Murder Mysteries

The murder mystery genre includes many sub-genres. A sampling is listed below. The classifications into sub-genres are not uncontroversial. One mystery writer proposed classifying mysteries as simply as "with cats" and "without cats".

One theory of the appeal murder mysteries is that they emphasize the importance of individual lives by the attention they give to identifying those who end lives. I suspect that most readers are seeking brisk, escapist plotting, and an intriguing puzzle, rather that moral uplift.

An incomplete list of mystery types

Mysteries and other genre fiction may give insight into the sociology of their time not available from more self-conscious literary fiction. Now put down that Harry Bosch and get back to work.