By Samaira Kalia
For me, reading is something I do every day and something I can do for hours. I’ve read fiction and non-fiction, fantasy and science fiction, mythologies and fairy tales, and so much more. But there’s one particular genre that, if I pick up any books within it, I can never quite keep them down – it’s just like a trap. This genre is a mystery. But why are these books so great?
Mystery books have been making readers’ hearts pound ever since the first detective story was published; The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe in the April 1841 issue of Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine. To this day, mystery books are known for their unpredictable character arcs and plots, keeping readers captivated and hooked. This genre of books has always been well known, but recently their popularity has been soaring even higher. This is because of the way the book keeps the reader thinking; always speculating and raising suspicions. When the mystery unfolds, it’s always a surprise. The reader also gets the chance to become the detective along with the actual characters in the books, by piecing together the clues, and it even gives the readers a chance of solving a puzzle before the characters in the book do.
Unlike a lot of people’s beliefs, mysteries aren’t just about murder and chaos, but about an unsolved question, waiting to be solved, and how it connects to all the character’s different stories. It’s about uncovering the truth, and the journey that takes place to find it is what makes mysteries so diverse and thrilling.
While writing a mystery novel, the author places small hints and clues throughout the book. Some hints seem unnecessary, and yet others can blame a clean character, making them look guilty. Many authors always use the most basic clues; the clues that are right in front of you, the clues that you should’ve seen but you’ve missed. That’s what makes these books so engrossing.
So we know that reading and writing mysteries is always fun, but does it actually impact us in our daily lives? Reading mysteries doesn’t just support your literacy goals, or increase your reading habits, like other books, but mysteries also demonstrate the power of critical thinking and promote problem-solving techniques that might actually help you in any real-life problems. It gets your brain thinking about who did it, keeping your mind active all the time.
Mysteries are written to be exciting and dramatic. Because of this, reading such books is something you can look forward to instead of thinking about it like work. When you get home from school, and you don’t have anything important to do, the first thing you want to do is catch up on your reading. Not as a job, but as something you want to do.
There are many different authors, and each of them has a different style of writing their mysteries. Some mystery writers include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who’s the creator of the most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. His most popular book would probably be The Hound of the Baskervilles. Set in England, the story follows a family’s suspicion that there is a demonic hound that stalks and murders them.
Another well-known author is Agatha Christie, creator of Detective Hercule Poirot and author of the famous Murder on the Orient Express. The story is about a man who gets murdered on a train, not long before there’s an avalanche trapping the train, and the murderer, on a mountain. Plus, there’s a movie adaption for this book and many others, such as Death on the Nile and the latest one, A Haunting in Venice.
If you want a more recently written book, I definitely have to recommend the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy by Holly Jackson. There was a murder that had happened in the town of Little Kilton five years before the book was written, by a girl named Andie Bell. The police assume her friend, who supposedly killed himself a day after she died, is the murderer. Everyone knows he did it. All the clues point to him. Five years later, a seventeen-year-old girl decides to prove them all wrong.
Not all mystery books have to be about a murder. One example is Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene. Most of her mysteries are about a girl named Nancy Drew, an amateur detective. She’s able to solve mysteries, mostly about kidnappings, and there’s not much murder involved.
Miss Jane Marple – an amateur consulting detective from the village of St. Mary Mead in one of Agatha Christie’s crime novels once said…“The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.” So let’s continue with solving mysteries, as the desire to seek the truth beyond, is what makes this world a wondrous place.