But the reality of murder and its detection are very different to what we see on TV or read in thrillers and murder mysteries. A few weeks ago, Ken Polk from Melbourne University had the audience at an Australian Institute of Criminology conference spellbound as he explained that Miss Marple or Philip Marlowe or any of the other highly skilled private eyes would certainly be on the dole queue if they were plying their trade in Australia today. The cases that these private detectives deal with are usually mysterious and complex as they sort out the shenanigans of the highly privileged to discover who done it, especially as each of the suspects had a complex motive. In reality it isn't like that, it is rarely a woman, it is rarely an upper class nasty person, and it is rarely a mystery. It's more often than not an altercation that has got out of hand or purposely turned ugly, and the perpetrator is usually there, at the scene, when the police arrive.
Homicide is a dreadful deed, and varies very significantly around the world.
Australia's current rate at just under two per 10,000 is the same as it was at the start of this century. Australia's rate is similar to that of many northern European countries and Canada and New Zealand, but double of that of Japan, Norway and Ireland. Why this is so is a real mystery to criminologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists and psychologists. We all have distressing things happen to us, yet the vast overwhelming majority of us do not try to solve the problem by killing the antagonist. There are obviously some fundamental neurological and sociological unknowns.