• Prema Jayakumar

A lot of people have a set routine to start a day. After a glance through the headlines of newspaper(s), they go to their favourite puzzle, be it a cross-word, a wordle, a sudoku or more complicated things. Once that is done, and they have solved it, they feel the day has started well. What is it that prompts adult human beings who do have other things to do to indulge in these activities? For one, there is the purely intellectual satisfaction of pitting your brain against that of the puzzle-setter and enjoying the feeling of victory when you have solved whatever it is. A challenge has been accepted and you have won. It is no small satisfaction. And nowadays it has the support of the know-alls of the internet who tell you that exercising your brain in this way keeps at bay the ills of memory loss and what not. Anyway, it is a pleasure that quite a few of indulge in with the additional smugness of being health-conscious. (Learning a new language or mathematics would be even more effective where exercising your brain is concerned, but that requires more commitment and so fewer people indulge in those activities!)
Another sort of puzzle that attracts a large number is the mystery novel. Here one cannot really claim that one reads them to exercise one’s brain. What is so fascinating about stories of murder and mayhem that it is such a popular genre of fiction and has such a following? Why are we drawn to these descriptions of gore and violence even when we are not really blood-thirsty people? It is not just the pleasure of solving some intellectual puzzle. It is something beyond that. P. D. James, a writer of detective stories, who was also involved in social issues regarding mental health, says, ‘What the detective story is about is not murder, but the restoration of order.’
I am a serious fan of detective fiction. I knew quite a few people with whom I can have hour-long conversations about various fictional characters ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Jack Reacher and everyone in between.
Detective stories and mysteries add another dimension to puzzle-solving. It is not just pitting your wit against the writer, guessing who the culprit, the thief or the murderer is, it is also the cathartic effect of seeing wrongs righted and truth triumphing over lies and evasions. The hero, now that the old concept of hero who is pure of heart and has no flaws no longer holds good, we’ll call him the protagonist, is not a compendium of virtues, he is flawed, a Lancelot rather than a Galahad. Usually a man of ideals but very few illusions about the people he is trying to help.
Raymond Chandler whose fictional detective Philip Marlowe, is one of the first of the ‘hard-boiled’ detectives one comes across in this genre explains how his protagonist’s character evolved. He talks of the mean streets of the city where people are terrified and in need of help and says, ‘Down these streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither terrified nor afraid. He must be a complete man and a common man and an uncommon man. He must be a man of honour.’ This fictional detective, even when not the tough hero of Chandler but the women who knit and gossip and solve mysteries in the books of other authors, have one characteristic in common. They restore order to a situation that is disorderly.
I think this is the attraction of puzzles and ultimately the mysteries that detective fiction solves. Unsolved puzzles niggle at you and so do unsolved mysteries. You need to know that the words and numbers aligned themselves properly and stood where they should. You need to know that where there was a crime and injustice was done, the mystery of the crime has been properly solved, the falsely accused innocents cleared of the slur and the real culprit identified. This restores the right order of things, and the world can go on its way with at least this corner back to normal.
It is this restoration of normalcy, of balance, that the solving of mysteries and puzzles achieve and obviously, we need to feel that order can be restored and chaos does not take over.