I love a good mystery, but it is nearly impossible to find Mystery books that are not all about murder. I am sick and tired of all the murder. There is nothing cozy about murder. There have to be plenty of mysteries that mystery writers could pen that do not include a grisly murder.
I wonder why there aren’t many murderless mysteries written. It seems like there is a market for this type of mystery, but either writers gravitate towards this or publishers reject the ones that do.
It's so crazy that people equate the mystery genre with murders. It's rather sad, in some ways, too. Good for you for writing a mystery that has no dead bodies; I'm going to challenge myself to do that. :)
Great inquiry! The genre is impoverished by being limited to certain plot structures that are repeated over and over. In crazy times like these it’s much more interesting to question everything: what is a crime? Whose interests are served? What’s the larger meaning? Etc.
Those are great questions. Is a crime always a crime, or sometimes justified? Sometimes the person who commits the crime isn't the one (or at least not the only one) whose interests are being served. This makes the concept of "justice" more difficult to pin down. I like it when mysteries/thrillers/crime novels grapple with this aspect and not exclusively with the standard Clue-type aspects of who, where, how, why. (Colonel Mustard, in the conservatory, with the knife because, um ... who knows?!) And where does all of this fit in larger societal structures, philosophical concepts, and contemporary worldviews? As you say, the genre is impoverished if books only rehash the same-old, same-old structures.
I love a good mystery, but it is nearly impossible to find Mystery books that are not all about murder. I am sick and tired of all the murder. There is nothing cozy about murder. There have to be plenty of mysteries that mystery writers could pen that do not include a grisly murder.
I reiterate, MURDER is not COZY!
I wonder why there aren’t many murderless mysteries written. It seems like there is a market for this type of mystery, but either writers gravitate towards this or publishers reject the ones that do.
I will add that my own mysteries do have murders. I write traditional mysteries/thrillers.
It's so crazy that people equate the mystery genre with murders. It's rather sad, in some ways, too. Good for you for writing a mystery that has no dead bodies; I'm going to challenge myself to do that. :)
Great inquiry! The genre is impoverished by being limited to certain plot structures that are repeated over and over. In crazy times like these it’s much more interesting to question everything: what is a crime? Whose interests are served? What’s the larger meaning? Etc.
Those are great questions. Is a crime always a crime, or sometimes justified? Sometimes the person who commits the crime isn't the one (or at least not the only one) whose interests are being served. This makes the concept of "justice" more difficult to pin down. I like it when mysteries/thrillers/crime novels grapple with this aspect and not exclusively with the standard Clue-type aspects of who, where, how, why. (Colonel Mustard, in the conservatory, with the knife because, um ... who knows?!) And where does all of this fit in larger societal structures, philosophical concepts, and contemporary worldviews? As you say, the genre is impoverished if books only rehash the same-old, same-old structures.