I have no interest in serial killers or indeed murder generally. Am I abnormal?

I like what they call "cozy" mysteries or "whodunnits" Where the story focuses on the puzzle of solving the crime.
As I'm Irish these are predominantly set in locations unfamiliar to me, so it adds another layer of unreality.
I don't like anything with the words "True Crime" in them, used to be a social worker and the devastation that even one violent act can wreak on a large number of people is too real for me.
I like my entertainment to be removed from my reality and if possible uplifting.
The older I've gotten the less I can stomach visual depictions of violence also, I watched the LOTR and thought they had brought the story to life so well.
I watched a bit of GOT and thought it was disgusting, all that violence and gore to no purpose.

I'm not interested in i descriptions of violence and abuse.

I am interested in causes and consequences, the problem solving, moral ambiguity, issues of justice and mercy, and original characters - and writing that has depth and keeps my attention. Some of those books involve situations where there has been violence and abuse - but the books I enjoy do not place their focus there.

There is quite a range within the genre.

As someone who used to work at a Holocaust museum, I find the comparison to tacky tourist murder tours really offensive actually.

These memorials do not exist to entertain or titillate people, or glorify the perpetrators.

Why do you find crime so interesting, @Angel2702? It does sometimes baffle me how central it is to entertainment -- tv schedules, podcasts, films, computer games, fiction and non-fiction. I imagine aliens observing earth and thinking 'This must be something earthlings worship, they spend so much time watching it and reading about it!'

And I absolutely find myself limited in TV and film in particular by not wanting to watch crime-related things in general, and specifically having no tolerance for violence, especially against women, and especially when rape is used as a plot device to either demonstrate how bad someone is, or as the beginning of a revenge plot. Together, that wipes out huge swathes of mainstream film and TV.

I watched the first episode of The Fall, for instance, which was well-made and with some excellent performances -- but why on earth would it be assumed I wanted to watch in close-up the face of a bound and gagged woman who knows she is about to be murdered, or possibly raped and then murdered? Whose idea of entertainment is that?

I think @Angel2702 is right, I personally don't understand why this genre is so popular but perhaps subconsciously it's a way for people to play out their fears of the unknown, of meeting a horrible end themselves. The stories present horrible things but there are also the 'good guys' trying to save people and the bad guy usually gets caught.

It's a bit similar with medical mysteries, but I don't mind those as much. There's no glorifying the disease or enjoying people's pain.

I can’t comment as I love anything crime related, always have even as a child. I have always thought it odd the common interest in crime though. I’ve always justified it by it being more of an interest in catching the perpetrators, the police side and in a way it is a way of addressing a fear of these things by focussing on killers being caught etc.

I think it’s similar to the way you read about disasters and tragedies in newspapers reading all the details, I think this is a way of protecting ourselves from the fear of these things. When you read all the details as well as feeling sadness/ shock etc at the event there’s another part of you that is looking at the reasons and circumstances of it so you can be sure it won’t happen to you. A way of distancing yourself from it.

It’s more worrying when the lines become blurred. Watching something like Dexter for example where suddenly you are not rooting for the police and celebrating justice being done. You find yourself on the side of the killer and I found that change in psychology very interesting.

Not suggesting the Arbeit Macht Frei sign is at Dachau -- was just thinking of obvious photo ops at concentration camp sites.

@EBearhug, I do agree with you in a sense I find it discordant when I've seen people (on here, for instance) recommend Dachau concentration camp as an 'easy day trip' for someone doing the tourist attractions of Munich, when you're done with the Frauenkirche and the Nymphenburg Palace. I went to Dachau when I was in my teens interrailing, because the friend I was travelling with badly wanted to go, and I think I remember more what struck me as the oddity of tourist queues and infrastructure etc on an atrocity site but then again, do you not have anywhere visitors can eat? Should you have a book shop so that people can educate themselves, and if so, what about stocking postcards etc?

I agree also about there being no way to test for purity of intention. It is of course possible that neo-Nazis get their kicks from visiting former camps, but it's also fairly clear from my memories of Dachau that people have gone to enormous lengths not to sensationalise the sites, and that they think that it's worth witless kids posting duckfaced selfies in front of the Arbeit Macht Frei sign and the like in order to educate.

I mean, it wasn't the London Dungeon.

I happily read a lot of pulp, and my dad especially reads all the crime fiction so we share that. I find murder so unimaginative as a fiction crime plot event.

Especially when the murder is quite graphic & overly creative (looking at You, Iain Banks)

One of the best Inspector Rebus stories I read was a short story about burglary, theft & deception. Just those. No murder required.

There should be more fraud & deception in crime fiction, I reckon. A very unexplored enormous mine of material there.

Pedophilia & sexual abuse were all the rage in crime fiction for a long time: you can chuck that now, writers. There's no shocking or even remotely novel/interesting angle to it.

It's not that I mind what other people engage with... but I don't know why people get engrossed in chronic ('true') stories of child abuse. I can hardly think of anything more upsetting.

I have misgivings about concentration camps as tourist destinations. I can understand them as memorials and people visiting them for that reason, particularly if they had family there, but I think there are others who don't have that motivation. But then you couldn't do some sort of test before people go to see if they have the "right" reasons. For one thing, not everyone would know all their own motivations. I have never been. I might feel differently if I had, I don't know. I suspect if I were in the area, I would go, so probably even I don't quite know what I really think, I can see arguments both ways.

I find with murders, I mostly just never get round to reading them, after I have read the million and one other books I want to read, fiction and non-fiction. I did read an Agatha Christie a couple of Christmases ago at my cousins, because the book was on the shelf of whichever was on TV. When I worked in a lending library, crime was shelved as a genre, and there were readers who who borrowed only from that section.

I do find forensic science interesting though. There was an exhibition at the Wellcome a few years ago about the development of forensic techniques and it was amazing to learn that soil profiles in the UK can be very precise, down to very small areas, things like that. That I find very interesting.

I think that if you’re a true crime fan type looking for gruesome details, you’re far less likely to get your kicks at a museum founded by camp survivors whose primary aim is dignified commemoration and education than on a sensationalist tourist attraction that fetishises rape and torture.

@Stonehopper the point really was the reasons people go there. You think everyone goes because they want to be 'educated?'

@borntohula, Auschwitz is a non-profit state museum, UNESCO world heritage site, education and research centre, intended to inform visitors about the Holocaust. Former inmates were the first people to go onto the site to start securing it in 1946. For 40 years the director was a camp survivor.

I really don’t think there’s any comparison with for-profit, highly-sensationalised Jack the Ripper tours.

I don’t like gratuitous violence, don’t find serial killer psychology interesting at all and avoid any sort of crime fiction or drama that features women being killed by evil geniuses... and yet, I do find a lot of true crime documentaries and podcasts very interesting. The investigatory and justice angle is fascinating, and the audaciousness of people is incredible. The latter point interests me in the same way as I read a lot of AIBU threads on this board - seeing how some people have a completely different view to mine on what is right or usual.

I actually find the most intriguing examples not to be about murder at all. There was a very satisfying 24 Hours in Police Custody episode about a fraud case. I also remember a multi-part documentary about the investigation of an arson - in which nobody was hurt iirc- several years ago. I also relish a good hoax documentary. How they are built up and then unravel.

So I don’t think it’s necessarily about the gruesome aspect of things so much as it is about how people step outside all societal norms and what happens when they do.

Yes totally agree. I am done with watching women being victimised for so called entertainment. Whoever thought it was a good idea? And does the sheer ubiquity of this theme contribute to how women are treated in real life? I am sure it must.

I'm with you.

I readily admit I hated GoT. I got torn a second one on here for stating that, as apparently rape, torture and immolation of screaming children is just entertaining, innit?

I can't see horrible things happen to people without imagining what they must be actually feeling, both the raw terror and unimaginable pain, as 'stuff' is done to them.

And actually, I am a hard-nosed bee-ach!

DH is a fan of Scandinavia-noir. I just don't get it. The raped and mutilated young girl whose body is examined in the mortuary. The small boy's final scream as he knows what's about to happen....

The bottomless pit of grief of the parents.

er.... no.

If I want to see carnage and depravity, I'll go to work 😉 HCP.

I’m with you too. DH loves unsolved crime documentaries and podcasts and wants to tell me all about them - not my idea of fun at all. Partly I really don’t like to guess as I go along what is going to happen in a story, some people seem to love that. I’m usually too busy thinking about some detail of what I’m seeing in the moment.

Me too.

For example, I adore David Tennant, but I haven't the slightest desire to watch Des in which I believe he is excellent (he does do bad very well).

Although I confess to a fondness for early 20th century crime writing (and similar such as Cadfael and Falco) so I can't follow you totally I'm afraid.

There is far too much weight placed on talking about the criminal rather than the victims. The appallingly lauded Jack the Ripper being surely one of the oldest examples. The things done to the victim are vomit inducing, utterly horrifying. There shouldn’t be a jolly tour around Whitechapel about those murders

Completely agree.
Peter Sutcliffe was, and still is, afforded his own moniker by the media when, in fact, he was a sadistic killer. His victims get a sentence or two if they're lucky.
Murder is horrific enough without needing to see it dramatised, thanks.

Me too.