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The Pleasures of Reading Mystery Stories
People read mystery stories for a variety of reasons. Some read them to put themselves to sleep, others to keep awake; some to solve the puzzles they present, others for the excitement of the chase. But nearly everybody reads mystery stories for one prime quality: they are good entertainment.
Perhaps the most striking illustration of the place the "whodunit" has to occupy in modern life occurred in London during the great blitz of 1940. Nightly, at the entrances to the fetid underground shelters, portable "raid libraries" were set up to supply - by popular demand - mystery stories and nothing else.
I like, too, the suggestion of a distinguished mystery story addict, Mr. Somerset Maugham, who feels that modern readers have turned in such numbers to this form of fiction because here alone can they always be sure of a novel with tells a story. And it was another famous English writer, Philip Guedalla, who was quoted by Dorothy Sayers as calling the detective story "the sport of noble minds."
It is marketing for the Dollar Mystery Guild book club, but summarizes why I prefer a mystery story to taking a chance on what is called General Fiction.
