I wouldn’t call myself a particularly brave person; I flee from a room if I see a spider and I haven’t watched a horror film for years. However, when it comes to a thrilling read, I simply can’t get enough. I couldn’t even begin to count how many nights I’ve had to sleep with lights on after reading a book that I knew, deep down, would scare me witless. I don’t seem to be alone in this habit either: in her wonderful book A Very British Murder, Lucy Worsley discusses our enduring fascination with murder, which stretches from 19th-century newspapers trying to identify Jack the Ripper to the current obsession with Scandi Noir on television.
Although books by authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins were already popular, interest in crime novels reached new levels during the Golden Age of detective fiction in the 1920s. Worsley argues persuasively that this was a response to readers’ desire to numb themselves to the horrors of the First World War, suggesting that despite the grim subject matter, this genre offers some form of escapism. In the last one hundred years, our enjoyment of crime fiction has not decreased, although tastes have changed and many now prefer gorier crime novels by authors such as Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo.
Horror novels have also been keeping us awake at night for centuries; The Castle of Otranto, written in the 18th century by Horace Walpole, is widely considered to be the first Gothic horror novel. The enduring appeal of frightening reads is proven by Stephen King’s success: his books have sold over 350 million copies and he is said to be worth around $400 million, making him one of the richest authors in the world. People will evidently pay good money to be frightened!
Although I enjoy a frightening novel, my particular weakness is for crime novels (fiction only, true crime is too real for me to enjoy). In 2020 alone I have read crime and mystery novels by Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Louise Penny, and G.K. Chesterton. These fall into the ‘cozy mystery’ camp, books with idyllic settings, often country houses or quaint villages, but where murder seems to happen with alarming frequency.
I’ve often wondered why I enjoy crime books so much, especially since they give me chills down my spine, and can only conclude, as Worsley does in her book, that our enjoyment of crime and mystery novels comes from the satisfying ending, where a detective, such as Hercule Poirot, delivers a neat summary and correctly identifies the murderer. The police then emerge from the wings and arrest the culprit, ensuring that justice is served.
How unlike real life: in the real world there are no easy answers, no denouements at which all loose threads are brought to a tidy conclusion. I’ve noticed that since the current COVID19 situation began, my desire to read crime novels has only increased. Although frightening and alarming at times (just like real life!), a crime novel offers us the ‘happy ending’ that is missing in the world around us. In reality, things aren’t so simple but it is nice, just for a little while, to believe that a solution can be found if only we use our ‘little grey cells.
Horror novels serve a similar purpose; by focusing on ghosts and vampires and things ‘that go bump in the night, we are able to distract ourselves from the things that really frighten us. At the end of the book, when the evil is vanquished forever (or at least until the next installment), we can pretend that the real world is just as simple. The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell, which I read last year is an utterly thrilling gothic horror that had me jumping at every noise in the night and yet I loved it, just as I love fairground rides.
We like danger, it seems, but only in small, safe doses.
Ten books that will have you on the edge of your seat:
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Endless Night by Agatha Christie
- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
- Dracula by Bram Stoker
- The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
- The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
- The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
- The Stand by Stephen King
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