The Mystery, Crime, and Thriller Group discussion

Hello everyone, I've long enjoyed all sorts of mystery stories, but lately I've been fascinated by a particular type of mystery or mystery adjacent story that's a little difficult to classify, and I was hoping that you might be able to help me define it a little better and point me towards some more.

For me the defining example of this type of story are some of the ones written by Jorge Luis Borges, particularly "The Garden of Forking Paths," "Death and the Compass," and "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero." Other stories that I'd consider to be in this line are Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose," Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red," and G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories, particularly the ones that center around apparent paradoxes and contradictions.

Beyond giving examples, I think I'd characterize the kind of story I'm thinking of as deftly combining the form and intrigue of a mystery with a kind of playful intellectualism, such that they both enhance each other. These stories generally explore various philosophical and meta fictional ideas, but they don't treat the mystery aspect as being any less worthy or dismiss it as not being "serious" literature. His stories aren't exactly mysteries, but Italo Calvino seems to me to write in the same spirit as the authors I'm thinking of.

Does that make sense? I'm happy to answer follow up questions if that would help, but I'm very curious to hear other people's thoughts and whether anyone can think of any similar stories/authors

You may wish to try Durrenmatt's The Pledge as a stepping stone to his other work which is very much related to Borges philosophically. It's a genius novel.

And speaking of Eco, I'd recommend his Foucault's Pendulum. It's Borges on a plate and a good postmodern mystery.