Art and Culture # 50: The Mystery Genre
-For the Uncensored!
The mystery genre is a subject I always had a deep suspicion over. Take for example Knives Out. I heard many good things about it. I read Dashiell Hammett, seen a couple Elmore Leonard adaptations (Get Shorty and Jackie Brown), but mostly my favorite genre is science fiction. But the thing I saw with Knives Out is that the character of each was sacrificed for the run time allotted. I would have loved to see a broader miniseries like production of Knives Out as it would have fleshed out the characters. Writers and creative people saw the tension between the father and son as what could have been a great character study between those who inherit the burden of genius and the genius themselves. It’s true. The offspring of literary stars often never follow in there writer parents footsteps. It would be a burden to have to live up to the literary success there parents have made.
But I think the answer is clear. Knives Out had a wonderful chance at showing some of the hardships surrounding the business of publishing, but also add some conversations that needed to be had. I think the mystery genre has never really been perfected for a long time. As the UK has clones of Agatha Christi, there are clones of Elmore Leonard and Philip K. Dick. The problem is that Knives Out had a chance to take a character and inject something honest in the conversation being had.
The story was too involved in being a Clue rip off that it doesn’t even try to hide the fact behind the line, “he lives in the Clue house.” This to me was the sign of a clone. It didn’t even try to hide it. Genre has the ability to play off itself, break the third wall, as such cinema narrative techniques have done.
But it felt, as all good things, another reason why I called it, “a loving remake of Clue.” Rian Johnson, and myself included, know that when we are going up against such established authors or films, we are entering that genre. The problem I have with mystery is that it doesn’t have enough character to make me care about the predicament of the plot. Sherlock Holmes has the ability to make me care about him and Watson, as the detective heads forward into the mystery. Many modern interpretations, like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, created a persona around the genius, and his personal existence. His character had a messy apartment and that’s true of many geniuses. They are brilliant at one particular subject but forget about the rest.
What Knives Out proved is that there is always a place for mystery stories, but the problem is that mystery genre is often mixed in with science fiction so we really take mystery for granted. Some things in life are meant to be a mystery. You can’t figure out everything in life or you wouldn’t have anything to ponder. The mystery genre is not a bad thing, by any means. The power of the mystery is that we are invested in the characters even though we might not like them.
A family member told me “everyone is awful” in Knives Out and I said, “I feel sorry for them,” and he said why, and I responded, “I feel sorry for these characters because I have written these characters before.” Again, the point is you can’t blame people for being awful when people in polite society shy away from who they really are. To me, this story was a psychic projection of what this family member felt inside, bringing to light there ugly perspectives about themselves.
Mystery has that ability to talk about what you don’t want to think about. Drug addiction, jealousy, poverty, honor, shame, anger, affairs, lost dreams, fortune. It’s all the problems a modern society has. Much could be infused with stories that you don’t care to think about. Good or even bad stories have this ability to evoke feelings out of people they might not like. The viewer will say, “That was horrible” when another doesn’t see it that way.
Mystery is also about what makes the world subjective, and the detective has to move forward, even if he might be over his head. Roman Polanski’s “China Town”, written by Robert Towne, is another perfect example of how a classic story can always represent the psyche of a lost generation. Always looking forward and putting the pieces together. To me, there are a couple mysteries. The hardboiled mysteries, like Dashiell Hammett and Elmore Leonard, and the character driven mystery’s like PD James and Agatha Christie. Knives Out seemed to be a mix of both but using the components that don’t often coincide with the other. As a writer myself I never lived in a genre, but I always wrote against the type. I see every story as its own category but the failure of Knives Out is that it wanted to be a mix of hard boiled mystery and comedy. I think the dishonesty in not seeing the layers within a character is what lead me to write what would be a mystery into long character driven stories, but the mystery is often superseded by the character details. But the question remains, can the mystery genre be improved when it’s already a stable crux of all literature and genre?
To be fair, much of Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” seems like light affair when even I say, “Now that seems entirely plausible” and nobody really wants to be sold a mystery about a Catholic Church scandal anymore. Because it exists. Many mystery thrillers think that they have to be fast in order to gain the attention of an audience. It just depends on who is reading and what you’re willing to offer. In 2021, streaming services often vie for our attention, and video games as well.
Everyone wants to know the outcome but aren’t willing to take the journey. It’s a few things. With a Pynchon novel, the technique is the story, so much of his writing concerns the technique and the conversations are intertwined. Then there’s Dan Brown who wants to bear weight on conversation, but not a complicated sentence in sight. It just depends on what people can interpret too. But the mystery is about searching for the unknown. Video games do this as well, but often run over 60 hours of game play, which can tire and bum out anyone.
What the mystery genre can do is offer that escape, and the pleasure of enjoyment. But who wants to read a mystery when you can google it and read the synopsis? When you can find everything with a touch of your phone, why would a mystery about a murder on train be so important? Why would a detective care about a statue? Or a MacGuffin, which is one piece of evidence, or object, which leads the character along to his next destination.[i] Additionally, there are too many forms of mediums that do this. This was Dan Brown’s career in a nutshell.
This is the question that most mystery stories have, and if we continue to write mysteries anymore, I don’t think it will take place in modern day. If the police won’t figure out who shot a BB gun through my window, why would Bones care about figuring out a murder? What’s always more intriguing? I mean, someone shot a BB gun in my window, but the consequences are there. The cop won’t care about a kid shooting a BB gun at my window, compared to a bullet going through my window. But my window is still broken but we have to known who killed Hammurabi’s dead lover and figure out some damn mystery from the past?[ii]
One can always precipitate the other. But if stories don’t have that sense of unforeseeable instinct to solve a mystery, why does the mystery genre even exist anymore? Because it does, even though I’m not scouring the mystery section at all.
[i] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/MacGuffin.
[ii] Again, this is a joke, but you get the point.
-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 19 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline (and the original text re-released in 2019), Apocalypse Soldier, The Data Chase, Selection: The First Book of the Life and Death Saga, and Blinking Eyes: The Second Book of the Life and Death Saga, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep, The City of Sand, To the Moon and Back, The Villain Lives and The Villain Lives: The Divided Pinpoint, Come Home, Young One, . His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. Our Freedom Book https://www.ourfreedombook.com/thereallouistbruno17. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. His next series, City of Sand is out now: https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/louis-bruno/city-of-sand/hardcover/product-rke9jz.html?page=1&pageSize=4. Also, if you can’t subscribe so that you can get members only content, please be sure to share the articles, and subscribe for the free articles as well. Every little bit helps in the war against Big Tech. Thanks for reading.