Isn't it strange that so many civilized people relish
murder? Not the real thing of
course, but the kind in fiction, the core of murder mysteries. What is more relaxing than a killing or
two, posing a puzzle for an intrepid detective to solve? It is called recreational reading. Why?
I got the mystery-reading bug from my mother, someone who
shuddered at the very thought of real violence. We used to pass detective novels back and forth, having very
much the same taste in them. In
the day, we both dosed on Rex Stout's stories of the obese, curmudgeonly, but
brilliant sleuth Nero Wolfe and his wise-cracking sidekick Archie Goodwin. I believe that she and I read all
fifty-some of those books, and in recent decades I've re-read most.
I don't cotton to books laden with blood and gore, like
those written by Mickey Spillane starting in the late 1940s, with their
excessively tough private eye Mike Hammer. I prefer my mayhem in small infusions, at the cusp between thinking "whodunit?" and saying "yech!" That being so, I'm more into the
Wolfe/Goodwin kind of adventure; it is a subgenre originated by Arthur Conan
Doyle, who paired the very cerebral and eccentric Sherlock Holmes with his
dimmer sidekick, Dr. Watson.
My epoch of choice starts in the 1920s, with Agatha
Christie's Hercule Poirot and his sidekick Captain Arthur Hastings, who are
immediate descendents of the Holmes/Watson duo. Poirot's constant and smug reference to the "little
gray cells" of his superior brain replaced Holmes' "Elementary, my
dear Watson!" A decade or so
later, the Wolfe/Goodwin pair appeared.
Wolfe goes into a trance with his eyes closed and his lips pulsing in
and out when his gray cells are working,
and Goodwin doesn't dare interrupt.
Holmes, Poirot and Wolfe all have their foils on the police force, who
alternately get furious with them and appeal for their help: Inspector Lestrade
for Holmes, Inspector Japp for Poirot and Inspector Cramer for Wolfe. Formulaic but satisfying.
I am also an aficionado of the noir subgenre, incorporating the lone, acerbic, anti-hero
detective who combines some of the brains of Wolfe with the brawn and
wisecracks of Goodwin. Starting in
the 1930s, the tales of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and the Continental Op
were the prototype for this sort of private eye: hard-boiled, cynical, yet
human underneath. Another is
Philip Marlowe, the protagonist of stories by Hammett's contemporary Raymond
Chandler. Starting in the 1970s,
Robert B. Parker's Spenser (no first name ever given; "It's Spenser with
an s," he insists) fits somewhat into this mold—little noir about him but plenty of wisecracks. I've probably read every book starring
these three gumshoes.
Another subgenre is the police procedural, exemplified in
the by-the-book investigations in Britain by P. D. James' Commander Adam
Dalgliesh and Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse, both of which I find a trifle
dull; and dour ones by any number of Scandinavian policemen like Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander, which I find too
bleak. I like the Italian brio of Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti of
Venice. He is pensive but not at
all dreary; not averse to cutting corners with a wink of his Italian eye; given
to reading Dante and Latin classics in his spare time; deeply in love with his
city and his wife; cynical about Italian politics and government, but accepting
their corruption and the knowledge that the criminals he catches may never be
prosecuted or convicted. In the
same Italian vein is Michael Dibdin's Vice-Questore Aurelio Zen, younger and
much more cynical about the establishment than Brunetti.
All these mystery writers are best of breed for me, to whom
I return time and again after sampling lesser writers. They concoct just the confections that
make me—someone who prides himself on absorbing more "intellectual"
fare—read late into the night, avidly turning pages. Recreational reading indeed, yet I cannot dismiss it as
insignificant.
Again, why this fascination with murder? Could it be that murder mysteries serve
a purpose akin to the fairy tales of our youth? Do you remember the satisfaction, when being read a fairy
tale as a youngster, in knowing that no
matter how horrifying the ogres and evil stepmothers were, all would be put right
in the end, that Snow White would "live happily ever after"? For adults, perhaps murderers are the
ogres, and Holmes, Wolfe, Poirot, Spade, Marlowe, Spenser, Dalgliesh, Morse,
Wallander, Brunetti and Zen are the Prince Charmings, fairy godmothers and even
the anti-hero Shrek, who will set everything aright. As in our childhood, we remain comfortably secure as we
read, knowing that good will overcome evil, that wrong will be punished. It is a soothing and reliable balm in
the face of an uncertain world.