I have a dear friend who for years was a big-deal corporate lawyer in a big-deal New York firm. She worked insane hours and sacrificed a great deal on the road to making partner. But she had a secret guilty pleasure: Great piles of mysteries, the trashier the better, covered every flat surface in her apartment. It was in these satisfying pages that she found relaxation. Throw in a pint of Haagen-Dazs and life was sweet.

It took me years to appreciate the pleasure of a well-crafted mystery. It’s no secret that the world we live in is messy and complicated — and that more often than not, things don’t work out according to any moral imperative. In the crime genre (and I’m including thrillers and mysteries here, aware that purists like to split hairs about the distinctions), usually the mystery is solved, the bad guys get punished, and the good guys get their just deserts and find closure. How beautiful is that?

Plus it’s fun to have a vicarious experience with detective work. The closest most of us get is finding our lost phones or the glasses on top of our heads.

A word about genre fiction: For years, serious readers turned up their erudite noses at anything smelling of genre. After all, how could fiction meant to entertain possibly be taken seriously?

I say nonsense. Writers as revered as Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Price, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Atkinson and Jennifer Egan have successfully collapsed uber-literary books with works of crime and science fiction, resulting in books of stunning intellectual power.

“Craft” is a word that often crops up when talking about genre fiction, sometimes derisively. I say hooray for craft. In the case of mysteries, the best are carefully constructed with the subtle planting of clues and well-paced discovery and resolution. Throw in some psychological depth, a sprinkling of nuance and a dash of humor and you have the recipe for a delightful read.

With all of that in mind, I proudly confess I’ve become something of a Donna Leon junkie in recent years. A native of New Jersey, Leon adopted Venice as her home city more than 30 years ago, and that’s where she sets her novels starring Commissario Guido Brunetti. I’m more than a little bit in love with Brunetti: A well-educated native Venetian who reads classics (Aeschylus, Pliny and the like), he’s also a shrewd detective. He takes us down the streets of his beloved city all the while bemoaning how the tourists have ruined it, real estate prices have gotten out of hand and government corruption is the order of the day.

Brunetti loves to eat and drink; he knows where to find the best brioche, the freshest fish and the most toothsome pasta, which he enjoys with a glass of grappa followed, always, by an espresso. No greasy doughnuts and bad burgers for this cop. His wife, Paola, a university professor who adores Henry James, always has the perfect multi-course lunch waiting for him, complete with aperitif and dessert, often served on the terrazza. Naturally his children Raffaele and Chiara are charming and well-behaved. Did I mention his in-laws are royalty? And that I fantasize about living in his world?

Rounding out the cast of characters in the Brunetti novels are his vain, bombastic boss Vice-Questore Patta (comic relief for anyone who’s ever had a bad boss … and who hasn’t?) and the sensational Signorina Elettra, Brunetti’s all-knowing, well-connected, indispensable right hand. She’d bristle at being called a secretary. Her wardrobe alone is a worthy reason to read these books.

There are almost 30 novels in the Brunetti series, and I envy you if you’re just getting started. So much reading pleasure ahead.

Among my other favorite mystery writers is Benjamin Black, the pseudonym used by the Irish writer John Banville for his mysteries featuring Quirke, a semi-alcoholic depressive pathologist in the Dublin city morgue. A childless widower, Quirke was orphaned at a young age and raised in an abusive boarding school. Not exactly a romp. But Black’s Dublin comes alive on the page.

I’m also a big fan of Tana French, an American who has long lived in Ireland, who writes sophisticated psychological mysteries, each featuring a different detective, that are as much about character as the crime at hand.

So go ahead, give yourself permission to dig into one of these delicious writers and hold your head up high when discussing their books with your snobby literary friends. If they’re so smart, they’ll come around to thank you.