Too little, too late

[swan_tower]

I’ve been watching a little of the ITV Agatha Christie’s Marple series, and enjoying Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple quite a lot — she does a lovely job contrasting her mild manner and soft voice with her sharp awareness of murder and what drives people to it. But I’m burning out very rapidly, and not for any reasons to do with the show itself. Instead it’s a matter of genre — and my fundamental problem with murder mysteries.

They are, a priori, about a bad thing having already happened. The best the protagonists can do is to try and deliver justice after the fact.

In a few cases they may forestall a subsequent murder, e.g. in the case of a serial killer going after their next victim. But in many cases shows try to raise the stakes by whacking a second person along the way, so now the detective or cop or whoever is playing cleanup to two horrible crimes. Sometimes more.

I’ve been re-watching Veronica Mars with my husband (who’s never seen most of it before), and while the metaplot of season one is indeed about a murder, the individual episode mysteries are about other crimes. Somebody has been conned out of their money, or a car’s been stolen, or a father has gone missing. I think that’s a large part of why I’m able to take the show in larger doses than I can take murder mysteries these days. In those plots, it’s possible to make people whole — to not just get justice, but to undo or at least significantly mitigate the harm.

These days, I think I need that. I mean, it’s not to say that non-mystery novels don’t frequently involve bad things happening that can’t be put right; obviously they do. But it feels different to me when the entire raison d’etre of the series is to have people die, again and again, with the heroes only taking action after that’s happened.

That mode wears on me after a while, even when counterbalanced by a charming old lady. Which is why I think I’ll be turning to something else soon, no matter how adorable Geraldine McEwan is as Miss Marple.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

Have you ever encountered Christie’s semi-supernatural Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Quin stories? Mr. Quin is strongly implied to be Hermes, and whenever he shows up, his mortal friend Mr. Satterthwaite knows events are coming to a crossroads, and that it’s up to him to pick up on the clues and either solve a murder from years before, or to prevent one from happening in the first place. Occasionally someone dies anyway, because that’s their fate and Mr. Quin was there in his role as psychpomp. Unfortunately I only know of two adaptations and neither one sounds very faithful to the material.

[sovay]

it’s up to him to pick up on the clues and either solve a murder from years before, or to prevent one from happening in the first place.

Thank you for reminding me of these stories! They actually answer a question I'd asked in the discussion at troisoiseaux's: whether there are any series detectives whose plot engines aren't murder-of-the-week.

[swan_tower]

The only examples I can think of are for or about kids, to one extent or another. Stories with adult detectives are usually mostly about murder, with the occasional non-murder plot for a change of pace.

[swan_tower]

I was completely unaware of those! I might need to check them out -- I'd be intrigued to see what they're like.

[sovay]

But it feels different to me when the entire raison d’etre of the series is to have people die, again and again, with the heroes only taking action after that’s happened.

May I point you toward this conversation?

[swan_tower]

Thank you! I haven't read much Christie, or much mystery in general really, but yes -- there's something inherently disturbing about the "dead person of the week" plot framework. And TV is especially limiting, because the 45-minute format means you really don't have much time to dwell on the victim, except insofar as their life constitutes a set of clues for the detective to assemble into a picture of their killer. Novels, even fairly short ones, have more leeway for that -- though not all of them necessarily use it.

[carbonel]

I think that's one of the reasons I took a break from watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. It's right there in the title that there's going to be a body in every episode, but I found it kind of grinding after a while.

[swan_tower]

I inhaled that show. Partly I think I wasn't as burned out on murder mysteries at the time, but partly it's the stuff going on around the murders: I could enjoy the character interactions and personal arcs, even when the plot was "oh look, another dead body." But with the Marple series, there are almost never any recurring characters other than Miss Marple herself, and (not surprisingly) no attempt to give her an arc across episodes; each one is self-contained. Which makes it a good deal more grinding for me.

[marycatelli]

The interesting things is that you don't have to have a murder to have a mystery -- they exist, though predominately in children's and in the short story form -- or even a crime -- though that's even more children's and short story.

[swan_tower]

Yes, I was thinking that, too (and said it to Sovay up above). I read very few mystery short stories, but have some awareness of the children's end of the genre -- Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, Encyclopedia Brown, Cam Jansen, etc. Those all manage to truck along without killing someone every time. But I think there's a profound feeling that the stakes of a non-murder plot are smaller and less important, so an adult investigating such crimes would seem kind of trivial.

[mrissa]

One thing that is different about S4 of VM that is not really a spoiler per se is that it is only eight episodes, so they basically spend the entire time on the main mystery. I tell you this because you may still want to watch it, and only eight episodes may make it easier to take than 22 would be that way, but it is definitely a difference from the previous seasons of "small crime of the week plus ongoing big crime."

[swan_tower]

True, and I sort of got that impression from the first episode (the only one I've seen so far). I'm okay with that as a structural decision; I do think "we will spend eight episodes unpacking this one murder plot" is going to register differently on me than "a new person dies every 45 minutes and then is forgotten as soon as that time is up."