Winter 2022. Another season of isolation. Trips cancelled. Theater, museums, movies, restaurants now no-go zones. Closeted clothes. Manicures and make-up a thing of the past. Exercise more resolution than reality. Occasional beans on toast for supper. Panic attacks when a book stash is low. FaceTime with friends. House arrest that feels like life in solitary. (How do people survive that?)
On dark days I think of Hildegard von Bingen, who became a German Benedictine abbess, composer, philosopher, medical writer, and healer during the Middle Ages - once she overcame her years of solitude as an anchorite, one of many young girls sealed in secluded brick chambers in remote abbeys with only a straw bed, a bible, and if they were lucky, a tiny garden. Hildegard grew medicinal herbs in hers as she watched her chamber mate slowly go mad. Occasionally she joined other veiled young women to sing to priests from behind a latticed wall, and somehow kept her wits about her. Having proved her intelligence and genius for healing, the abbot finally released to start her own convent where nuns were free to move about, read, write, study, garden, and engage in intellectual and social discourse.
Sometimes I think about all the women in the world whose entire universe consists of a lonely hut where daily life revolves around a husband, children, backbreaking chores, and subsistence gardening. I even recall poor Rapunzel alone in her castle. That’s when I thank God for good books, streaming platforms, and FaceTime friends.
Now that my husband and I have become Netflix junkies we try to vary our choices, but invariably when we can’t find a good movie, we resort to watching BBC mysteries and other fictional stories that revolve around crime. Apparently so do a good many other people.
My research about why some people get hooked on true crime, or well-scripted fictional mysteries, wasn’t particularly enlightening, but one article in the New York Times tried to explain the phenomenon. Writing in October, Stephen Graham Jones posited that “Horror can offer comfort, can offer solace. Not because it’s an accurate representation or dramatization of our turmoil…but because horror comes packaged…in stories that end. … For all of us who sense no end to our own daily horror stories, that’s what’s so “important.”
A Google search was totally useless because no matter what search terms I offered it revealed list upon list of why people watch copious true crime stories. But I never watch true crime because it’s so depressing. However, well-crafted, complex mystery stories like the ones Agatha Christie wrote and Hercule Poirot solved are worthy of attention even if they are a bit outdated.
Psychologists were the least helpful as I tried to answer the question of why so many of us are drawn to mystery dramas, but a few did offer some insight. Most of them agreed that we like stories that offer a battle between good and evil. We also, they say, like things to be resolved almost as much as we want to escape from the crises in our own lives. We seek respite from our anxieties, and in these days from our isolation, and we enjoy helping clever detectives solve fictional crime.
Not being satisfied with expert opinion I began to ponder a few other questions. For example, who dreams up such complex plots surrounded by numerous subplots? What makes these mysteries so compelling? Why do we care so much about the outcome?
Being a writer helped me answer my own questions. I know that good drama must be grounded in strong plot lines, clever dialogue, brilliant acting, and credible, likeable characters. It helps if at least one character is attractive, even sexy. Take the vicar in PBS’s” Grantchester.” Not only was he better at solving crimes than his best friend, Gordy, the detective; the actor James Norton was incredibly loveable as a sleuth, a guy conflicted about God, and a priest leading his flock.
Then there was “Astrid,” the Danish autistic savant who bested the pathologist in every episode by paying much deeper attention to corpses than the forensic guy did. Brilliantly acted by a young actress who captured Astrid’s autistic compulsions along with her astounding qualities emanating from her love of solving puzzles, the friendship she formed with the female detective who understood her was a heartwarming aspect of the weekly stories.
And how could I not recommend “Unforgotten,” a series about long unsolved crimes in which the British actress Nicola Walker portrays a compassionate detective so committed to solving challenging 20-year-old crimes that it gets her in trouble. Like Astrid and her detective, Walker has great chemistry with her male deputy in a relationship of understanding and trust vs. sexual attraction.
All of this is the stuff of good drama and compelling mystery that, for whatever reason, serves up distraction, makes us feel we are in good company, and leads us to believe that trouble ends, and all will be well. That’s enough to make any dark night feel less threatening or lonely. After all, Hildegard went on to do great things, and Rapunzel was rescued from her castled solitude, proving that hope works in mysterious ways, even in Covid times.
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Elayne Clift is a writer. She has never written a mystery and seldom reads them but she watches lots of TV.