From The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore

On why people like mysteries (from pages 255-256):

“I think I love the idea that problems have solutions.  I think that’s the appeal of  mystery stories. . . .  As opposed to  a world that’s random. . . . Not knowing is the worst outcome for any mystery story, because we need to believe that everything in the world is knowable.  Justice is optional, but answers, at least, are mandatory.”

FD wonders if these attitudes are colored by the studies of the author, who has a degree in religious history.  Anyway, he also says (page 287),

“He’d read thousands of  happy endings and thousands of sad ones, and he had found himself satisfied with both.  What he had not read, he now realized, were the moments after the endings. . . .     . . . he had never before thought that find one [an answer/solution to a mystery], and then having to go on living with it, might be worse.”

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