Why detective stories?

Why detective stories?

?W. Somerset Maugham wrote that millions read mystery novels each year because at least they know there will be a well-constructed plot.? My English lit. professor said that people read detective stories because they want to see justice triumph.

?Since my first Sherlock Holmes tale, I’ve been a near fanatic devotee of the classic detective story, but not for those reasons.? My love for the genre comes from an almost desperate need to believe that the rational mind can and will bring order out of chaos.? Crime is chaos.? It destroys for no reason.? In a mystery, the detective uses a superior intellect, uses reason to bring order out of that chaos and to reveal the truth.? In the end, reason triumphs and chaos is dispersed.

?“I always have faith, Mr. Fallon, faith in what Judge Leonard Hand called ‘the eventual supremacy of reason.’” ---Perry Mason, “The Case of the Impatient Partner”

?I suppose, in my heart, I want to believe so much better of us as human beings.? I want to believe that we will all, in the end, embrace reason.? I want to believe that we will let go of all the lies we create, all the lies we use to justify the terrible, heinous things we do to each other, that reason will triumph in the heart of the liar as well as the person lied about and that then forgiveness and healing will be born, the lies destroyed, the chaos dispelled and love and faith will find a home.

?Perhaps in my naivete, I fantasize that I might be the person to use reason to bring order out of the chaos of lies.

?If only life worked that way.

?A year ago, a close friend, one I’d known for decades and dearly loved, was caught doing some abhorrent, demeaning and horribly destructive things; things that destroyed families, harmed children and harmed friends.? The actions grew from lies, lies my friend had first told to the self then to others.? Lies we tell to ourselves are doubly damaging because we are both the liar and the person lied about.? We lie to our own ethical and personal self-destruction.

?By the time the truth involving my friend had come out, the lies were so thick that, no matter how vicious, gross and irrational the actions were, my friend held them as justified, even holy and “sacred.”

?Now, my friends trend toward the highly rational and this friend was no exception.? So, I thought that, if only we talked enough, if only we reasoned together long enough, we could create some rational order from this web of lies.? We could bring some truth out this chaos.? For a year, I spoke with this friend incessantly going over the lies, the actions, the horrible ethical failings all to no avail.? Rationality did not enter the picture.? For my friend, wrong had to be right.? That was the price of friendship.? And so, in the end, I lost my friend, something that cut me to the core.

?The pain was amplified by the fact that I had been so certain, so very certain that working together we could bring rational order out of the chaos of destructive lies.? That belief came from my own failed reasoning. ?One of my premises was false.? I had assumed reason could guide and trump the human will.? But the human will is stronger than the human intellect.? People choose to do terrible, irrational, chaotic things and no amount of reasoning or rationalism can stop them.? That’s part of the blessing and the curse of being human.

So, I lost a dear friend, I lost someone I loved, and, in my sadness, I slipped back to my detective stories in which a rational mind brings reason, order and truth out of chaos.? They brought me some very small measure of healing.? That may not have been the most rational response to the pain.? But it was a human response.