June Prompt: The Beginnings of Mystery Stories

[Prof. Tarma Amelia Black]

The mystery story is as old as time, and maybe older. Who knows what the first mystery was in actuality? Did someone borrow someone's hand-chipped rock knife and put a gouge in the blade? Who did it? Was the puzzle solved? Yes, those are both mysteries!

Then we get to stories made up, which are puzzles, and then, sometimes, puzzles within puzzles.

You may write and answer either of these to participate in this topic:

1) Who is your favorite mystery author? When did you first read her, or him? What was the book? How old were you when you first read anything by this author? Have you re-read that book recently? Have you read other books by this author? Tell us more!

2) What is your favorite mystery story? Who wrote it? Why is it your favorite mystery? Is it by a favorite author (see #1 above) or is it a book (or story) which grabbed your attention and captivated your imagination without regard to whoever wrote it? Tell us about this story!

Your write-up needs to be at least 200 words to count towards Beans (and any possible award)! If you post a graphic, please keep it to 600x600 or smaller, and write a brief description underneath what the graphic depicts.

You will receive 20 Beans when you post. Any replies in here, through the school year, will be credited towards a possible award. As always, please keep to HOL appropriate sources for your post.

There is no deadline as such for these prompts but if you’d like it to count towards your chance of earning the award for a specific year, we’ll need it by the end of that school year. If you’re comfortable sharing, then post below. If not, email your story to us via hol.bookclub @ gmail.com (without the spaces).

Remember to click preview before posting to look for spelling and grammatical errors -- or see if auto-correct changed what you wanted to write to something entirely else!

[Dominick Salinas]

My favorite mystery story is actually In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It is a mystery/crime story stuck in this gray area between being a non-fiction story and a novel. It is completely based on the real murders of a family in Kansas and is true to the story throughout, but it is written in a novel-style, almost as though it were fiction. I love that about it because sometimes non-fiction pieces can be dry and boring, but this makes it feel like a regular story with characters and a plot.

I was actually introduced to this book in high school through an AP English course, but it turned out to be one of the best books I’ve read. I had no idea who Truman Capote was before this and honestly I haven’t read a single other book by him. This book was written in a spark of interest by real-life current events (at the time) and inspired him to create a thrilling written documentary following the story from murder, to investigation, to capturing the killers, and finally ending with the trial and conviction.

What I also think is super cool is that because Capote did all this basically in real-time along with the investigation, he became such an expert on the case that he was called to provide testimony on his findings, so while the novel itself probably leans more on the crime side than the the mystery side, for Capote it really was a big mystery that he was invested in from start to finish.


EDIT - 12.26.2022 - Beans sent - Tarma

[Hiya Debnath]

My favorite mystery author is Arthur Conan Doyle. I first read him when I received a few books from among the volumes of the Sherlock Holmes collection as a gift. I must have been like 12 years old back then. It was very captivating. I had a habit of reading books again and again and re-reading them every year to see if I would perceive them differently. I read those books at least once every year until I was 19 and no longer had time to. The best story in my opinion by this author was "The Hound of the Baskervilles". That was an amazing book. What I liked in this book was that the crimes seemed to be done by a supernatural entity throughout most of the book, but turned out to be the doing of someone very much natural in the end. The murderer here was a dog and the criminal was it's master.
Over time, I collected all the volumes and read all the Sherlock Holmes stories. Sherlock Holmes is my favorite detective. The narrative is compelling and gluing. The Sherlock Holmes detective mysteries are real page-turners and one keeps trying to solve the crime mysteries throughout the book but never succeeds because the criminal turns out to be someone unexpected in the end. It's like trying to solve a puzzle in the form of a story.


2.10.2024 - Beans sent - Tarma