to sell. If you can categorize your book, in general, all the better.

     

    Get to know your fictional characters!