by Maggie Auffarth

 

For fiction lovers, there’s no end to the kinds adventures we can have. Want to spend the next few hours on pirate ship with Blackbeard? How about trying to escape a government lab with a top-secret serum in your pocket? No problem! Reading makes it possible for us to take on these lives and more. And for many of us, there is no life we enjoy better than that of a detective on the hunt for a new case.

Since their genesis in 1860 with Wilkie Collins’ novel, The Woman in White, mystery novels have continued to amass success on the popular market. Today their genre enjoys their fair share of cultural saturation—from the still-undefeated bestselling records garnered by crime queen Agatha Christie, to the wild success of mystery TV shows like Castle, Sherlock, or NCIS.

So, what makes a mystery story great? What is it about this genre that draws readers in and keeps us obsessively turning pages at three in the morning? Here are a few aspects of the mystery field that make its best offerings thoroughly captivating:

1.) A Reason to Keep Reading

The first job of a writer is to try and hook their readers by giving them a reason to continue on to the next page—but mystery novels already come with built-in incentive. From the moment a reader cracks open the spine of a mystery, we know exactly what we want from it and exactly how much investment we’re willing to put in to get there. Even in the slower moments of the mystery, the underlying puzzle will always keep us turning pages and give us something to speculate about.

2.) Compelling Characters

One of the best things mystery novels promise are a list of fascinating and possibly untrustworthy suspects. In the hands of a good writer, these characters can consume readers for hours at a time. Whether we’re debating the dependability of Vera Claythorne’s story in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, or trying to decide our feelings towards Michael Tolland in Dan Brown’s Deception Point, a good mystery tests a reader’s intuition as well as our problem solving skills.

3.) The Promise of Resolution

The final thing that a good mystery novel gives its readers is a satisfying ending. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all plot threads are tied up in a neat bow, or that all the characters receive a happy ending. Instead, it means that the mysterious perpetrator is revealed, along with the methods he used to commit his crimes. It also means that there were enough clues laid out beforehand that the readers could’ve pieced together the solution in the same way the detective does.

Few stories capture our deepest fears or draw us in like mystery novels. They tap into our desire for excitement and grant us a healthy dose of darkness. They thrill, shock, and challenge us while simultaneously improving our attention to detail. In short, mysteries make us better…as long as we keep them confined within the pages of our library books, that is.