Murder Mysteries -- An Essay

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Or why I quit reading one book without finishing it and go on to one of my goto writers even if I've read their book before. I know, I know -- where's the mystery in a mystery book you've read before. Or if you're binge watching TV and it's the fourth time you've seen that episode of Blue Bloods? You know whodunit already.

And we're talking mysteries here. Not thrillers. The difference? Well, in a thriller you know whodunit. Or, maybe not. But you're inside the whodunit's head and you know what he's going to do, but the hero doesn't. Or that poor dumb ingenue at the head of the steep, dark stairs into the dreaded basement. Why do they always go down there?

Okay, so I don't like thrillers. They're like horror movies. They're either really dumb or really scary. Either way, I'm not interested. And I sure as hell wouldn't go down those stairs.

What brought this on? As you might know, I am recovering from total knee replacement surgery, which here means that between pain meds and restricted activity, I just haven't been writing. I have, though, learned many important lessons: You can sleep on your back. But not in your bed. That's what lounge chairs were invented for. Rehab exercises can be painful. That's what pain meds were invented for. And when you take pain meds you can sleep on your back in lounge chairs. But you cannot string thoughts together in any kind of coherent fashion. You can read and you can watch TV. Especially if you've already read that book or seen that episode. But you cannot write.

Maybe I'm far enough along in my rehab that I can write. Nothing deep and maybe not particularly thought provoking unless thoughts come to you largely unprovoked. But here goes.

I finished the 14th and last book in Robert Jordan's fantasy series Wheel of Time a couple of weeks after the surgery. I'd read them before, but as always there were things I'd missed or forgotten. And it didn't matter much if I drifted off to sleep, I knew where I was when I woke again.

Then I went to John Lescroart's Dismas Hardy murder mysteries. I'd only read them once before. I was still enough in a fog that my previous reading didn't get in the way of my enjoyment -- once I got past that editor-in-my-brain who kept saying "I'd write it this way!" Obviously my health was improving.

I ran through the first four books in a little more than a week. It's just fascinating how many ways murder can be done and for how many reasons.

Anyway, I didn't have the fifth Dismas Hardy book on my Nook and I can't navigate the stairs (even with the lights on) into the basement where our library lives so I don't know if I have that book in hard copy or not.

I could have asked my husband to look for it. But I'd already asked him to find our Bend It Like Beckham DVD and he never did. Maybe he forgot. But, hey! He's been doing the laundry, cooking, dishes, grocery shopping, driving me to doctor's appointments and physical therapy, and cheering me on. So, what I'm doing here is what my Grandmother used to do. She never complained. But she did point out exactly what it was she never complained about.

I do appreciate him and all the help he's being. And he knows we'll be doing this all again in a couple of months. He's a rock! And it doesn't hurt that he's pretty cute, too.

Anyway, under all the detritus on my side of the bed (that I am only just now being able to sleep in again) was a Ken Follett book, A Place Called Freedom, that I'd never read. I don't even remember buying it, but it has a pink sticker on it marked $1.99. So I'd say I got it at ARC, my favorite thrift store. And now you know why I usually steer clear of their book section. If I go there, I'm gonna buy one. Or, at these prices, a dozen. And the money goes to good purpose.

I like Ken Follet's work, but ....

Having grown up in Oklahoma, I'm quite familiar with my country's despicable history with slavery, segregation, and discrimination. And the continuing ramifications. Interestingly enough, I'm always a bit surprised to discover that slavery was not peculiar to the American South, indeed, not peculiar to America at all.

A Place Called Freedom takes place just before the American Revolution. It follows a young man from his life as a miner in Scotland -- where miner's children were 'dedicated' during their baptismal rites "to work in [the laird's] mines, boy and man, for as long as he is able, or until he die.'' Not strictly legal, but the miners didn't know that. They were required to go down in the mines as children and if they worked in the mine one year and one day following their 21st birthday, they were the mine owner's property for the rest of their lives. And that part was strictly legal.

Malachi McAsh escapes the mine, Scotland, and eventually England, too. But so many bad things happen to him with no let up that I just could not continue reading the book.

You know, I almost quit reading in the middle of one of the books in the Harry Potter series. I don't remember which one it was but it was the one with Dolores Umbridge as the onsite bad guy. Probably the only reason I kept reading Harry Potter was that I was so invested in Harry that I couldn't quit and after I'd read that particular volume, I knew I didn't ever have to read that one again.

Chances are good that I'll never know how Mr. McAsh's life turned out.

Murder mysteries? Why on Earth would I leave a book following a character who is constantly besieged by perfectly dreadful events and turn to a murder mystery? Speaking of 'perfectly dreadful events.'

Because! Especially because it's John Lescroart's murder mystery. His characters are all three-dimensional. Four dimensional, actually, because the books not only show their whole selves, but their selves as they live through time. They experience: dark thoughts in dark events overseen by dangerous people in their work as policemen and attorneys; humorous interactions with people they love; joyous events in their lives quite separate from their work; and, sometimes, even sad events in their lives separate from their work.

And in John Lescroart's murder mysteries we're given things to think about. Like this from Nothing but the Truth. Dismas Hardy's cop friend Abe is half Jewish, half Black and all homicide inspector for the San Francisco Police Department.

Abe's father is thinking:
     "Lots of times when he'd been younger, he'd been less than diligent at keeping the Sabbath,
     but now in his eighth decade he'd come to believe that the Ten Commandments had gotten
     everything exactly right if you wanted to have a world full of healthy and productive
     people. People should pay attention to the wisdom in all ten of them, he believed. They
     really should. Keeping the Sabbath, taking a day off, kept you sane."

Now this passage may not help you or the book's heroes solve the mystery, but it goes a long way to tell us who our main characters are and how they got that way -- all the while dispensing some very useful wisdom.

Plus! At the end of most murder mysteries, we as readers have the satisfaction of not only finding out whodunit and why, but the baddies get their just deserts. (With a nod to Lemony Snicket) which here means "what they deserve."

"...the word 'desert' — [when pronounced with the accent on the second syllable like the word dessert] — ...refers to a deserved reward or punishment. Therefore, someone who does wrong and is punished in a suitable manner has received his 'just deserts.'" http://www.snopes.com/language/notthink/deserts.asp