Something has to be lovely...

The Residence in The Residence

....no? A murder mystery is the opposite of true crime.

When we are watching Only Murders in the Building, or Death and Other Details, or Knives Out, or the various interpretations of Sherlock Holmes-

The mystery comes SECOND in interest to how they are telling the story.

Only Murders is a murder mystery about intergenerational friendships and developing a community of previously lonely people uniting under a shared experience.

Death and Other Details (so far) is about the manipulation of memory, about shouldering the responsibility of other people's secrets.

Knives Out (and Glass Onion) are about wealthy abusers getting whats coming to them, but SPECIFICALLY it's doing so in a tactile, textural way.

And the current set of Agatha Cristie films, which have an underlying theme of class disparities and how post war economics affect the well to do vs the well to don't.

And what makes or breaks a murder mystery for me is-

-is this a story? Or is this an excuse to show our protagonist being extraordinarily smart?

Not to STILL be taking pot shots at BBC Sherlock in 2024, but what made that show uninteresting to me is that it was more about the murder than it was about the way the story was told. Vs Elementary, which was a lot about addiction, vs Enola Holmes which was much more about putting you in a setting, vs the RDJ Sherlock films which don't hit 'mystery' to me so much as 'swash swash buckle buckle.'

Mysteries are a medium with which we paint a whole picture out of a series of seemingly unconnected vignettes. Connecting those vignettes is an immersive experience.

True crime is a narration of events that often does not serve that purpose- much of the intrigue comes from the open-ended nature of 'what if this happened to me?' Which may be interesting for some, but it is not how I prefer stories to be told.

But I am LIVING for this kind of mystery renaissance we're going through because I feel like the genre is really hitting in terms of storytelling, in aesthetics, and frankly just... mood.

I like it when I'm looking at a painting and when the light hits it right I can see the artists sketch underneath. I like looking at the sheet music to songs I know even though I can't read the clef. I like looking at the floor plans of a building I've been in and maps to trails I walk often.

Storytelling is a raw material like clay.