Why do ordinary readers happily devour crime novels, the sort of stories I write, about violence — murder above all — and every conceivable sort of treachery? Why do housewives and business travelers and grandmothers — people who would not themselves steal a stick of gum — feel drawn to crime stories, fascinated by them?
John le Carré seems to have puzzled over the appeal of spy novels in a similar way. The other day I ran across this quote:
Most of us live in a condition of secrecy: secret desires, secret appetites, secret hatreds, and relationship with the institutions which is extremely intense and uncomfortable. These are, to me, a part of the ordinary human condition. So I don’t think I’m writing about abnormal things.… Artists, in my experience, have very little center. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception.
I think le Carré gets that exactly right. We are all spies. We all fake, one way or another, at times. Spies perfectly embody this aspect of human nature.
Are we all criminals, too? Is that why we rush to buy books by Lee Child or Richard Price or Michael Connelly? Is that why the news media cover crime stories with such obvious relish?
Maybe. When asked to explain the attraction of crime stories, I have always fallen back on the phrase “bad men do what good men dream,” which was coined by the psychologist Robert I. Simon (it is the title of Simon’s book). Simon writes,
The basic difference between what are socially considered to be bad and good people is not one of kind, but one of degree, and of the ability of the bad to translate dark impulses into dark actions. Bad men such as serial sexual killers have intense, compulsive, sadistic fantasies that few good men have, but we all have some measure of that hostility, aggression, and sadism. Anyone can become violent, even murderous, under certain circumstances. Our brains are wired for aggression, and can short-circuit into violence.
It is a powerful, frightening idea. But even if it is true — even if we are all criminals with secret dark instincts, however faintly we feel them, however well we master them — it still does not explain the precise nature of our attraction to crime stories. When we read crime novels, are we indulging this secret urge to violence, acting out fantasies? Are we good men (people) dreaming of doing bad things? Our favorite criminals — Hannibal Lecter, Michael Corleone — do have an undeniable glamor.
On the other hand, maybe we read crime stories to relieve the anxiety that we will become victims. Maybe the pleasure is in the experience of control over these demons. Most crime stories end with the villain’s defeat, after all. Justice tends to triumph in fiction more often than it does in real life. Surely that is no accident.
Or perhaps we enjoy crime stories for the same reason we go to horror movies and roller coasters: to feel the thrill of fear. To get the adrenaline rush of a dangerous situation without the risk of actual danger.
I suspect that the precise nature of our attraction to crime stories is murkier than le Carré’s theory about spy novels. We may indeed all be spies, but we are not all criminals — not just criminals, anyway. We are good and bad, cops and robbers, heroes and villains, at different times. As a crime novelist, that strikes me as good news. Novels thrive in the murk of human emotions.
Mmm. Interesting. Makes me wonder what Miss Marple was thinking as she gazed out on St Mary Meade observing her microcosm of criminality and deceit. What was her motivation? What submerged tendancies made her the country’s leading criminolgist? Did she harbour secret inner desires to bump off the vicar in her quiet, forensic mind? If only Agatha had let her…
Yes, I wanted to mention Agatha Christie and her descendants, the “cozies” school of murder mystery. It has always struck me that these are genteel books for nice ladies who knit and own cats and volunteer at the local library — and in their spare time they read about murder. To put it another way, no one ever reacts to murder in these traditional mysteries as real people would: “Holy crap! There’s a dead body in the drawing room!” They react to a dead body on the floor with no more shock or horror than they would react to a lost wallet or a spilled drink. (Though, come to think of it, a spilled drink is no small thing.)
I don’t think it is so much about agresive tendencies, unless it is a dark and gory stuff (which often it is). I prefer Agatha Christie and those like her, but don’t consume mystery material too often. It doesn’t need to be murder either, theft is fine foe me.
We as humans don’t feel comfortable with chaos, psychological level chaos. We feel there is a lot of things which require repair, healing. We yearn for some uncomplicated world which is emotionally ordered and as such safe.
So, the mysteries usually show a quite peaceful existence, which gets terribly disrupted. It becomes chaotic, specially with such terrible things like murder, the peaceful world is thrown into total imbalance. As the detective proceeds, more hidden imbalance is revealed (hidden motives, hates, conflicts, etc). The detective finds the clues, which are confusing, false leads and so on, but finally he/she is able to untangle the confusion and tragedy of crime and the previous homeostasis is restored, the evil is purged. The evil does is captured and made harmless, can’t harm anyone anymore. It is like cancer surgery: the evil is expelled, and so far things are good, there is recovery, a triumph of good. And we live in the world when even the news headlines are reminding us of violence and chaos, and we can’t do anything. But mystery novels, or movies tell us that no, there is a lot to be done, we are powerful, problems can be solved and an happy end will come, not the doom.
I think it is also nostalgia for a savior figure which is a very powerful archetype in culture, not only religion. A detective is such a rescuer, and the sense of helplessness is gone the very moment he/she entangles the confusion of the dark forces of chaos when the investigation starts. The evil tried to harm us, to confuse all, but could sting only partially, finally the reason and the good won the battle, not the enemy. And this is very reassurring, and this is what we need to be reminded, and like to e reminded: that we are not powerless against the evil. We can have our peace back.
All very interesting points. I was interested to run across this theory, too, in an article I read recently:
Perhaps we have an evolved need for stories of danger and mayhem, to experience these dangers without real risk in order to educate ourselves to the very real dangers of the world.