"Guilty Pleasures." I volunteered for this assignment not being entirely sure what it was, much less how I would respond. What popular literature do I read? That's easy, mainly mysteries: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Tony Hillerman, Colin Dexter, Edmund Crispin, Martha Grimes, Kinky Friedman. I once read a P. D. James, but since I wasn't on antidepressants, I found it disturbing enough that I didn't want to ever go that way again. I also once read a Lillian Jackson Braun, but, not being a cat fanatic, I found her such an incompetent writer that I did not want to go that way again either.
Which issue-competence, that is-brings me to my confusion about this assignment. I read in Margaret's description, that this habit of mine is a "guilty pleasure," "as opposed to the 'great literature' we usually discuss!" First, I am thinking, "Who says my mysteries aren't great literature?" Second, I am thinking, "Is the reading of this so-called "great literature then a guilt-free pleasure or simply not a pleasure at all?" Then I recalled my last encounter with Henry James and concluded that the latter must be the case. "Great Literature" is no pleasure, and mysteries, being enjoyable reads, are therefore not great literature.
So, what is it about mysteries that make them enjoyable? Steve Boyd would probably suggest that, well, there's a puzzle in every mystery novel. But I must confess that, being a cognitive psychologist, puzzles are only of academic interest to me. In all the mysteries I've read, I've never solved a one before the end, unless you count the painfully transparent ones in the old TV series, Murder, She Wrote. I've occasionally taken a stab at a solution, but have generally found that the mysteries themselves are far to engrossing to waste my time trying to solve them.
One of the things that make mysteries cool is the nature of the genre, and, in particular, the fact that the genre is more a collection of sub-genres, each invented by the mystery writer. Take an example. Edmund Crispin begins many of his novels by putting all of the future suspects on a single passenger train. This gives him a chance to describe each of them and to complain about the British rail system of his time. Martha Grimes mysteries, all of which are named after pubs, by the way, begin with two subplots, one involving the activities of Richard Jury, an exceptionally competent Scotland Yard detective, and the other involving the activities of a bumbling and often half-drunk crowd of the idle rich from the small English village of Long Piddleton. In the course of the mystery, these two subplots merge. Rex Stout mysteries are almost always a series of forays by Nero Wolfe's assistant, Archie Goodwin in search of people for Wolfe to grill. Wolfe is Stout's 300-pound protagonist, who is naturally reluctant to leave his Manhattan brownstone.
Along with the discipline of a sub-genre, mysteries give their authors the ability to develop their characters across not just one but several novels. As the result, the characters in mysteries are often much more finely drawn than in even the best "great literature." They can develop relationships in one mystery that fall apart in the next. Grimes does this routinely to the ever star-crossed Jury. Hillerman takes one his protagonists, the young Navajo cop, Jim Chee, on a similar long-term roller-coaster ride. Sometimes a writer gets so sick of a character that he kills him off, as Colin Dexter did to his protagonist, Morse (just Morse).
Most mystery writers also play variations on themes that run across several mysteries. Wolfe is a notorious gourmet and orchid fancier, so Stout's novels are peppered with observations on cooking and orchid growing. Kinky Friedman's protagonist, Kinky Friedman, is, like the author, a South Texas Jew transplanted to New York with a penchant for introducing irreverent reflections on both the Jewish and Christian Gods in his novels. I believe that I read one such reflection in church a few years ago. Morse is a hopeless drunk who always manages to make it to the nearest pub at opening time and to make his sidekick, Lewis, foot the bill. Eventually, it is booze and diabetes that kill him. Booze, I should mention, figures prominently in many mysteries. In Hillerman's mysteries, which take place on the Navajo reservation, it is the bad guy. But many of the finest fictional detectives are prodigious drinkers. Friedman is overly fond of Jameson. Morse is a beer hound, as is Nero Wolfe (strangely enough). Crispin's protagonist, Gervase Fen, will drink beer, but prefers whiskey.
Finally, and most important, perhaps, mystery writers are fine comedy writers. They make their readers, at least this reader, laugh out loud in a way that "great literature," rarely can. My typical reaction to the humor in great literature is, "Gosh, that's funny. Why am I not laughing?" So, I thought I would leave you with a bit of humor from an Edmund Crispin novel, one well suited to a church setting like ours.