Refreshing the Whodunit:Moving Beyond Christie and Doyle

Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle – or some other detective maven – turned many of us into mystery and detective readers. We found Christie and Doyle or another author (Sayers, Peters, Hammett?) on library shelves and devoured their oeuvre. The questions underlying the mystery – of the tension between order and disorder, good and evil, and the process of logical deduction – generated an immense readerly pleasure. But how does the reader navigate the proliferation of mystery and detective novels available now? And what do these stories and novels do to us, why do they have this effect, and what kinds of discussion does a fuller understanding of the evolution of the mystery narrative as well as examination of new mystery treats make possible?

This Let’s Talk About It series provides new and experienced mystery and detective fans with an opportunity for in-depth conversation about how this fiction has incorporated the contemporary world’s globalism; dilemmas of race, gender, ethnicity and class; religious conflict; historical revision; and others. To refresh the whodunit, participants will read from a selection of novels by writers more marginal and contemporary than Doyle and Christie – though in some cases playing off of the classics –and ponder questions of the mystery’s relationship to history and culture. Does the mystery merely reflect its cultural environment or does it help to elucidate or even change that same environment? What do contemporary mysteries bring today’s readers that we really need, though we may not have known we need it? How much social change can a formulaic plot generate or reflect?

The perpetual argument about mystery fiction claims the publishers determine the possible plots, the plots determine the outcome and the genre determines plots again for every writer. Yet there must be some potential for social change or effect if Native American, women’s, gay and lesbian, Jewish, and other categories of mystery fiction are emerging for publishers, marketing departments, and consumers – and if the reinventions of Sherlock Holmes and Victorian England are even more fun than the originals. This series samples writers from these categories and asks of ourselves how they are different, what they are teaching us, and what our pleasure in the mystery is – while providing the immense joy of reading and talking together about this popular but sophisticated and very modern genre.

Upcoming events

January Artist of the Month: Sarah Smith

Minecraft Play Club will be on break until Jan. 10. See you all then!

Author Afternoon with Sandra Neily, “Nature-themed Mysteries & Thrillers and...Truth”: Saturday, Jan. 13, 12:30-2 p.m. (Weather date: Saturday, Jan. 20).

Story Hour: Fridays, 10:15 a.m. Hear a story with Miss Pam, make a craft, and sing a song. Ages birth to 5.