The literary rebus

by Jorn Lier Horst, Norway

Why do we read crime? The question pops up in the Norwegian media periodically, just as the statistics of this year's best-selling books or the libraries most borrowed books are presented. And it is a good question. Why do we let ourselves be entertained by what we otherwise deplore? Why do we love cruelness in fiction?

The genre's popularity is difficult to explain. It has been claimed that it is linked with a society characterized by pace, new online media, superficial reality shows and gossip magazines that provide literature with increasingly tighter conditions. A development due to the fact that we live in a time that is characterized by entertainment and a general tendency to flattening and stultification as a result.

I think the reason for the popularity is more complex than that, and that crime is more than superficial entertainment.

The Famous five

The Crime genre has always attracted me. Ever since my dad sat at my bedside and read Donald Duck comics to me. The stories of Mickey Mouse with Goofy as his sidekick were those I liked best. Later I read the series about The Famous Five, the Hardy Boys and other stories with enigmatic mysteries. These books had their own vitality that pulled me in and let me be part of an exciting journey. The literary rebus attracted me.

Martin Beck mysteries

When I became older and read books by authors like Sjöwall and Wahlöö, Henning Mankell and Gunnar Staalesen I realized that books of this genre also offered something more than an exciting and riveting story. These books broke with the established norms of delivering pure entertainment. Social criticism and existential dilemmas were interwoven into the crime format, and the genre distanced itself from other mass-produced formula literature. The distinction between so-called ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ forms of literature became more diffuse, and the crime novel today has gained admittance to the same market as other serious literary fiction in Norway.

But the social concern of the authors does not provide a good answer to why so many readers prefer crime.

Local newspaper: Young man died after blind violence

I think I came closer to an answer in an airport last summer. I met a woman I had not seen in five years. In 2009 I led the investigation of the murder of her brother. He was beaten to death during an argument at a local pub. It was a simple investigation. The pub’s CCTV cameras filmed everything. The hardest task was the dialogue with the relatives and the bereaved. The one who took the death hardest was the sister of the deceased. I spent hours in conversation with her. Last summer I met her again when I was on my way to New York. She came up to me in the departure hall and dragged my latest novel out of her bag. She had bought it in the airport shop and wondered if I could sign it. As I did so, she told how much joy she had found in my books. I could not hide my surprise that she, who had experienced her own brother being killed, could find pleasure in reading a crime novel. She told me that she read crime to unwind from everyday life. In the couch she could sit on a comfortable distance from the ghoulish. Crime books pulled her into something exciting and made her, for a while, able to forget everything around her.

I think the joy of crime books have to do with this, and that we all have an inherent force that seeks equilibrium and clarity in the face of mysteries. In the novel we meet a protagonist who creates order in the chaos. He gets us to understand the incomprehensible and create justice out of injustice. The crime novel can give us an answer in our quest for the truth - whether it's about who did what or why. It's all about finding the solution to a riddle; the investigator must restore an order that has been disturbed, and I think that such a restoration of law and order has an appeal to the reader in our chaotic world. 


Jorn Lier Horst