The Writing Life: Carolyn Hart

The crime novel features Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade or Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski. The crime novel is the story of an honorable man or woman who tries to remain uncorrupted in a corrupt world. It is the story of the protagonist and not of the murders that are solved. These books are about the quest for honor.

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My own particular love is the traditional mystery. These books are sometimes dismissed by devotees of the crime novel as unrealistic, "cozy" little stories of drawing room crimes in little villages.

Agatha Christie, whose books have now sold in excess of two billion, knew better. There may not be a body in the drawing room, but there will always be pain and passion, heartbreak and violence, despair and fury -- be it in city or country. Christie knew life as most readers live it, ordinary, unremarkable and fraught with emotion.

Christie once compared the mystery to the medieval morality play. In the play, audiences saw graphic representations of what happens to lives dominated by lust, gluttony, sloth and all the deadly sins. This is what today's mysteries offer in a more sophisticated guise.

The sleuth in the traditional mystery explores the relationships between the victim and those around him or her. The detective wants to know what caused the turmoil in their lives. Readers extrapolate the lessons for their own use, for their own lives. (If this, Dear Reader, is how you treat others. . . .) Thankfully, everyday dramas do not usually end in murder, but violent emotions provoked by fractured relationships corrode the lives of all involved, often forever. This is what the traditional mystery is all about. It focuses on the intimate, destructive, frightening secrets hidden beneath a seemingly placid surface. Readers know the cast: the jealous mother, the miserly uncle, the impossible boss, the belittling friend, the woman who confuses sex with love, the selfish sister.

What could be more humdrum than life as most of us live it? Aren't those everyday tales of murder nonsense?

No. Nothing can be more powerful than jealousy, anger, hatred, lust and fear.

I suppose true crime stories work in the same way. But even though I've spent a lifetime with murder, I find it hard to read accounts of real crimes. I find them too harrowing, the violence and heartbreak too real. In my own books, I am always looking for the redemptive side of things: trying to understand the human passions that destroy and offering homage to the detective who brings peace and understanding.

Even though the body count in my many books is by now horrific, I am grateful for my life with murder. It has put me in the best of company. Mystery readers are good people. Every time they read a mystery they reaffirm a commitment to decency and justice.

Every day we see proof that evil can triumph. But there is a world, too, where goodness prevails, where justice is served, where decency is celebrated. I and so many readers find that world in the mystery. *