Reading detective fiction is very different
is very different from trying to follow politics
via the running commentaries of the pundits.
What both share is an interest in what makes
readers and followers care about what they follow,
and goads both further, leading them to who did the deed,
how it was done, and why they did it. With a cast
of engaging side characters who act as collaborators
who aid and abet the lead character on their journey.
Political pundits today have quite the battle
with many world leaders who occupy prime place,
in making their deeds, their wealth, and the way
they lead their country, seems mysterious.
Wrong footing the pundits tracking them,
both when the pundit offers soft ball questions
that flatter the leader's profile, or when the journalist
finding villainy in the leaders errant accountability,
is easy when the man with power hides how he got it.
It is at times like these that the reliability of fiction,
a good murder story, seems all the more attractive:
the author has a much firmer control of the narrative
than the political pundit who is struggling to discover
where the bodies are buried, and who put them there.
Although the pundit is dealing with real life, and death,
they have a harder time making the reader care
about futures that they can't make any clearer.
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