Detective fiction is the purest literature we have:
the cycle of creation-fall-redemption.
The author plants a garden, with people in it,
living, walking, working, traveling, being
in families. To be honest, sometimes
I’d like to stop here, with Holmes and Watson
in their firelit living room, snow outside.
But then there’d be no story, and as long
as we move through time, things happen.
An apple is eaten, something is broken, or killed,
fallen. The crime ripples out, leaving clues.
The rest is finding out who, and how, and why
and retribution. For us, the readers, repentance:
we begin to admit that we could also be so bad.