He’s Alive!

“He’s Alive!” While playing Victor Frankenstein in Universal Studio’s 1932 movie, Colin Clive actually said, “It’s alive.” I’m taking a bit of poetic license to share with my readers that I have embarked on a study to seek out mystery stories without a murder. Why? Because I write non-murder mysteries or NMMs. And although most mysteries do involve a character’s demise, I maintain an author can write an exciting, baffling, and engaging “mystery” that need not include a corpse.

Mystery: “a genre of literature whose stories focus on a puzzling crime, situation, or circumstance that needs to be solved.”

Literaryterms.net

Literaryterms.net describes the mystery as “a genre of literature whose stories focus on a puzzling crime, situation, or circumstance that needs to be solved.”

The definition says nothing about murder, and many other crimes (and non-criminal situations) are just as meaningful and worthy of extraordinary reasoning and detective skills.

Several well-known mystery authors agree with me. For example, I refer you to The Red-Headed League by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this short story, the legendary detective, Sherlock Holmes, knits together clues and thwarts a crime that requires recruiting men who apparently have nothing more in common than red hair. No one dies. No one even comes close to meeting his Maker, a distinction not apparent in John Dickson Carr’s NMM, A Footprint in the Sky. So, there you have it. Two mystery stories by renowned authors without a murder, and there are many other examples.

And so, at least for the time being, my mysteries will continue to entertain, puzzle, and hold readers spellbound without requiring a call to the undertaker.

Until next time.