“LIKE a hug in a book” was how the the Dublin writer Kitty Graham described it to The Irish Times. It is an odd way to describe a literary genre concerned with murder and the worst aspects of the human condition. Many examples feature the word murder in their very titles, from Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders, Richard Thorogood’s The Marlow Murder Club, and, of course, Murder on the Orient Express by the Queen of Crime herself, Agatha Christie.
Many of these books have been made into hugely successful television adaptations, including the Revd Richard Coles’s Canon Clement mystery series, which begins with Murder Before Evensong (Books, 24 June 2022). The inclusion of a priest or other religious body as the naïve mystery-solver is also seen in Grantchester, Father Brown, and Sister Boniface. There are also numerous examples featuring lay detectives, amateur or otherwise, such as Death in Paradise, Jonathan Creek, Hetty Wainthropp, Rosemary and Thyme, and, of course, Murder, She Wrote.
This is “cosy crime”, the dubious moniker of a genre with a longstanding popularity that has boomed during the past five years. Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, for example, has sold more than ten million copies, spawning a raft of similar titles. A recent poll by the free streaming service U found that, of 2000 adults surveyed, 73 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds were fans of the cosy-crime sub-genre, suggesting that puzzle-solving mysteries devoid of graphic violence may have cross-generational appeal, too.
Agatha Christie’s first murder mystery book appeared in 1920; so this is hardly new territory, but one that has been repackaged, originally by the American publishing industry, to cash in on a trend for all things coded twee and comfy, characterised by middle-classness, suburbia, and nostalgia.
THE increase in popularity, as well as the genre’s finding of new fans among the young, coincides with the turmoil and uncertainty created by the Covid pandemic. In times of crisis and insecurity, people seek ways to escape and self-soothe. The predictable pattern of a pre-watershed murder mystery is a safe thing to reach for.
The violence is dialled down and is incidental, usually happening off the page or off camera. The stories told are not tales of terrible injustice, but puzzles to be solved. Reading or watching them is mentally stimulating rather than rage-inducing, and the promise of a neatly wrapped-up conclusion is soothing and satisfying rather than challenging. In a world of many unknowns and uncertainties, the familiarity of this can feel blithely comforting.
So far, so obvious, and yet the horror of murder effortlessly juxtaposed with cosiness and comfort ought to trouble us. The fact that it does not provides a fascinating insight into human psychology. The violence may be hidden, but the murder itself is crucial to the entire drama. If no one is slain, there can be no story, no mystery to solve, and, therefore, no resolution.
In constrast with real-life violent crime, the trauma of the situation is entirely absent, and there are no lasting repercussions for the community. The conclusion of each mystery may well conjure up an Isaiah 11.6 type of cosy reconciliation, a utopianism that is obviously part of the appeal; but it is an unrealistic resolution that is not possible this side of heaven.
This is murder-lite, an act that may result in the hauling off of its perpretator(s) to a prison cell, but one that otherwise leaves no negative traces. The murder most often happens in an enclosed environment, in the midst of an otherwise kindly setting, whose polite norms are disrupted. Indeed, the community can return to normal only because there has been a murder, which suggests that something more primeval may be at play here.
THE popularity of this genre, rising as it did during a uniquely incendiary time, suggests that there might be a Girardian type of impulse at work: murder as a mechanism to solve societal tension and crisis.
René Girard’s ideas attempt to account for more than just the origins of religious belief: they also explain how people may be able to experience murder vicariously and then feel better about themselves as a result.
Girard uses mimetic theory to argue that early human societies used sacrificial murder as a way of relieving pressure and conflict. During times of crisis, a scapegoat was chosen to be ritually murdered to resolve the distress — a character who would absorb all that was wrong. The death of Jesus ultimately subverted and dismantled the scapegoat mechanism; but, in an increasingly secular world, to borrow the words of Nietzsche, society is one herd without a shepherd, still engaged in the futile search for scapegoats.
We have seen this mechanism play out throughout history, whether it is in witch hunts after failed harvests or vicious pogroms after plagues. We are still seeing the urge to scapegoat today, in ruthless online cancellation campaigns that reached their height during the pandemic, through the current rise of anti-Semitism, and the blaming, variously, of the white working class, minority groups, and immigrants for society’s ills.
This lashing out at an illusory enemy is, perhaps, why we should not be surprised that people might want to tune out by turning on a cosy-crime drama — one that represents the same kind of cathartic release, achieved safely through a pretend murder that acts as the proxy for a controlled explosion. In contrast with real life, there is also the certainty that justice will be achieved, that right will triumph over wrong, and that an agent of good will defeat an evil enemy. In the real world, none of this is certain.
Releasing tension by the murdering of a scapegoat is a shape-shifting energy. Consuming cosy stories that contain reductive stereotypes of heroes and villains may make us feel warm inside, but it does not absolve us of our own propensity to sin.
Any one of us can unexpectedly cease to be part of the mob, and, instead, find that we ourselves are the next unexpected victim. It probably pays to be aware that the hug in your cosy-crime story may not be as benign as it seems.
The Revd Jayne Manfredi is an Anglican deacon, writer, and radio broadcaster.
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