Mystery???

 

I love a good mystery. Doesn’t everyone? Ever since I “discovered” Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden I have been a mystery fan.

Back in those days, when I spent whole summers reading nothing else, I was obsessed with finding real mysteries wherever I looked. I recall riding bikes with a friend out on the gravel road to the cemetery, stopping along the way to search for clues in the ditches, roadside, and, of course, in the cemetery.

We found beer cans, pop bottle lids, candy wrappers, an occasional shoe or car muffler. We tried to build mysteries around these things. Somewhat unsuccessfully. Whose car was making a lot of noise lately? Which high school boys were most likely responsible for throwing the beer cans out their car window? How many females in our town wore a size 7 shoe, and who was missing one?

More Complex Mystery

As I aged out of Nancy Drew, classics replaced mysteries as my preferred reading. But the mysteries persisted. Who is the crazy person living in Mr. Rochester’s attic? How many secrets are there in The Scarlet Letter?

History Mystery

As I matured, I grew more and more passionate about history. I realize that history is full of mysteries. Research helps uncover not just events that happened long ago. It sheds light on the people who participated in those events, along with their desires and motives. How did they live? What were they trying to accomplish?

We know that Edward IV’s two young sons vanished from the Tower of London, but it was a mystery for many years if and how they died, and is still debatable who was responsible. Did Richard III kill his nephews?  Shakespeare immortalized that version. Or was it done through Margaret Beaufort to put forward her son Henry Tudor (who became Henry VII) as heir to the English throne? Or maybe it was Richard’s wife to ensure the succession would come down that line? It is still a mystery waiting to be solved.

 

Mystery Historical Fiction

Classics and my love of history led me to reading historical fiction, and even there, I’ve found mysteries. A paleontologist dug up dinosaur fossils in Centennial by James Michener and solved a murder from an earlier century.

I’m a fan of historical fiction mysteries. I love the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters with his medieval monk sleuth. C. J. Sansom has Matthew Shardlake as a Tudor era detective. Right down my alley! Elizabeth Peters amuses me with Amelia Peabody and her Egyptian archeologist adventures in the Valley of the Kings.

 

Mystery Fiction

Nancy Drew has even reappeared in my life. Of course, now she looks like National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon in Nevada Barr’s works. Or Dr. Kay Scarpetta in Patricia Cornwell’s forensics. Or Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan. Or maybe even madcap Stephanie Plum in Janet Evanovich’s novels.

Contemporary mysteries, with their flawed but admirable solvers draw me into their worlds, too. James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux is at the top of this list. Sheriff Walt Longmire and Game Warden Joe Pickett, characters created by Craig Johnson and C. J. Box, respectively, fall into this category. They appeal to me with their Wyoming locales in the Big Horn Mountains. Tony Hillerman, P. D. James, Louise Penny, Elizabeth George, Aaron Elkins, and so many more, right back to Sherlock Holmes, tempt me to spend time with them.

Why are mysteries so popular? I believe it is because they all appeal to the human desire for justice and to our natural curiosity. In the real world, we usually find out who has been killed, and maybe the cause of death. But the other questions are less surely answered. “Whodunit”, how did they do it, and why did they do it, are not always answered to our satisfaction in true life.

But remember, some crimes take a hundred years to come to light, when a paleontologist digs up human bones along with a dinosaur fossil…