crime, comfort and tropes
One of my favourite comfort read genres is crime, particularly murder mysteries. Sometimes I feel strange about that- why are books about murder and horrible crimes comforting? It's a strange balance, and it's the reason I tend to shy away from true crime and towards the milder end of the crime spectrum. I think I really enjoy crime because it's so plot driven. When reading is hard or my brain is foggy what I usually want is something fast paced and absorbing that I won't be able to put down until I reach the end. It's a puzzle that I want to solve, or have solved for me in most cases. There are some other things that make crime novels a good read, and a good comfort read. Firstly, crime fiction always comes to a resolution, the mystery is solved, the bad guys found out and usually punished. I was just reading an interview with Tana French where she says "mystery... is a genre very much based on morality" and I think that's true. Sometimes that plays...