What True Detective does that most mysteries don't

There are mysteries like Burning, which suggest that all mysteries are inherently layered, ultimately unknowable and perhaps even meaningless.

Then there are mysteries like, well, most mysteries, which would have us believe that dogged humans are capable of divining and articulating correct solutions.

And then there's True Detective, which suggests that mysteries are solvable, but humans lack the imagination to define them, the courage to pursue them, and the acuity to recognize the solution if we ever even find it. And yet we're incapable of walking away from them. We chase mysteries because they give our pathetic, circular lives structure and story.

It just wrecks me. Every single season.

Things I thought after rewatching Frailty

1. "I can't believe how accurate my memory of this movie is." Typically I forget scenes and transpose lines. But my recall of Frailty was almost shot-for-shot accurate. I suppose that's because it's a movie I've replayed in my mind constantly since the day I saw it.

2. "I wish I was watching this movie with an extremely religious person." The end of Frailty left me absolutely floored. For awhile I considered it one of cinema's greatest twists. But the second time through, I saw how completely Paxton telegraphed the solution. So was Frailty a twist film at all? Or did my secular paradigm make it impossible for me to put the clues together?

Owl & Raccoon #3. Get it first, get it free.

Not With A Bang, the next Owl & Raccoon locked room mystery, is just about wrapped up. So this is a reminder that everybody on my email list gets a free advance reader copy. Subscribe in the sidebar of this blog before July 17 if you're interested.

"All our misery is better than the abyss"

[Ed. - This post mentions scenes from The Midnight Promise, The Papers Of Tony Veitch, and Eight Million Ways to Die. No spoilers per se, but enough info that if you really want to be surprised, you ought to skip it.]

Even the best lives are stupid. You're born into a situation you have no way to choose and no power to change. You spend your weekdays getting ready for a job you'll probably hate, and your weekends chasing girls who'll probably hate you. You grow up and work yourself rotten, only to come home to a mess of bills informing you the money you thought you made was never really yours. And at the end, you die.

And that's if you're lucky. You're not, you get born in the middle of a genocide. You have to wield a machete by the time you're six.

What makes crime fiction so important is the value it places on existence. Life must matter if a detective is willing to plow through disgusting scraps of evidence purely to ascertain the circumstances of its end.

Every mystery has its eureka, when the puzzle becomes a portrait. But the best also include an affirmation that all the misery of the preceding pages was merely water and every life is worth living.

That's how you get the genre's enduring images. Jack Laidlaw pulling a small, old woman from a cab queue to dance to the random notes made by a homeless man's harmonica. Matthew Scudder standing up at his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and bursting into tears, admitting the nature of his soul. Isabella telling Crockett, "Leave now. Life is short. Time is luck."

Time is luck. Never is that clearer than when you wade among the dead.

Nowhere, in any book, is the affirmation so unforgettable and moving as in The Midnight Promise, the first and only book by Zane Lovitt. The book is compiled from ten loosely related cases solved by Australian private inquiry agent John Dorn. The first couple are mild and slow and devoid of much in the way of actual crime. The mysteries get grittier, the violence more sickening, and Dorn more desperate as he searches to satisfy his self-centered death wish.

But oh, those final pages! Dorn gasping, body burning, soaked by blood and denial, paused in the throes of a futile gesture that has meaning only to the extent that it reminds us to hold on to our hopes and fight against all death, even in the face of certain defeat.

I gave The Midnight Promise four stars on Goodreads and then, after a couple weeks of dreams and thought, went back and re-rated it up to five. And then I sat down to write this post. It's a book I won't forget. One that screams loud, all our misery is better than the abyss.

Eleven crime writing cornerstones

In this Amazon list, I write about the books you have to read to understand crime fiction. And I take a stab at guessing which may have inspired some of my favorite modern authors.