It's a mystery
My apologies for the lateness of this week’s post. I’ve come off a spate of freelance deadlines, and the work meant that there was very little room in my head for thoughts that weren’t about that work.
Still, even when I am extremely deadlined, and even though my work involves reading, I still wind down in bed with a book. Even if it’s just a few pages, there’s something about this ritual that no matter how tired or distracted or busy I am, that makes it the best way to close out the day.
But I do notice that when I am tired or distracted or busy, I tend to be more specific in my reading choices. What I mean is, that’s not the sort of time when I’m likely to pick up the experimental novel from a writer I’ve never read before. I don’t look for comfort reading so much as I look for known qualities – some sort of reassurance that I know what I’m getting and I’m likely to enjoy the experience.
This time, what I wanted was mysteries. For me, a mystery novel offers the same sort of genre guarantee that a romance novel does. By which I mean that a romance offers a happy ending – the characters are happy for now (HFN) or get a happily ever after (HEA). If this condition is not met, the book is not, in genre terms, a romance. It may be a love story, or romantic, or have romance elements, but it is not a genre romance. The requirement for a mystery isn’t so stringent, but at the end of the day, we get answers. The mystery (or a mystery) is solved. Justice is done, or we understand why it can’t be. There is a restoration of order out of the chaos of the initial event.
I am a Virgo; I like order. No wonder I wanted mystery novels as a cure for stress and uncertainty.
One that I just finished was Dorothy Dunnett’s Tropical Issue. I had no idea Dunnett had written mysteries until I saw Kelly Link mention the series’ detective, Johnson Johnson. It seems that the books are in the process of being reissued. It was, I admit, a sort of surreal reading experience. I love Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, and I think King Hereafter is one of the best books I’ve ever read. This was very different (as it was meant to be!) but also, I could see pieces of Dunnett’s particular interests and phrasings come through in a way that made me sort of miss being in academia – I could feel the ghost of the seminar paper I would have written. I’m not sure if I loved Tropical Issue, but I did find it pleasingly smart and complex, and it was an excellent distraction when needed.
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