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The mystery of why we love reading mysteries
By Laurie Hertzel
Star Tribune
At one time, there was nary a mystery
to be found on my shelves.
Last year, right around this time, I had
coff ee with a writer in a Minneapolis park.
She’s someone I’ve interviewed several
times before, and as we walked back to
our cars she asked me the question she
always asks: “What are you reading
these days?”
I didn’t have a great answer. At the time,
I wasn’t reading anything new or daring. I
wasn’t even reading anything for work. We
were halfway through the second year of
COVID-19, and to my surprise, I was read-
ing mysteries — one after another.
I’ve never really been a mystery reader.
It’s not a snobbish thing, though it might
sound like that; I know plenty of brilliant
people who love mysteries, including
most of the critics who write for these
pages. (They fi ght over who gets to review
the new Kate Atkinson.)
Minnesota is bursting with wonderful
mystery writers (and I don’t dare start
naming them or I will run out of room)
and I’ve read a lot of their books, which I
always enjoy, and I’ve interviewed many of
the authors, who are always unexpected
and entertaining and eloquent.
But mysteries as a genre never attract-
ed me: I don’t like gore, I don’t like vio-
lence, I don’t like to be scared. And I didn’t
like that it seemed like beautiful young
Penguin Random House
Harper/TNS
It’s soothing to read something that provides answers when
we are in the middle of a time when the problems are huge
and answers are scarce.
women were often the victims.
I had not yet understood that there are
all kinds of mysteries — classic mysteries,
police procedurals, cozies, spy thrillers,
legal thrillers, psychological thrillers and
detective novels.
And then, a few months into the
COVID-19 lockdown, I picked up a mys-
tery for no particular reason and I started
reading. And then I read another, and an-
other. I found that I liked being engrossed.
I liked being fl ummoxed. I liked trying to
puzzle things out, looking for clues,
trying to fi nd the answer, being tricked
by red herrings.
I realized that there are just as many
kinds of mysteries as there are any other
novels, and that all I had to do was fi gure
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out which kinds I liked (as it turned out,
police procedurals and detective novels)
and which ones I didn’t (anything that will
give me nightmares).
I came to love Anthony Horowitz and
Richard Osman because they are funny as
well as clever, and because the murders in
their books are generally not gory. I love
Tana French because her books are set in
Ireland and because the mysteries are so
complicated that I can’t fi gure them out.
A colleague gave me “River of Dark-
ness” by Rennie Airth and I found it so
frightening I had to put it down halfway
through; it was months before I dared pick
it up again. But I had to fi nish it; there is no
doubting Airth’s skill.
Still, what I didn’t understand was why I
had suddenly started devouring mysteries
at this time in my life.
The writer I had coff ee with had a pretty
good idea. The world is so diffi cult now,
she said. Everything is complicated. You
like mysteries because they have an-
swers. They are solvable.
She might be right. It’s soothing to
read something that provides answers
when we are in the middle of a time when
the problems are huge and answers are
scarce. But maybe there are other rea-
sons, as well.
Do you love mysteries? Why? Have you
come to appreciate a genre later in life,
something that surprised you? Write to
me at books@startribune.com.
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