I recently spent a week with my mother. Sometimes it’s rather exhilarating to stare into the abyss of your future neurosis, dementia and physical decay. And anyway, I was getting sick of buying my own teabags.

And while I no doubt toyed with the idea during my stay – especially while explaining that you cannot “restart the internet” or when ordered to cut down a tree using just a bread knife – I did not at any point commit actual murder. However, my mother is one of those yoga-practicing, teetotal vegetarians who only reads two things: ancient spiritual texts or tales of psychotic, calculated murder; The Upanishads or Poirot.

When she’s not reading about murderous atrocities committed on the suicide-happy streets of Sweden, she will be watching them on TV. Luckily for her, BBC iPlayer and ITV3 are more packed full of murderers than the 4.50 from Paddington.

So, as the new season of the he’s-a-serial-killer-yet-also-a-forensic-specialist series Dexter premiers in the US – and season four starts screening here on FX – I thought it timely to hold up my magnifying glass and evidence bag to the spectacle that is the popular murderer.

Ever since the tuberculosis-soaked, pustulous days of Victorian London, when upstanding citizens would hurry down from a day of slave-trading and pie-baking to buy a penny dreadful from outside Newham Prison, tales of crime, corruption and murder have been bringing joy to the hearts of law-abiding civilians across the world. The murder mystery as a form goes further back than this, of course; what is Hamlet if not a “whodunit” of Oedipal proportions, with the Danish prince playing the ultimate maverick detective?

What draws us to tales of the very people we most virulently try to evict from society? Well, firstly, most murder mysteries conclude with the villain being discovered, publically shamed and punished. Even acts of sexually motivated violence can be “feel-good” and reassuring if justice is upheld in the finale. What makes Dexter so interesting is that, like The Talented Mr Ripley or even Paradise Lost, the audience itself becomes implicated by rooting for the baddie; we don’t really want the serial killer to be discovered and we certainly don’t want him to stop killing people.

Secondly, there is the sheer problem-solving satisfaction of the crime thriller. Spotting a murderer in your midst is the literary equivalent of trying to cross your bedroom without touching the floor or making a wedding dress from a single sheet of A4 paper.

Perhaps this problem-solving, justice-seeking element of murder mysteries is what gives them their unique audience. I once heard crime writer Mark Billingham explain that his book signings are almost entirely attended by white-haired old ladies with nothing more dangerous hidden in their handbags than a thermos of tea and a cheese and chutney sandwich. The Miss Marples of Midsomer, as it were.

Talking of Miss Marple, this year marks 120 years since the birth of that queen of curiosity, Agatha Christie. One hundred and twenty years? That would be like people still reading Dan Brown in 2075.

Now, that really is an idea worth donning a pair of leather gloves and silenced revolver for.

More Nell:

...on Capitalism Fest

...on dancing