The Appeal of the Mystery Genre

Question One:
At the beginning of the semester I wrote in my personal information handout that I felt what made the mystery genre stand apart from all other genres was its ability to keep the reader/watcher on the edge of their seat wanting more information. That mysteries are unpredictable, making the reader/watcher stay until the end because they must know the ending. I still feel this way, but my understanding of this concept has certainly evolved and sharpened.
First and foremost, the concept of keeping the audience on the edge of their seat wanting more is driven by epistemic sequencing. This concept, described by Talmy, is the idea of “who knows what when” and is very crucial to the mystery genre and in keeping the audience wanting more (Talmy, 473; PDF 12). We see epistemic sequencing in nearly every mystery story, Talmy describes epistemic structure as a “system by which the author undertakes such narrative actions as setting up a mystery, leaving clues as well as false trails, introducing a succession of seeming explanations that do not prove out, and delaying explanations until the final resolution at the end” (473; PDF 12). This can clearly be seen in the first two episodes of Harper's Island that we have viewed in class. “Who knows what when” is absolutely pivotal to keeping the plot line going and especially to draw the watcher in. As the audience at home we see more than the characters within the show see and this is what keeps us entertained. In the case of Harper's Island, after the first two episodes we know who has been murdered and where, while the characters have no idea. This is incredibly important in the viewer playing detective and keeping us on the edge of our seat. It helps us to think: who will find ...

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...nly Sherlock Holmes who knows that word “Rache” means revenge in German and only Holmes has the knowledge of Mormons that helps him solve the case (Conan-Doyle). In The Murders in Rue Morgue only Dupin can figure out that not all the windows are nailed shut and that the hair that was found is certainly not human hair and the language that the neighbors heard was not a language at all. Dupin, the detective, is the only person who realizes that the knot was a sailor's knot and is able to wrap it all together that an orangutang committed the murders by accident because he was copying his owner, a sailor (Poe)
By looking at 19th century artifacts, I have learned that the detective is the central character within the mystery genre, without them the story could not be told. Without the detective the blanks would not be filled and the audience would never find resolution.