Mystery: A Seduction, A Strategy, A Solution

Mystery by Jonah Lehrer is a 2021 Avid Reader Press publication.

This book grabbed by attention right away by repeating the tale of Agatha Christie’s well-calculated disappearance, with a segue to Edgar Allan Poe’s detective novel, which are topics I have always been intrigued by.

Once he had my attention, I was under the impression we were going to mainly examine mysteries as a genre, instead the book moves on to examine what it is about a mystery that is so appealing…

After the strong opening, the book maintained my attention by examining our love of unpredictability – such as in sports- when a favored team loses to the underdog. While the odds are against such an event, the small chance it might happen, is part of the thrill.

I show more enjoyed the segment on Law & Order SVU- one of the longest running shows on television and how the writers work to keep the audience in suspense, because knowing too much, too soon, ruins the experience.

I felt vindicated by this as I am occasionally chided for complaining about the ability to puzzle out the villain too early on in a novel. Very interesting, since the information came straight from the writers.

Many other aspects of mysteries are given a cursory examination- magic tricks, optical illusions, etc., which was somewhat interesting, but I didn’t find everything here presented in an entertaining manner and felt it was a too dry and more philosophical than factual.

This book was not exactly what I was expecting, but it is a short book, mainly just surface material, but does make some interesting points. I skimmed some segments, I’ll admit, but I was engaged in most of the material, overall.

3 stars

*Note: I found out after I had finished reading this book that the author was involved in some controversy at one time, which did give me pause. But, as I said in my review, I didn't take everything in this book too seriously. So this book gets a 'for entertainment purposes only' stamp from me. show less

I am unsure how this book adds to the body of knowledge about human psychology or pop culture criticism. The basic message is: be curious, present, and comfortable with uncertainty. That is not a novel finding.

The author--whose credentials have been documented to be suspect--seems to cherry pick psychological studies to prove his point. This book would also have been more interesting if the author had used examples from different cultures, not just the usual suspects like Shakespeare and Harry Potter. Not recommended.