"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
Einstein and Mystery
Category: Why Do We Love Murder Mysteries?
Ah, the French
Roland Barthes proposes an erotics of reading. And crime fiction does not come off well.
The Cleverest Christie: The Reversal
Readers believe we are solving one particular mystery, when all along something else entirely has been going on.
Greek Tragedy and Freud: Auden on the Detective Story
For W. H. Auden detective fiction embodied a timeless idea, which appears in Classical, Christian and Freudian thought.
Forgotten Facts and Hidden Meanings
You can’t really discuss Australian crime fiction without mentioning Jane Harper’s first book. It has been spectacularly successful. Here's one reason.
The Unputdownable and the Unpickupable
“If a narrative is going to be as clumsy as that, can’t it have some guns?”
THE MR JONES MOMENT
Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is.
The Slipping Place
The Slipping Place, is a murder mystery set in and around Hobart and on Mount Wellington. It is a dark and suspenseful and a meticulously constructed clue-puzzle. The book is also rich with ideas. "You draw a line" The Slipping Place is concerned with violence in the domestic sphere and examines the way in which … Continue reading The Slipping Place
Reading for the Plot
Narrative is central to our understanding of life. It reflects the structures of human thinking.
Familiarity
There are many reasons we might pick up a detective novel. One is obvious and very simple: We know we enjoyed the last one.
