Clive James has been trying to read a Henry James novel.
Category: Why Do We Love Murder Mysteries?
Maybe This Is You
You discovered mystery novels at a young age. You began reading one and you were instantly enthralled. You gobbled it down in one long fevered gulp ... and then you went searching for the next.
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.
You Are Not Alone
The world is saturated with murder mysteries.
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.
The Cleverest Christie: The Reversal
Readers believe we are solving one particular mystery, when all along something else entirely has been going on.
MURDER MYSTERIES AND PHILOSOPHY
Murder mysteries can be about death and the profound mystery of life itself.
Einstein and Mystery
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
Ah, the French
Roland Barthes proposes an erotics of reading. And crime fiction does not come off well.