Most of us stick to the genre we like the most and
kind of stray away from others. This doesn’t mean we never watch anything or
read books that aren’t our favorite genre, it just means we don’t dig deep or
actively look for things in different genres. And we might be missing out on some amazing novels, movies or shows
(and maybe some fashion inspiration).

For this series of posts I’m going to dive into
some of my favorite genres and let you know which books you should read and
which TV shows and movies to watch, plus a couple of outfit inspirations from
iconic characters in each of those genres.

In the past posts in this series, I’ve shown you guys my recommendations for the best of the horror and comedy genres. This week, we’re diving into the mystery genre.

Table of Contents

What is mystery?

Mystery is
a genre of fiction that usually involves
a mysterious death or crime to be solved. It’s considered a “young” genre,
because what we know and understand as mystery fiction today started developing
in the early 19^th century.

Since crime is its starting point, mystery is a bit more entangled with its historical context than most genres. Because of this, it has spread itself across many formats: the classic whodunit (Sherlock Holmes or Herculé Poirot), police procedural (yes, CSI and Law & Order), hard boiled detectives (Philip Marlowe), and many, many more. Mystery overlaps with suspense and thriller so much that it gets messy when you try to separate them.