22 november

On the side: Writing is an excellent way to figure stuff out. One must only consider the case of Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote. Ahem. Not that she wrote her way out of the cases featured in the episodes. But! The correlation between writing and solving of mysteries is strong. There’s a reason why so many of us -- not just writers -- find mysteries so appealing, whether in writing or in television or films. Unlike stories that start in airports and drift into who knows where, a mystery is going somewhere. Whatever happens to reveal the puzzle, the aim is toward a solution. By the point when the author and reader run out of shared pages -- or when time runs out on the film or TV show -- there must be some answer to the question. The detective must piece together the clues and arrive at some conclusion. Whether it makes everyone happy or not, whether it seems ethically appropriate to enforce necessary punishment, or even whether it’s even the absolute end, this conclusion must include a kernel of satisfaction. The return of so many detectives and the extension of so many series -- Agatha Christie’s wonderful but obnoxious mustachioed Belgian, Hercule Poirot, and busybody biddy Miss Jane Marple; Holmes who need not be named, preferably of the Humperdink Cumberbund variety; and even the recently retired Inspector Chopra, who, when I first encountered him a few weeks ago in an airport bookstore, had just been gifted with a baby elephant by his beloved but now deceased uncle -- indicates the appeal. We see the success, we enjoy the solution, and we want more. We hope to learn from the process of these mostly noble investigators, not only to solve the puzzles pages before they do -- and not in the style of an Encyclopedia Brown cheat, involving a flip upside down to the back of the book for the answers -- but to apply these lessons to the rest of our lives. In only one hundred pages, an answer! In 90 minutes, all will be well! In 44 minutes (allowing for commercials), all of the unraveled pieces will fit into a clear and simple pattern and the next step forward will be clear.