Compulsivity...Compulsiveness...Being Compulsive

[Peg Herring]

It's the subject of movies, TV shows, and family humor: the things that some of us have to do the way we like to do them. My kids hated playing Scrabble with me because I can't stand it if the tile isn't exactly inside its little square. A friend at work was visibly upset if one of us sat in a different position at the lunch table. And before computer-generated papers I've seen students copy and recopy an assignment until it met their standards, even if there was only one small error.

It seems that mystery characters require a bit of the compulsive in order to make the story work. We're aware of Columbo and Monk, flawed in social behaviors but dogged in their pursuit of truth. But any story's sleuth has to convince readers that he has a reason to persist. For cops and P.I.s it's their job, of course, but why did they choose that path in the first place? They have an inability to leave a puzzle unfinished.

Amateur detectives are often drawn as unable to "let the police handle it." In reality, 99.9% of us are perfectly willing to let law officers do the crime-solving. We would never put ourselves or our loved ones in danger by taking on criminals; in fact, we stay as far away from them as possible. But that quality of our favorite sleuths, that need to find out, makes us believe that they will go to that abandoned ship in the harbor and climb around stinking, rusting cargo holds with only a flashlight and a need to know. Maybe all sleuths, both real ones and those who write mysteries, are compulsive, and maybe it all starts with the urge to make that tile fit exactly inside its little square.