This short item will start out as an observation and end with an appeal.

Within the past month, four or five different acquaintances have suggested I set this artsy photojournalism shtick aside and write the one type of book they’re certain will sell-sell-sell: A mystery novel.

I thanked each of these well-meaning friends and relatives, but gave each of them one reason (the same reason to each) why I’ve never wanted to write a mystery novel.

I hate mystery novels.

Specifically, I hate the central conceit behind the formula whodunit story–the wanton slaughter of human life treated as a quaint li’l intellectual puzzle, all clean and light and dispassionate.

I happen to believe violent crime, at its burning-cold heart, is the ultimate act of dehumanization. The killer, rapist, or mugger objectifies his/her victim as a mere thing in the way of the criminal’s goals?and objectifies himself/herself as a mere beast (no, as something less than a beast, as a mere machine cut off from the continuum of life).

And the writers (and readers) of formula whodunits, by this view, are, at least as a momentary expression of escapism, vicariously sharing in this soulless attitude.

The murder-victim character typically is both dehumanized by the killer and by the author, created to be nothing but a plot activator. The killer character typically is treated with slightly more empathy than the victim, but is still ultimately little more than an elusive safari prey, to be tracked down and bagged by the clever detective hero.

I know you’ll tell me there are mysteries out there that aren’t this inhumane in their depiction of inhumanity. But the whodunit authors who take homicide seriously (cf. Raymond Chandler) end up depicting acts and attitudes of sad, futile nihilism. Emotionally accurate, perhaps, but awfully grim-n’-depressin’.

Longtime readers of this site know I believe David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks was, and is, my all-time fave TV drama and one of the most true-to-life portrayals of Northwest life ever filmed. Yes, it had a murder mystery as its central plotline. But part of what made me love it is that Lynch and Frost deliberately broke several of the rules of murder mysteries (thusly dooming the series to a short network run). The murder victims (at least most of them—we never really got to know the likes of Bernard Renault) were human beings with good and bad sides and personalities and everything, whose demises were treated with tragic weight. The killers, particularly the schizo Leland Palmer (a medium-time sleazeball even when in his “right” mind), were also humanized. They were still violent criminals, with or without the excuse of demonic possession, but they were also victims in their own way; victims of their own dark ambitions and vanities.

But Twin Peaks succeeded as a great story because it failed as a mystery-puzzle. If I were to attempt a story that could be commercially marketed as a “mystery,” it’d have to be one that had no successful homicides in it.

There are plenty of precedents for this type of bloodless investigation yarn (Nancy Drew, Cookie’s Fortune, various stories investigating such lesser crimes as jewel heists and art forgeries).

If any of you have any favorites in this area, or wish to tell me I’m totally wrong about the whole premise of this piece, lemme know.