For over a century, we've been obsessed with a particular flavor of murder mystery stories. Wealthy upper class people gather in country houses. There's a butler and people get dressed for dinner and talk about fox hunting and how vulgar Mrs. Stuffington's necklace is and so on. And someone dies.
This is a trope as old as murder mystery itself, and we've seen it played out many times. The Hound of the Baskervilles and and there was no one left Go to the board game “Clue”. For a very long time, people were discovering bodies in libraries.
On the surface, its continued appeal is mysterious. Society has moved on. We don't need to read about rich white people anymore. We have a diverse range of authors from different backgrounds (at least we're getting there). We can read gritty, realistic crime stories or follow tough, troubled cops. Solve murders of the kind that actually happened in real life. Why should we care about Mrs. Staffington's untimely death? But we do. When I told a friend that I was writing a novel about privileged college friends encountering a murderer in the snow, I was instantly captivated by the results.
Of course, there's also the obvious cozy charm. Outlandish murders of entitled individuals are much easier to read than gang-related crimes in our home cities. And the familiar pattern of whodunnits, where the resolution is all wrapped up in a bow at the end, comforts us in these post-pandemic times. But that's not all.
During the golden age of detective fiction, the 1920s and 1930s, murder mysteries reflected class society. There was a gap between the lives of the rich and the poor. But while writers were busy killing off the manor's fictional lords, the centuries-old social structure was under threat. The aristocrats were overwhelmed with debt, their country homes were in ruins, and it became difficult to find employees as local young men and young ladies tried their luck at offices, shops, and factories in nearby towns.
In addition, Europe was in turmoil. Kings and emperors were overthrown and socialism began to take root. In the United States and elsewhere, the Wall Street Crash destroyed the remnants of the Gilded Age. We were beginning to realize that it wasn't just the ruling class being policed.
But while social change was behind these murder mysteries, that was not the theme. His sovereignty was never achieved by rebellious gardeners brandishing copies. Das Capital. It was against criminal etiquette. In 1928, author SS Van Dine wrote a list of rules for detective stories, including the fact that the culprit should not be a servant. “It's too simple a solution,” he wrote. “The culprit must clearly be someone of high value, someone who would normally not be suspected.”
I mean, with very few exceptions, deacons never did that. The wealthy have always been responsible for their own downfall. And that's a major part of the appeal of upper-class mysteries, the idea that corruption often lurks beneath the privileged surface. Readers gradually uncover the characters' dark secrets, such as debts, infidelity, and jealousy, hidden behind their elegant clothes and fine manners. I've never considered myself a class warrior, but I enjoy seeing the secrets of the elite exposed.
Flash forward to the 2020s, and the world has changed beyond recognition. There is an air conditioner. There's TikTok. We have a mature democracy. However, our society remains deeply hierarchical, and there is a huge gulf between the rich and the poor. We are also in the midst of important, and often loud, conversations about equality, privilege, and how we think as a society.And during these discussions Knives Out Freed. A thoroughly modern country house mystery, it features the latest in upper-class suspects, including a beauty guru, neo-Nazis, various trust-fund kids, and Nepo's baby. And, in a clever twist, there's also poor, pure-hearted Martha, a modern-day butler who really thinks she's done it. The film quickly became an international hit.
Therefore, nothing has changed and our murder mystery reflects this. The characters in my book are twelve days of murder He belonged to an elitist murder mystery society at university, but it disbanded when one of them disappeared. Twelve years later, they reunited for one final murder mystery game. Characters include an aristocratic politician, an eccentric artist funded by a trust, an influential person, a banker, and the daughter of an oligarch. They all have secrets that can corrupt and destroy them. And, like the stories of golden ages past, the appeal lies in seeing how the mighty fall.
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