Aren't mystery novels kind of weird? Like, what does their prevalence say about our culture?

The most popular kind of fiction (in terms of sales) is, by a huge margin, the romance genre. And that makes sense to me. Falling in love is a major focus in our culture. I'd say it's even more important than finding the right work, since, for most people, the latter is a pretty constricted thing: people generally only have access to a few occupations, …