I have an enduring love of detective stories—in part because they both recognise the founding and barely constrained violence of civilisation and because they offer the fantasy that there is a meaning to this that can be obtain through suffering/melancholia (of the detective)—and who doesn’t love a good puzzle?

But I have to laugh at how easily I am seduced by “contemporary classy detective TV show tropes”—the title sequence that has some ink pluming in water; dramatic faintly atonal strings or low drones; aerial shots of crime scenes; lined enigmatic detective face; long-suffering women; some supernatural/mystical element; mumbled wisdom/nihilism.

One is encouraged to side with the rogue element within a crumbling bureaucracy against some chaotic evil: the detective might be autistic, an addict, have suffered some grievous loss, unable to love. I love Highsmith when she becomes randomly cruel and murders lively characters on page one just…because she can. We know very well that real violence is usually squalid and obvious, and that there is no mystery. Evil is usually not a Rubik’s Cube or a high-end cryptic crossword. But we wish it were and that we could unpick it, or watch someone following a thread to the bitter end.

(Edited to add) I’m trying to think of any contemporary detective stories that make bureaucracy the source of evil, as opposed to humanising it (overworked cops, etc.). Perhaps this is more the focus of horror (Beau is Afraid) and perhaps Severance tries this. Rather than the outlier battling the system in the name of the true and the good, the system itself needs to be chased down and tried: after all, when a state murders its population in the name of “care” or whatever, the detective will have to be truly outside to see in.