Do you like reading mysteries?

Generally yes, but I’m picky. Not all mysteries are worth reading. I like police procedurals more than horror-based mysteries.

Early Jonathan Kellerman stuff was good, when he was fresh. Now he’s repeating himself. And so on.

Depends on the style and author, whether I enjoy it, in what way, and whether I try to figure it out or not.

I don’t much like formulaic, unconvincing, or artificial mystery stories. I do like amusing and creative ones. In general I prefer ones that are closer to adventure stories than mysteries. So I like Sherlock Holmes (if you read the stories in particular, Holmes is about as much a man of action responding to situations as he is a solver of mysteries, and I’m usually much more interested in the former). And I have enjoyed many noir detective adventures, where there are thugs and gangsters and scoundrels to deal with – again, more about what I think of adventure situations rather than mysteries to solve. I also like humor and likable clever playful protagonists such as Ms. Marple and Lord Peter Wimsy and Hercule Poirot. And I rather enjoyed And Then There Were None, Christie’s mystery where everyone’s invited and trapped by a villain, and they begin to suspect each other as they die off one by one… again, I think, because I see it as an adventure situation.

I do. But that doesn’t necessarily mean detective fiction or thriller novels.

A couple of examples :
My Dark Places – James Elroy
Life’s Edge – Carl Zimmer

I loved these books! Both nonfiction, but written in a style uses suspense to tell a story that mixes past, present, and future.

I love to read (and watch movies and TV shows) mysteries.

Right now, I have just started one in a series that I have been reading over the last several years (I read a lot of books). The author is Laura Childs, and she has several different mystery series. This one is set in a tea shop in Charleston. They are light, delightful, and fun. Nothing gruesome. This is the list of books from her Tea Shop Mysteries:

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/laura-childs/tea-shop-mysteries/

She has another, equally delightful mystery series set in a diner/knitting shop called The Cackleberry Club mystery series:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/AOB/a-cackleberry-club-mystery

These particular books are wonderful if you like reading about tea, or knitting, or strong female leads, and friendship. The series all feature a small cast of characters that are in each of the stories, friends and co-workers, or relatives of the main character.

I also love to read (and watch) anything that has to do with Sherlock Holmes.

And we watch boatloads of great mystery series on Netflix. I have found a lot of the non-American shows to be much better than the typical flashy American shows. But I will warn you that some are pretty gritty and gruesome, but some are more like the tea shop stories, fun and light, but still great mysteries. So light, and dark. I like both.

Some of the best ones we have watched over the last few months and years are:

Deadwind (from Finland):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadwind

The Murdoch Mysteries (from Canada):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murdoch_Mysteries

Black Spot (from France):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Spot_(TV_series)

Father Brown Mysteries (from England):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Brown_(2013_TV_series)

The Valhalla Murders (from Iceland):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Valhalla_Murders

Midsomer Murders (from England):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midsomer_Murders

Not really. I had a thing about cheapo gumshoe detective stories when I was younger, but I don’t know if you’d call those mysteries. Lines like. “He opened the desk drawer and opened his fourth pack of Luckies. He was about to take another swig of his cheap whiskey, when she walked in, looking like one of those men’s magazine bunnies. I ain’t talking the Energizer rabbit”.

I love mysteries and detective novels. As a child I read all Trixie Belden books and as a teenager I read Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie. As an adult I’ve read all of Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, Bill Pronzini and Sue Grafton. I’m currently into reading detective novels by Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Laura Lippman and Rachel Howzell Hall. I have a larger list but I won’t bore you.

I love the twists and turns and the psychology of the different characters. I also like to try to figure out who “done it”.

I did when I was a kid, but as I got older I got frustrated by authors who witheld the one telling piece of evidence until the end.
I like the books by Kathy Reich’s. I enjoy the flow of her writing, and her use of characters, but we can be absolutely confident of her science. I never read details of maggots, flies, bones, escavation, etc.and feel like she makes it up for effect.
She knows her topic, and if she needs science she doesn’t know well, she has friends in all sorts of expertise she can tap.

I appreciate she doesn’t often take events in her work beyond the realm of believability, except the weird series she wrote for teens. I found that fun too. She didn’t write it is such a way which talks down to kids.

I’m not currently reading anybody, as I am writing like mad my own work in hopes of soon publishing an assortment of works.

I think the best “mystery” movie I have ever seen, was actually a murder mystery wrapped up in a western, “Five Card Stud”, with Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum. One of Dinos best performances in my opinion, and really entertaining. Dino plays a boozing gambler in his usual amiable, “Who me?” way, that no one could have pulled off but himself. Mitchum is a stodgy Bible Thumping preacher and they both caught up in tryong to solve the mysterious murder of a cowboy. Great film with a kind of spahgetti western atmosphere, but to my mind, much better with Dino with his, “Who, me?” modesty in the reluctant hero role, as opposed to Eastwoods macho man posturing. Catch it of you can..Great western as well as great who done it.

I used to love “pure” mystery—you know, the kind of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christine. But as I got older those mysteries lost their appeal. First, it stops being exciting once you know the detective is so intelligent he/she would bring the mystery to light in no time and wouldn’t get harmed in the process. Second, I have grown out of the simple bad vs evil formula. Sure, a lot of the criminals have a tragic backstory, but their backstory always seems a bit forced to me. And besides it’s already too late to make me sympathize with the villains when the villain’s motive is already pushed to the end of the story.

Mystery doesn’t have to be a mystery crime or criminal that requires a brilliant mind to investigate. It can be something more unusual like how a crime is committed or how a detective defeats a criminal. I recently watched a movie called Panique. It’s about a dandy guy with an ugly heart who kills an old lady just for some money. We are shown right at the beginning who the criminal is and how he committed the crime. So what is the mystery here? There is this weird old man who no one likes and just seems to live in his own world. But for some reason he knows who the criminal is, and has proof of what he did. Who is this old man? And what proof does he have exactly? That is the mystery that keeps viewers excited.