Jami Worries About Mystery Writers

I'm not a huge fan of mystery novels. While I absolutely adore the Fletch and Flynn series by Gregory MacDonald and I read the Sue Grafton alphabet series, I much prefer true crime as long as it is well written (read Ann Rule if you want really excellent, expert writing about crime). True crime is useful: we can learn how some crimes could have been prevented, how justice was served or averted, and why people commit crimes to begin with. Fiction crimes are not as useful, IMO, because reading about how an imaginary person solves an imaginary crime most likely isn't going to help me. The other main problem I have is with the murders, because let's face it, most of these are murders, is how they are written. A good writer, I believe, can write a fascinating story around what we would call and "ordinary" murder. You know, a shooting, a stabbing, your basic baseball bat to the head. However, one of the trends seems to be coming up with more gruesome, creative and horrific ways to off your victim, and to me that's both piss-poor imagination and lazy story-telling. I just put down a book that I won't be picking back up because the detailed description of the attack on the second victim, more disgustingly brutalized than the first, actually made me sad and sick and I couldn't bear to read about what would happen to the third. Not because I am so queasy about violence, but because someone spent time thinking this up - for entertainment. Like the torture-porn movies currently so popular, I find this more than distasteful. I see this not as a different type of creativity, but a lack of it. And I worry about the psyche of someone who spends time thinking about newer, more awful ways to kill someone. In one of the Fletch novels, victims are thrown off a balcony and strangled. Yes, it's a crime, but it's also not exactly new or interesting. I'm sure that most experienced homicide detectives have seen at least one of those. What makes it a good story is how the crime is solved, the uncovering and piecing together of evidence. How does motive fit in, how are the players all connected? Less than 100 pages into the book I just stopped reading, I could tell there would be none of this. The killer, in fact, had already been discovered, so while they still had to prove it and all, blah blah blah, there was already rehashing of crimes and a surviving victim having nightmares where she relived her crimes or discussed her various scars or injuries. Ick. It can't be good for your brain to read that, or worse, to ponder it the way you must to write it. To research how to slay people and think up new ways to hurt them longer, or more disturbingly. Not plotting out an original story with a murder in it, with new twists on old motives or interesting clues and a good way to put the puzzle together, but just unique ways to cause pain and ultimately end someone's life - this is what bothers me. I guess there's not much point, except that I can't see a point in reading, writing or watching that sort of thing, and I don't think it's good for your soul. That's all.