by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

Here is a mystery in itself: Why do so many of us read so many mysteries? Googling the topic, I discovered that a high school student had asked a similarly phrased question — perhaps in search of information for an essay assignment — at the eNotes.com website. It drew lots of thoughtful responses, including a link to the scholarly paper “Why Use Detective Fiction in the AP Classroom” by Eric J. Pollock and Hye Won Chun.

Solving the mystery
So, what are the reasons for this compulsion? Here are some conclusions based on Pollock and Chun's insights, comments posted at eNotes, an interview with mystery writer Sue Grafton and my own ruminations.

Readers participate in mystery novels. Mysteries inspire “active” reading in which readers interact with the text, seeking clues and trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together. This is intellectually challenging.

Mystery novels are therapeutic. Readers gain a sense of control from helping to solve mysteries. It gives us a sense of control, order and closure.

Mysteries are strong on action. While some critics might say that characterization in mysteries is secondary to plot, many of us might disagree and say that isn't true of compelling mystery novels. Characterization and plotting both propel the novels of great mystery writers, such as Stephen L. Carter, Margaret Coel, Tana French, Karin Fossum, Sue Grafton, P.D. James, Dennis Lehane, the late Ralph M. McInerny, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley and Ian Vasquez. By allowing us to understand well-defined characters, these authors help readers understand the reasons behind their actions.

Readers develop relationships with characters.Some mystery writers, such as Vasquez, return to familiar locales from novel to novel but lose appealing central characters along the way. Their plots make repeat performances impossible. This can leave readers mourning favorite characters, such as Riley James in Vasquez’s Mr. Hooligan, who is a likable amalgam of charm, kindness, good looks and keen intelligence despite his criminal career.

But many mysteries are written as series in which the same characters survive from one scrape to another. As Pollock and Chun note in their essay, “Why Use Detective Fiction in the AP Classroom,” this allows readers to revisit characters for whom they feel an “affinity.”

It seems to me that many of us enjoy getting into the heads of the fictional detectives with whom we spend time. We grow to know them so well that we might even like to have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine with some. We know who would be welcoming as well as who would be distant.

Visiting with fictional favorites
I know from repeated visits to their fictional worlds that Professor Roger Knight of Ralph McInerny’s Notre Dame mysteries or Father John O’Malley of Margaret Coel’s Wind River Reservation series would respond warmly to a knock on the door.

But despite being cordial, many of my favorite mystery characters would be coolly reserved. That includes Kinsey Milhone (Grafton) with whom I would enjoy sharing peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches, a surprisingly tasty culinary oddity that pops up in each of Grafton's alphabetically-titled mysteries.

Inspector Adam Dalgliesh (James) of Scotland Yard and private investigator V.I. Warshawski (Paretsky) would radiate a similar professional detachment designed to protect them from the irritations, aches and deepest pains of social interaction. In contrast, Dublin undercover detectives Frank Mackey and Cassie Maddox (French) might bluff sociability.

Lehane's Dorchester, Massachussets, private eye Patrick Kenzie and his wife Angie (former last name Gennaro) simply would not be in the mood to chat about the mystery business after all the bad things that they have had to face. Neither college president LeMaster Carlyle (Carter) nor Easy Rawlins (Mosley), an unemployed mechanic turned custodian, would warm easily to those outside their respective African American circles — LeMaster’s upper class East Coast elites and Easy’s blue collar friends from the post WW II mean streets of Los Angeles.

Better to be a fly on their walls.

Participating in bravery vicariously
Often, but not always, mystery novels allow readers to brush shoulders with the greatness of  acting bravely and doing the right thing. Authors are not immune to the magnetism of their creations. In interviews posted on Grafton's website and at North Carolina's Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, the  author says that Kinsey Milhone reflects some of her own traits but that the characteristic to which she is most drawn is one that isn’t part of her regular life. She likes how Kinsey “represents the ‘heroic,’ an aspect of my nature which seldom gets called upon in the course of my ordinary life.” I suspect that this is true for most of Grafton's readers as well.

Great mystery novels take us into the hustle and away from the humdrum; they give us a break from our own limitations and locales. For at least a few hours, they tidy up and set aside our anxieties about the world’s messiness. And, sometimes, they make us sigh, “Whew! I’m glad that’s not my nightmare.”

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

This issue’s (January 9, 2012) blue-plate special recreates the peanut butter and dill pickle sandwiches that are a staple of private investigator Kinsey Milhone in Sue Grafton’s bestselling alphabetically titled mystery series that currently stretches from A is for Alibi to V is for Vengeance.

Peanut butter and pickle sandwiches  “always make me swoon,” said mystery writer Sue Grafton In a 2004 interview with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library (CML) of Charlotte, North Carolina.  Grafton means “swoon” in a positive way.

The sandwich topic arose when CML asked Grafton about characteristics the author shares with her central character. Kinsey’s prefers fast food, meals at the neighborhood dive — a Hungarian restaurant run by the culinary dominatrix Rosie — and being invited into the kitchen of her elderly yet dapper neighbor, Henry, for freshly baked bread. When she cooks at home, Kinsey's repertoire is limited to sandwiches filled either with pimento cheese spread or peanut butter and dill pickles.

I began reading Grafton when she wasn’t far into the alphabet. (She is the only author I have waited hours to meet, standing in line with hundreds of other readers at a bookstore.) Years later, during a pregnancy marked by a severe craving for pickles, I decided to test Kinsey’s PB&P special and discovered it was delectable.

What is that fancy word food writers use? Piquant? Yes, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the sandwich was marked by “tang, zest, zing.” The sweet-tart combination sang to my taste buds! Here is a recipe I have contrived.

Kinsey Milhone's  PB and Pickle Special

2 slices white sandwich bread
2 heaping tablespoons of creamy peanut butter
6 dill pickle slices (hamburger-style slices that are round)

Spread peanut butter generously on each piece of bread. Place pickle slices in two rows of three each on one piece of the bread (not to imply that Kinsey is obsessive compulsive, but she likes order). Place other peanut-butter-slathered slice of bread on top. Never ever add marshmallow fluff or other sweet embellishments that would obscure the sweet-tart contrast of PB and dill pickle. For culinary flare, cut the sandwich in half diagonally.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws, by Margaret Drabble, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010,
ISBN 978-0-54-738609-6
Available at Powell's Books

When stuck between a rock and the sheer high face of a seemingly insurmountable problem, there are a number of ways that I cope. These include watching quality television, reading and working puzzles. I'd like to cry, but I'm not good at it.

Sopranos and Mad Men
One year, to redirect the anger I felt about unfair treatment at work, I visited the library to check out DVDs of the entire, breathtakingly violent Sopranos TV series. My husband and I were comforted that Tony and Carmela Soprano’s hellish lives were not our own.

Last autumn, we found respite from the  not-so-great depression (GD II) in similar trips to the library for DVDs of Mad Men. We were sucked into the dark of Don and Betty Draper’s 1960s home and propelled into the brightness, creativity and corruption of Madison Avenue as we blended a crazy cocktail of old episodes with the new season.

Margaret Drabble
More often, I seek a different kind of fiction therapy at the library, bringing home piles of novels. I admit to being what I think of as a lopsided reader. Except for the endless factual research I do for my writing, I seldom read non-fiction.

 Yet I have been drawn to a number of non-fiction books in the past year, including Margaret Drabble’s unusual The Pattern in the Carpet, A Personal History with Jigsaws, which I discovered — where else — at my local library.

Drabble wanted to create a glossy, harmless history of jigsaw puzzles and other games that would avoid painful family controversies. She reasoned that thinking about puzzles and games would aid her escape from the anxiety and cabin fever of helping nurse her husband through cancer.

It did, but not before transmuting into a difficult memoir, involving recollections about an eccentric but beloved spinster aunt devoted to jigsaw puzzles.

Puzzle therapy
Previous to discovering The Pattern in the Carpet, I theorized that people are drawn to puzzles, in part, as a form of therapy — a way to sooth themselves by succeeding at putting together the pieces of a picture, reorganizing the letters in a word jumble or decoding a cryptic message.

Drabble validated my thinking, while at the same time showing that any topic can lead to turmoil. However, as she wrote, “Jigsaws are a useful antidote to anger.”

Similarly, solving a crossword puzzle can help one avoid cross words and completing the daily Sudoku can lend a feeling of logic to the illogical, disturbing days of GDII. A walk to the library doesn’t hurt either.

by Alicia Rudnicki, Library Mix

The Totally Made-Up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish, by Claudia Mills, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008, ISBN 0-374-37696-4
Available from Powell's Books

I rubbed my eyelids till they were raw today, crying as I finished reading a children’s novel,The Totally Made-up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish, by Claudia Mills.

 Divorce symbolizes secession
I cried for the misery of Amanda, whose forever-arguing parents were seceding from their marriage and tearing their family asunder. I cried for Polly, the 1860s farm girl in the fictional diary that Amanda was writing for her U.S. Civil War class project. Poor Polly! One brother was fighting for the North and the other for the South.

 I cried for the more than 600,000 soldiers who died in that war and for the estimated 100,000 soldiers under the age of 15, many of whom joined up for adventure.

A battalion of fifth graders
 Finally, I cried for the earnest student teacher I once was, leading a battalion of fifth graders through a Civil War unit.

 I involved my school's art, music, and library teachers in the project. The students painted abstract flags, sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and listened to the sad, sad story of how little Todd Lincoln heard about his father’s assassination. (He was across the street from the Ford Theatre watching a children’s play in another theatre.)

As part of a math lesson, we simulated the cramped quarters of a slave ship, my students huddling shoulder to shoulder on the floor, with their knees hugged to their chests.

 Using the writings of actual children, everyday people, and historical figures who experienced the Civil War, my students made dramatic presentations during literacy.

Hard tack and Ken Burns
We visited another classroom where a Civil War reenactor demonstrated how soldiers of the time dressed and lived. Nobody liked the hardtack biscuits he shared.

At night, I watched the Ken Burns’ PBS series The Civil War over and over to understand what had happened and to bring life to the lecture portion of my instruction.

But…the teacher whose class I was sharing didn’t like the project. She said that some of the students had complained about spending too much time on the Civil War. She said the history lesson should be the history lesson and that math, literacy, art, and library time should be kept separate.

Our partnership erupted into a civil war of sorts. To avoid enlisting students on either side of our battle, I withdrew to work in another classroom.

Bittersweet fiddling
So today, it all came back to me, and I fell in love with Mills’ fictional character, Amanda MacLeish. She is the kind of student who would likely never say that her teacher was spending too much time on the Civil War; the kind of student who connects past and present and enjoys "you were there" learning.

I also fell in love with James, Amanda’s biracial friend who plays a violin solo of the haunting theme song, Ashokan Farewell,  from the Ken Burns series for their fifth grade Civil War concert.

You can hear the tune that James played. Embedded below is a brother and sister duet of the bittersweet Ashokan Farewell that I found on YouTube.