Murder

Crime captivates the world. Crime fiction and dramatizations of real crime take up rows upon rows in the bookstore, hours on the television every week. Some people disdain pat whodunnits, while others (like myself) find their predictability and cheerful acceptance of the facts to be comforting. Others prefer true crime, delighting to stare death in the face and ponder the existence of criminals among us. I recently finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Whole courses can be given on crime fiction, focusing on the phenomenon of popular culture (I should know, I once took one). This particular book is quite perfect in that it reproduces the comforts of a nearly bloodless whodunnit but with the upsetting notion that perfectly well anybody--even somebody we feel intimate with--could murder.