Lauren Winner writes about the genre in the WSJ today.

I wrote about it several years ago for OSV. I can’t vouch for the hyperlinks on the page, considering how long ago I put up that piece. I’m sure most of them are dead. But…who did it?

From my piece:

It’s no mystery why priests and religious are natural choices to be the protagonists of mystery fiction.

What is a mystery, after all, but the story of a confrontation between good and evil, an attempt to restore justice to creation, and to shed light into the darkness? This is what ministry is about, as well, so calling the ordained or vowed forces of good to the scene of a crime makes perfect literary sense.

And from Chesterton:

“The inconsistencies of human nature are indeed terrible and heart-shaking things, to be named with the same note of crisis as the hour of death and the Day of Judgment. They are not all fine shades, but some of them very fearful shadows, made by the primal contrast of darkness and light. Both the crimes and the confessions can be as catastrophic as lightning. Indeed, The Ideal Detective Story might do some good if it brought men back to understand that the world is not all curves, but that there are some things that are as jagged as the lightning-flash or as straight as the sword.”