The other day, a friend asked me, “Why do you write mysteries? Why don’t you write something useful that could help people? A memoir, for example. Or a ‘how-to’?”

A how-to? A memoir? Immediately, I became defensive. People like mysteries, I explained. They get entertained by them. Mysteries are fun. But, deep down, the question rattled me. Made me wonder about the value of my work. What’s the point of writing yet another whodunit? How do tales of dastardly deeds and human dark sides contribute anything to the world?

I slipped into a spiral of self-doubt. See, it takes me months to write a suspense novel. During that time, I live with the characters as much, if not more than with the three-dimensional, breathing people in my family and neighborhood. In fact, I often lose touch with the breathers, becoming lost in the pages of a pretend world, known to no one but myself, for long periods of time. It’s lonely. It’s difficult. So, my friend’s question jolted me: Why do I do this? What does it accomplish? And, even though I brushed off the question at the time, I grappled with it for days.

The world, after all, has lots of problems. Maybe people should write books that can help fix them. Books about managing time, relationships or money. About lowering carbon footprints. Or ending war, making the world safe for future generations. Or aging gracefully, losing weight, saving species, overcoming depression or making perfect soufflés. Books should enlighten readers, enhance their knowledge, address vital issues. I began to wonder if my efforts, my books were a waste not just of my time, but that of everyone who bothered to read them.

I thought back over my writing career. Before I began to write mysteries, I’d been writing non-fiction and humor for years. But I’d stopped and turned to suspense and mystery. Coincidentally, the change occurred just as my husband suddenly got sick. In fact, gravely ill.

Esophageal cancer is usually deadly. The doctor told us, don’t go on-line, don’t read about it; you’ll only get scared. My husband was stoic, but I was not. I sat in his hospital room post-surgery, frantically watching monitors measure his heartbeat and respiration, staring at tubes that took fluids into and out of him, and hearing him tell me in a morphine haze, “Go home.”

What? I was insulted. Didn’t he need me by his side?

“You’re doing no good sitting here,” he went on. “Go do something besides worry. Go write a book.”

He insisted. Repeatedly. He even told me he couldn’t sleep while I was staring at him. So, finally, I went home. And, as he’d told me to, I wrote a book. It was, in a way, a memoir, in that it was about the threat of impending death and violence that struck innocent people without warning. About unexpected, unanticipated upheaval that erupted suddenly while unsuspecting victims were walking babies in the park or fixing dinner or going to work. Living their lives. The villain in that first mystery was personified as a serial killer, but I realize now, he might as well have been esophageal cancer.

When my husband was sick, I retreated into the world of the NANNY MURDERS, finding solace in a world where a psychotic sadistic serial killer was less threatening than my actual reality. I lost myself in a fictional world I could control because I had no control over the real one. And, suddenly, remembering when and how I started the series, I realized why I wrote mysteries. And maybe why people read them.

The sorry and inescapable truth is that life throws its unanticipated twists. We are hit, unexpectedly, with diseases or car accidents or natural disasters or job loss or death. In life, we are all waiting for a shoe to drop or a lightning bolt to strike, and we never know when it will come, or how or if we’ll survive.

But a mystery—A mystery provides readers with a safe paradigm for actual life. Readers know that the unexpected, unavoidable catastrophe will strike. We know that the characters’ lives will turn upside down. But, unlike in real life, we know that, by the end of the book, order will be restored. Good will trump evil. And--if it’s a series--we know that, no matter what, the hero/heroine will survive.

Mysteries provide a way for us to experience vicarious tension, danger and violence without really being in peril. And they provide something else, as well: Between the onset of the upheaval and the final resolution, the characters have to survive, managing their relationships, handling their finances, raising their children, aging gracefully, minimizing their carbon footprints, overcoming depression, even making the occasionally perfect soufflé. And so, in a sense, the mystery is a how-to book. It shows how to survive, even in the face of events that are uncontrollable, unpredictable and life-threatening.

Fortunately, my husband survived his cancer. It’s been several years, and so far, he’s okay. Me? Not so much. For me, the fear that accompanied his illness remains, hovering just overhead. So I continue to write mysteries, battling primal, fundamental, life-threatening fear in a realm where, ultimately, my choices, my will and my pen prevail.

For the friend who asked why I write mysteries, I still don’t have an easy answer. But I do have a question: Why would I write anything else?

(Merry Jones is the author of SUMMER SESSION, coming out in May in the UK, August in the US, as well as the Zoe Hayes mystery series: THE BORROWED AND BLUE MURDERS, THE DEADLY NEIGHBORS, THE RIVER KILLINGS, and THE NANNY MURDERS, and humor books, including I LOVE HIM, BUT..., and non-fiction including BIRTHMOTHERS. Visit at MerryJones.com)