I have been reading a lot of murder mysteries and so I have been thinking about murder mysteries. It would be silly to write about them individually, I think, since I read them not for their individual stories and characters but for the way they fall into a familiar and happy pattern. The mysteries I have been reading are all comedies. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever read or heard of a murder mystery that was not a comedy for they all reach a resolution which is happy, not for the murderer but for the detective or charming neighborhood busybody, who is (isn't she?) the hero of the story. The ones I have been reading are also social comedies in the way they gently satirize their characters and the ways of a certain society of a certain time (mainly the 1930s and 1940s, just coincidentally). They are like the novels of Jane Austen, though not as brilliant. For her, the goal of marriage was an excuse to build a plot. For Ford and Christie, the excuse is murder. The murder which opens each book tosses characters from their ordinary lives for a time, brings out their unusual qualities, and provides a puzzle to be solved. When the puzzle is solved, the book will end, just as in those other comedies, the book ends when the marriage is secured.
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The detachment of the hero in the murder mystery makes these books feel just a little less vital than comedies of Austen's type. The resolution is necessary, for the sake of justice, but the detective is acting mainly to satisfy his own curiosity--curiosity which the audience shares and delights in. This detachment, I think, is what makes the murder mystery all the more satisfying to zone out to, all the better to watch on a Sunday night with a bowl of popcorn, all the better to read and read in August with your worn out mind while you recover from the crises of June.
Here are the murder mysteries I have read in the past month:
Towards Zero, Agatha Christie
Invitation to Murder, Leslie Ford
Road to Folly, Leslie Ford
Three Bright Pebbles, Leslie Ford
Thirteen at Dinner, Agatha Christie
Murder with Southern Hospitality, Leslie Ford
Sirens in the Night, Leslie Ford
The Clue of the Judas Tree, Leslie Ford
The Bahamas Murder Case, Leslie Ford
Date with Death, Leslie Ford
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