How to rite Killer Fiction (5 page)

Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Nero Wolfe, Lew Archer, Perry Mason—these characters remained the same from the first day they appeared in print until their last story. Even in cases where they professed to have a strong personal connection to a victim or suspect, they didn't experience the kind of anguish today's detectives go through. The focus was on the case itself and the people involved in the case; the detective was an outsider whose essential core remained untouched. Some of them didn't even age (Hercule Poirot must have been 110 by the time he "died").

Whether your detective is a librarian who solves crimes on the side, a homicide detective on an Indian reservation, or a big-city private eye, she will probably go through more personal changes than the classic detectives named above.

Why? Because that's what today's readers are looking for. "Other people's troubles" were enough for Lew Archer, whose creator saw him as a transparent window through which he could examine the social structure of Southern California society. Today's readers want more about the detective's inner struggles and outer realities. They expect to see growth and change from one book to the next, and some level of acknowledgment of the effect past events had on the character's development to date.

Some mystery writers are producing books that are as much novels as detective stories. Minette Walters, Val McDermid, and Elizabeth George are some of the authors whose books cross genre lines into mainstream. Sarah Smith and James Ellroy (in his later books) are two whose novels are crime-based but whose sales transcend the usual genre expectations.

Write What You Read _

Whom do you love? If your finished book were to be favorably compared to the work of another writer, who would you want that writer to be? This is a vital question, and something the aspiring writer should start thinking about as soon as possible, because how can you hit a target if you don't know where the target is?

Writing what you read means reading critically. It means trying to figure out, if you don't already know, exactly what it is you love about the books you love. Is it the character development, or do really tricky plots appeal to you? Are you someone who falls in love with exotic locations? Is humor essential to your ideal of a great book? Whatever wins your heart as a reader is what you need to write, because you will know by instinct and long years of loving exactly what it is that your ideal reader wants from you, and you can give it freely, without sweat or second-guessing.

"IT'S NOT the crime, it's the cover-up." This isn't just a Washington truism; it's the essence of the novel of detection. The killer kills, and even if we the readers see the death itself, we have not seen the murder. The most significant action of the entire book takes place offstage. What do I mean by that?

Cover-ups_

Picture the scene: the English country house, the greedy relatives gathered around the dinner table while Uncle Sebastian, the rich patriarch, lifts his glass of port to his lips. He drinks, he cries out and grabs his throat. Choking and gagging, he falls to the floor and within minutes is dead as a doornail, the scent of bitter almonds on his blue lips.

We saw the death. We did not see the murder, for we didn't see the killer putting poison into the wine bottle or smearing it around the edges of the wineglass. Or, if we did, we saw a shadowy figure creep into the study and lift the port from its accustomed place. We saw a hand reach out to take the special glass that only Uncle Sebastian used. We
did not see
whose hand it was, because that would give away the game.

Cover-Up One: It Wasn't Murder

The killer kills, but not wanting to be caught, he conceals his identity. He may also choose to conceal the fact of murder itself. Thus many mysteries begin with a death the police refuse to classify as murder.

"It couldn't have been suicide—she never took pills!"

"She couldn't have drowned! She was an Olympic-level swimmer!"

"Dead! He's not dead, he's in Borneo."

The killer has killed, but he has created a cover story that results in the police refusing to investigate the death as a crime. The detective's first act of detection, then, is to discover
and prove
that the death was deliberate murder.

This is a wonderful device for the amateur detective, since it gets the police out of the way and allows the detective free rein, at least for a while. It also gives the detective a realm of investigation that doesn't directly focus on specific suspects, meaning the investigation has two distinct parts: the "was it murder" section, and the "whodunit" section. Since the big bad middle of any book is a challenge to fill, this is a great way to make sure there's enough material to go around.

An interesting variant on this is the Murder-that-isn't-a-murder. Here we have someone missing, presumed dead, presumed murdered, but either we have no body or we have a body that's been misidentified. This time the detective's job is the opposite: to prove that a death the police think is the murder of Sir George is really the death of a transient, while Sir George is alive and well and drinking margaritas in Cabo San Lucas.

The Wrong Murder is another useful device. In this gambit, some poor soul ends up dead and the police spend several chapters hunting down people with a motive to kill that individual, whereas our detective realizes that the murder was a mistake and the intended victim is still walking around and still vulnerable. (Whenever a mystery reader sees a character putting on someone else's coat, little bells go off in our heads and we're ready to bet that a Wrong Murder is about to be committed.)

What all of these devices do is clear the way for a non-police detective to investigate an aspect of the case that the police aren't interested in. The amateur can establish her detective credentials by first proving that the death was murder before embarking on the larger task of bringing the killer to justice.

Cover-Up Two: Some Other Dude Did It

The second murderer's trick is to allow the death to look like murder and to frame someone else for the crime. Now the police are in the act from the outset, so the killer must divert suspicion from herself and plant clues leading to another. (Of course, once the cops in the earlier situations realize the death is murder, the killer needs a backup plan that will involve the same things.)

Back when I worked for the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, we called this the Two-Dude Defense, or Some Other Dude Did It. It was purely amazing how many guys in Brooklyn were just standing on street corners chillin' when "two dudes" ran up and shoved a loaded gun or a stolen radio into their innocent hands. Before they had time to think, the cops rolled up on them and caught them red-handed.

My clients in Brooklyn seldom got away with the SODDI defense, but your murderer will give the cops a good run for their money with it. The killer not only kills, not only conceals his own guilt, but
actively plans to have someone else take the fall.

One important element of all these approaches to the cover-up is that the murderer is not a passive observer of the detective's actions. She is plotting against the detective every step of the way, playing a high-stakes game of chess, shoving clues in front of the detective to divert suspicion away from her and toward another suspect.

Real Reality and False Reality

The murderer creates the reality of a dead body, and then creates a "false reality" to cover it up. For a long time, the detective, like the police and the other characters, sees only the "false reality." Gradually, through investigation, the detective is able to separate the truth from the fabrication.

This is the funhouse part. Like the funhouse at the old-fashioned amusement park, we encounter mirrors that distort images, passageways that lead us down blind alleys, surprises that pop out at us from seemingly uninhabited places, and misdirection designed to keep us walking around in circles. The detective is just as baffled as the official police—at first.

The "false reality" usually has two parts: the minimization of the killer's motive, opportunity, or access to means; and the maximization of someone else's motive, opportunity, or access to means.

Starting with the first of these, the killer works hard to conceal her motive to kill Uncle Sebastian. She pretends she has money of her own, so no one knows she's waiting as eagerly as everyone else for the old coot to die and leave her a legacy. She pretends to have forgiven him for stopping her marriage to the unsuitable suitor. At the same time, she takes great pains to remind everyone, including the police, that her brother needs money, that her mother never forgave Uncle S. for what he said to her last Boxing Day.

But that's just motive, and that's not enough to put the noose around someone's neck. Our killer needs to create the illusion that she
couldn't have killed
her uncle, no matter how much motive she had. Then she needs to show the police that other people could have done it, and in fact, left clues behind telling the world that they did do it.

A great many of the Golden Age detective stories depend upon alibis, for an ironclad alibi is the best way in the world to prove you couldn't possibly be the killer. Show the police you were in Detroit on the fatal day and they can't nail you for a death in Philadelphia. Show them you were receiving an award from the mayor at the time the victim was shot, and they'll have to look for someone else as the killer.

Thing is, you the writer have to figure out just how someone
can
commit murder and then make it look as if they were somewhere else at the time. You have to put yourself in the killer's shoes.

The Straight-Line Narrative

The late California crime writer Collin Wilcox called this "the idiot plot," but, believe me, it isn't for idiots. Anyone who wants to craft a sound, tight, well-constructed mystery is advised to write the crime
from the murderer's point of view.
In other words, the writer first creates "the real reality" and then creates the "false reality" that the killer uses to cover her tracks.

Let's take Uncle Sebastian's poisoning as an example. Let's say that his niece Wanda committed the crime. Here's how a straight-line narrative starring Wanda might look:

Wanda lives with her Uncle Sebastian, a cold, cruel man who treats her very badly and makes fun of her mousy looks. She accepts this until she meets a man named Hosmer Angel, who wants to marry her but worries about having enough money to start his own business. Wanda assures him she'll inherit enough money for both of them, but then Uncle Sebastian finds out about Hosmer and says he'll cut her out of his will if she even thinks about marrying him.

The Real Reality

In fact, Uncle S. announces his intention to change his will and invites his whole family to his house for his seventy-fifth birthday party. The family includes Wanda's ne'er-do-well brother Waldo, who always has his hand out for Uncle's money, her flighty sister Winnie, who wants a thousand pounds to open a dress shop, and her mother Wilhelmina, who depends upon Sebastian's generous allowance to maintain her home in Torquay. So the house is nicely stocked with suspects and we're not even counting the butler and cook, who have plans for their inheritances as well.

Uncle S. likes his port. No one else in the house drinks port. Uncle is sure to pour a glass for himself on the night of his birthday, so Wanda takes four buses to a village where she isn't known and buys a bottle of poison containing cyanide. (That means: now Wanda has what it takes to commit the murder, and she's concealed the fact that she bought it by going where she wasn't known and signing a fake name in the chemist's poison book.)

Now she has to get into Uncle Sebastian's private study, a room he keeps locked. Only the housekeeper, Mrs. Strange, has a key; she unlocks the room every Thursday for a quick dusting. So how is Wanda going to get into the room to put the poison into the port?

Answer: maybe she isn't. Maybe the port itself isn't really poisoned, but the inability of anyone to get into the study becomes a red herring. Maybe she doctors the glass Uncle Sebastian uses instead; she has access to that pretty readily. She can then divert the police by adding more poison to the decanter afterwards to make it look as if the poison was there all along.

Let's say she does get into the study by diverting Mrs. Strange after she's opened the door on Thursday. Mrs. Strange's later recollection that a salesman called at the door and asked to speak to her will explain how the room was unguarded for a short time. That the young man looks a lot like Hosmer Angel will eventually put the noose around both their necks—and you developed the clue by realizing you had to figure out a way to get Wanda into that study.