It is a Dark and Stormy Life
In defence of my undying love for (fictional) Murder
After publishing my essay last Tuesday, I was exhausted. Nothing went as planned, the editor broke down and the whole process became a lengthy battle against my internet browser. I finished far later than expected and couldn’t make it to See How They Run (link to review) for which I had tickets that evening. All in all I was tired, frustrated and coming down from a serious panic attack that happened during this whole ordeal.
My head was blank and for a while I stared at my laptop screen, sniffing and sad. At some point, I mustered the strength to close it, before I could fall into another internet-related rabbit hole. I peeled myself off the chair and fell onto the sofa. What now? I needed something comfortable, a cozy blanket for my mind, eyes and ears - I needed a good murder.
As I’d already planned to see a murder mystery, I decided to spend my evening with the coziest mysteries I could find, which I dutifully documented in my insta stories. But, as I lounged there enjoying Yvette’s bouncy boobs and Tim Currie’s mugging in Clue, the somber and somewhat disturbing ending of Crooked House and the absolutely wild ride that was Blithe Spirit, I wondered: Why do I love murder mysteries so much?
Out of all movie and literature genres, they provide me with the most joy, the most comfort. The more people die, the calmer I become. Most would think that I’m referring to cozies like Miss Marple, Murder, She Wrote and Agatha Raisin - in which the murder is somewhat in the background and the focus is more on the quirky set of characters and the, mostly female, protagonist. But no, all murder comforts me, provided it’s fictional.
There are some exceptions: I don’t particularly enjoy sleazy erotic thrillers, mostly because they all inexplicably revolve around Michael Douglas’ dick, and I don’t enjoy horror movies, where there is always a body count and technically a mystery, but it’s just too graphic for comfort. It seems there are three key components to me enjoying whodunits: an aesthetic that pops, a strong sense of justice and a mystery that I can follow along.
There are a lot of interesting aesthetics that can adorn a whodunit. The Georgian and Victorian eras are very popular thanks to Arthur Conan Doyle, mostly featuring male detectives modeled on Sherlock Holmes and E. A. Poe’s Auguste Dupont (The Murders in the Rue Morgue), who strut around on dirty streets, employing grisly medical instruments to perform autopsies and talking to dirty witnesses, some of whom are dirty prostitutes. The medieval times are also quite popular; sporting a cast of sleuthing members of the clergy (Cadfael Chronicles, The Name of the Rose), curious coroners (The Sanctuary Seeker) or seemingly bored aristocrats, who might secretly be spies (The Owen Archer Series). But I want to focus on an aesthetic that makes me the happiest: the interwar years.
A lot of whodunits lean heavily into the aesthetics of the 20-ies and 30-ies, the Agatha Christie era, so to speak. Even movies that are not based on her stories (Amsterdam, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) often employ the same looks and feel. The picture is golden and sepia-toned, the costumes are vibrant and the characters rich and exuberant. The visuals of the interwar years evoke feelings of freedom and lushness. We see a generation of survivors tasting, touching, experiencing life at its fullest. With them we take a joint sigh of relief - We did it! We survived the Great War!
With this backdrop - the memories of war still looming large in the distance - any murder feels exciting and lighthearted. In one and a half hours you experience the excitement of a war ending, a breath of a new era, beautiful costumes and great characters. The motives are clean cut - love, passion, money, maybe even boredom - and everything is set in high society, where the actual repercussions of WWI (abandoned broken veterans, a second war right around the corner) are invisible. Add a brilliant and adorable lady sleuth or a quirky detective (or both) and you’re enraptured, following the story to its simple and elegant solution.
Best of all: the mystery is yours to solve. By following the detective(s), you too, can collect clues, watch suspicious characters break under the watchful eye of our protagonist and solve the murder alongside them. Exciting, wholesome even. When you’ve seen the horrors of war, a lady killed for the inheritance money doesn’t seem as terrible anymore.
When the culprit is found out, they have to be punished accordingly. If the time period allows, an arrest may suffice, but it’s also fine if the murderer and their accomplices die in the end. Whether the justice is man-made or divine doesn’t matter, as long as it is served.
But, what makes it cozy?
For me it hits the golden spot between engagement and relaxation. As is widely known: We live in a society. Our brains are constantly working on something, at work we are, well, working, in leisure we’re focussed on not working or on socializing, which gets harder and harder each day, and following along is a day-long barrage of bad news, social media, impostor syndrome and the torturous question of what to have for dinner. We are constantly engaged, either by algorithms or our homemade drama. Doing too much is overwhelming, but doing nothing feels wrong or is just plain boring, due to our inability to relax.
The same goes for movie genres. Romcoms are famously tropey but they’re all too familiar, as you sit there and wait for the next plot point to drop. Action movies also have a rigid set of rules, but their sound design and toxic masculinity are overwhelming to a point where relaxation is a distant memory at best. This is where murder mysteries come in. You are engaged, might even follow along with the mystery, but due to its eye-pleasing aesthetics and lavish soundtrack, you can focus on something else entirely and still derive pleasure from it. The characters engage your sense of curiosity, the situations tickle your funny bone and the clean cut ending is so round and satisfying that you might need another cup of tea after the movie has ended.
You sit there, amused, but not overwhelmed, attentive, but relaxed - you find your middle.
You are calm.
You are cozy.
Murder is zen.