Why Crime?

Annamaria on Monday

A few months ago, I wrote about why people write and why they read crime fiction. In researching for that post, I found quite a number of articles purporting to explain why.  One of them goes back as far as 1957. The reasons writers gave were sometimes interesting, some a bit far fetched, and one case, strange.

The interest in crime stories has been intense for eons, and their popularity has never wained.  Nowadays, it is rampant, not just in books, but even more so in films and television. There are seres that go on for a decade, and TV detectives' names have become household words.  Not just Poirot, but Morse and Foyle and Monk, etc!  Why?

Why is always a an interesting question for me.  One of the things that fascinates me about it is how we humans seems to always hope there will be a uniform answer - one reason that explains how come and applies to all people everywhere.  To me anyway, there is never only one answer. So for now, with today's question, let's just look a few answers that I uncovered.

The weirdest answer I came across was the oldest, found in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly in 1957, by one Charles Rycroft who questioned the validity of an explanation by a psychologist named Geraldine Pederson-Krag.  He wrote, "According to her the murder is  a symbolic representation of parental intercourse and 'the victim is the parent for whom the reader (the child) had negative Oedipal feelings. The clues in the story, disconnected, inexplicable, and trifling, represent the child's growing awareness of details it had never understood, such as the family sleeping arrangements, nocturnal sounds, stains, incomprehensible adult jokes and remarks... The reader addicted to mystery stories tries actively to relive and master, traumatic infantile experiences he once had to endure passively. Becoming the detective, he gratifies his infantile curiosity with impunity, redressing, completely the helpless inadequacy, and anxious guilt unconsciously remembered from childhood.'"

Charles goes on to debunk Geraldine's thesis because she does not produce specific clinical evidence from mystery writers'/fans' experiences.  He also implies that detective stories' failure to appeal at such a deep psychological level explains "...why the detective story so rarely achieves the status of a work of art…"  

 Okay, if you say so, Charles.

My research also included an article by a contemporary forensic psychologist who seeks to explain why he decided to become a forensic psychologist, in his words "instead of remaining safely within the confines of my consulting room, just me and my non-criminal patients."

Among other lesser reasons he says  that women read/watch crime stories because they "want to absorb tips on how to survive dangerous encounters with predatory men.  For men, watching shows about crime and murder, seems to stir feelings of manliness."

Okay, if you say so, Richard

For the most part, people who bother to answer the question of why stick with the generally accepted answer: that we love crime stories because while justice is not guaranteed in the real world in which we live, fiction allows us to spend time in places where real justice is a possibility,

As for me, here is why I write mysteries.

When I was first crossing over from writing non-fiction to fiction, my then agent said, "If you're going to be a novelist, you have to hang around with other novelist. The most collegial group of fiction writers in New York is the Mystery Writers of America – New York Chapter." He told me that one of his other clients, let's call him Jim was a member and that he would introduce me to the group.

  

 

In those days, MWA-NY had their monthly dinner meetings at the National Arts Club. My agent's client was supposed to meet me there at six pm when the group would be gathering for drinks and schmoozing before dinner and a talk, that day by in New York City police detective.

I was intimidated by the grandeur of the location, so I tentatively approached the ballroom entrance to see if I could spot Jim. He wasn't there. Just inside the door there was a man sitting at a table who was checking people in. Then a woman, wearing a name tag that just said "Mary," came to me and invited me in. "You're new. Let me introduce you to some people."  And she did.

She got me checked in.  Jim failed to show up, but the folks I met were just as collegial and warm and friendly as my agent had told me to expect. By 7 o'clock, that Jim had still not arrived, so Mary came back to me and took me to the table with her and her friends, keeping a spot open for Jim who finally got there halfway through dinner. When it came to MWA-NY I was sold.

A month or two later, I had given my agent about 10 pages of the beginning of a story. He told me that it seemed like the beginning a woman-in-jeopardy novel, just the kind he thought I should be writing. He said,"You have to read the work of the best in that field." He recommended a book called Where Are the Children? He told me it was out of print, so I went to the great Strand Bookstore. The book was on an upper shelf in the used book section for mysteries.  I climbed up the ladder and as I pulled it off the shelf, there on the back cover was a picture of that woman wearing the name tag "Mary": Mary Higgins Clark!

Mystery Writers are like that!  And Mary was ESPECIALLY!

I had really wanted to tell historical stories, not necessarily mysteries. But once I started hanging out with mystery writers and found some to form a critique group, writing a mystery seemed the natural thing. In the process, I discovered something really important to me.  Like a lot of historical fiction writers, I want to weave the history into the story in such a way that it seems natural. Some historical novels give the reader a few pages of story followed by a few pages of history, followed by some more story, followed by more history. Yuck!

I want to write historical novels where the history is woven in. "Killing" the right person makes a big difference.  I choose a

person whose death cannot be investigated without understanding what's going on historically in that time in that place. If a historical novelist starts with the right dead body, the people who are trying to solve the crime have to talk to each other about what's happening socially, politically, etc.  And the reader who is also, of course, trying to work out who-done-it wants to understand the possible motivation of the murderer. 

Bingo!

That's my WHY!

How about you?