A Rumination on Detective Mysteries
Why Do We Watch?
Some years ago, I used to watch detection procedurals on American TV, three varieties of Law & Order (including Special Victims Unit and my favorite, Criminal Intent, because of Vincent D'Onofrio), the original NCIS (with Mark Harmon & David McCallum), NYPD Blue and even CSI (though not much as I didn’t like the glitz). I watched Longmire – with another actor, Robert Taylor, who had played a priest in Ballykissangel – but gave up in the fourth season as it really got too convoluted for me. I watched the excellent Jesse Stone till the end and am ready to continue the new version of Leaphorn (having enjoyed the first starring Wes Studi).
But now it’s mostly British detective TV mysteries and novels. This started with my discovery as a boy of Sherlock Holmes. (I read the stories on the stoop of a neighboring apartment building for an escape from our crowded flat.) Arthur Conan Doyle – following Edgar Allan Poe – invented the genre as we know it today. A crime is committed. Following the clues – using logic, grey cells, “instinct” and relevant investigative procedure – the crime is generally solved and criminal caught. (Holmes actually added laying traps to lure the perps out, though this technique is not much used these days.) The detectives may be police or not (Astrid, Jack Taylor, Miss Marple, Poirot, Miss Scarlet, Father Brown, etc). The conclusion may offer surprises – Midsomer Murders excels in setting red herrings – but as one can almost always assume a successful outcome, why do we watch and read?
The most obvious reason is the very fact of being able to count on an orderly resolution of messy situations. We don’t get many of these in the real world. We certainly don’t get horrible crimes resolved within an hour or 90 minutes of detection or by the end of a book. Many genuine crimes never get solved. And the world is full of bad things that remain bad and bad people who never face justice. It offers a certain satisfaction to be able to enjoy at least fictional nice endings.
My love of mysteries started when I was young, it may of begun when.I used to watch Scooby doo when I was quite young a very loose version of mystery ( though that is what they solve) Mine really began when I was 12 and watched PD James's mysteries with Adam Dalgliesh played by Roy Marsden . I still love the theme tune, which titled after after one of her books, Shroud for a Nightingale. Theme tunes are important for me to be good in mysteries for tv/ film . This led me to many other wonderful mysteries which I watch and read, and I also write my own.