In Defense of Mysteries

I’ve always been a fan of mysteries.

by A. B. Donahue

I’ve always been a fan of mysteries.

By the end of 5th grade I had probably read every Agatha Christie book in the local library. I scooped up Enid Blyton's Famous Five books every time there was a Friends of the Library book sale. And The Revenge of Jeremiah Plum was one of the easy reads that I revisited more than once.

Some people thought it was kind of weird for a kid whose peers were barely out of The Babysitters Club series to be reading Agatha Christie novels. But I “got it honest.” My Mom, knowing how much I liked to read, simply handed me the books that she enjoyed. (Albeit at a slightly older age.) 

Recently, she came across an essay she wrote as a high school junior titled “Mysteries.” In it, she defended her choice of reading material with this justification:

For the past few years I have enjoyed novels of suspense and mystery as light entertainment. I supposed it would seem that murder stories and the like would have very little value in a literary or historical sense. Quite to the contrary, under such authors as the famous Agatha Christie I have increased my vocabulary, learned facts about Europe, and learned some of the processes of law and order. It is also possible to sharpen one’s ability to find clues, although I have yet to figure out “who did it” in one of Christie’s intriguing mysteries.

While my Mom made some good points there—I also learned a lot about Europe, and, I would argue, a lot about history—there’s something about a good mystery that gives us satisfaction beyond solving  the “whodunnit.” 

Carolyn Clare Givens, one of my colleagues with Bandersnatch Books, gave an excellent defense of the value of mysteries in her 2017 Hutchmoot Session with Jen Rose Yokel, titled Sleuths and Spaceships. So instead of trying to re-explain what she explained, I’ve curated some of the highlights of the session to share here.

After giving an overview of Golden Age (ie. Christie) detective stories and then commenting on the “hardboiled” detective stories that came after, Carrie said:

Whereas the hard-boiled detectives are the only glimmer of light in an otherwise dark world, the Golden Age detective story is one which strives to restore order and light and justice when it's broken. Angelina Stanford, when she was with the CiRCE Institute, wrote about [Dorothy] Sayer's idea of an inherently moral universe of the detective story. She says, “In Strong Poison, [the character] Lord Peter Wimsey defends detective novelists, saying, ‘She [the novelist] writes detective stories, and in detective stories, virtue is always triumphant. They’re the purest literature we have.’” 

And that, my friends, is it. In the best detective stories, virtue is always triumphant. 

Carrie elaborates on the difference between these Golden Age detectives and the hard-boiled detectives of the more modern novels:

Stanton goes on, “For Sayers, the true detective story is an inherently moral story, and the morality of the story is embedded in its very form. Each story begins in chaos, a dead body, and the entire story moves toward justice and the restoration of order.” 

Joseph Bottum in his Books & Culture article, “God and the Detectives,” put it this way. 

“Proper mystery novels, in other words, begin in the Garden of Eden. They start with the assumption of what Auden names, borrowing from Henry James, the ‘great good place.’ Indeed, that's where hard-boiled novels differ, for stories from the likes of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler begin instead in the great wrong place in a world fallen and corrupt. One result is, curiously, that a hard-boiled detective can forgive or allow the criminal to escape, but the murderer in a classic golden age detective story must be found and executed, just as the sinner must be expelled from Eden.” 

Bottum says that for most of these stories, it's a moral universe without God, but I think Sayers would take issue with that because I think Sayers would argue that the restoration of justice is a movement toward creed from chaos. 

Her view aligns with the idea that we as Christians are called to bring the kingdom in whatever way that we can, to fight for the cause of the widow and the fatherless, for the victims, to fight for justice, even though we know that true justice isn't going to be complete until the New Heavens and the New Earth. 

That makes a lot of sense, and I can see how it would appeal to many of us as young people, eager to make sense of the brokenness we see around us. There’s something very reassuring about a properly wrapped-up mystery. When the bad guy is bagged, we can echo Robert Browning by saying, “God’s in His heaven—All’s right with the world!”

Carrie also ties in an important point about community.

In Sayers' moral-universe perspective of detective stories, the chaos and murder that the murder or the crime brings not only disrupts the order of the world but it also disrupts the harmony of community. 

There's nearly always some kind of community formed at the beginning of a detective novel. Whether the crime takes place on a family estate or on a train full of passengers or an Oxford common room, some kind of community either exists beforehand or is formed right at the beginning of the story. With the crime, the bonds of trust in that community are broken and there are doubts and suspicions that are strewn about, and it's only when the murderer is brought to justice that the community can be restored to a semblance of harmony. 

That’s very “hero’s journey” is it not? Any good novel is going to start with the world as it was before the inciting incident occurred. And that inciting incident is what propels our hero forward to reclaim what was lost and make things better.

Carrie wraps up by saying:

Angelina Stanford writes, “In a modern world that increasingly denies there is any order or real virtues like truth and justice, the detective story creates a longing in us for the very things our culture rebels against. We hate this chaos created by the dead body, and we desperately want to see the truth revealed and justice enacted. We want to see the good guys rewarded and the bad guys punished. Our souls cry out for order to be restored.” 

I was working last week with one of our new authors, Katherine Ladny Mitchell. (Let me just take a moment to say, I’m super excited about what she has in store for our readers. Stay tuned for more news on this soon!) Our conversation led to the topic of how to write mysteries well and how some people may not see value in literature that brings to light some of the very wrong things about our world. 

Katherine, who has done an excellent job navigating this in her own writing said, "What I love about mysteries is that they remind us no matter how clever the adversary is, evil cannot hide forever."

And that, my friends, is a truth worth being reminded of. 

November 29-December 2: Black Friday through Cyber Monday sale! 40% off ALL books in the Bandersnatch web store
December 3–23: Free shipping on book orders of $50 or more with code SHIP24
December 14: Order by this date to be sure to get your books in time for Christmas!
December 25–31: Delayed fulfillment (we’ll be celebrating Christmas with our families, so won’t be quite as quick about shipping out orders).

---

Above, Not Up released into the world this week, and we’d love to hear what you think of it! If you’ve gotten your copy, be sure to review it on Amazon or Goodreads (or your favorite internet place for reviews)! If you haven’t gotten your copy, what are you waiting for?

bandersnatchbooks

A post shared by @bandersnatchbooks

Above, Not Up is one of those books that packs big truths in its story without preaching at you. Be sure to order a copy for the teen or math-lover in your life—or for anyone who needs a reminder to open their eyes to the greater reality all around us.

Follow Bandersnatch Books on Instagram or Facebook!

“Sometimes we got to look in the dark to see how bright’s the dawn.”

—The Fiddler’s Gun, A.S. Peterson