A Long Way to Go

Image Courtesy of Zaptel

I have always enjoyed a good mystery. However, through starting this blog and, for the first time, actively researching the genre, I'm realizing I hardly know anything at all!

I have seen probably every episode of Murder She Wrote and Law & Order (if you count that as a mystery). I've also read most of the Ellery Queen books and the Alfred Hitchcock collections. My grandmother has saved a large amount of old mysteries, some out of print, that I've read dutifully over the years (partly for the mystery, but also because I sort of love the scent of the musty 1940s books that have been collecting dust in my Grama's basement.) I'm also pretty good at Clue, even the Simpson's version.

However, I'm quickly realizing that barely scratches the surface. Additionally, while I am a published writer and feel I can impart valuable advice and knowledge on both the creative and business aspects of writing, I have never published a mystery story.

You may be asking yourself, how did I get here, and why am I reading this clueless girl's blog! Well, I don't know, but I'm glad you stopped by!

More seriously, this realization has been both a little intimidating and a little exciting. Yes, it seems I have a lot to learn, but sharing what I discover and how I solve some of the amateur problems in writing a mystery may be more beneficial and interesting than those so called "published" mystery writers' blogs. At least that's what I'm going to tell myself, and you dear reader, until I accomplish my next goal: publishing a short mystery.

Mystery Exercise

On the way to my grad school writing class yesterday, I passed by the infamous Mayflower Hotel. It has, of course, been in the news lately due to the whole Eliot Spitzer prostitution thing. Don’t worry, as this is a mystery blog, I will refrain from getting into my thoughts on that whole thing! However, while I was starring up at the windows wondering which window belonged to room 871, it occurred to me that there was probably someone in the room, or at least staying in the room, right then.

How strange it would be to go on a trip, check into this randomly assigned room, unpack your clothes, and then, the next day, your seemingly cookie cutter hotel room is hot news. Would I look around the room to see if I could find anything telling and unusual that the housekeeping crew had missed?

I thought it might be fun for my throngs of readers to explore this creatively. I will change the scenario to a less politically charged and way more fictional (and therefore fun) alternative:

While you are on vacation or a business trip, you read about a business man who was found murdered yesterday. The police have already arrested someone for the murder. Among other evidence, they learned that the victim made several phone calls to the suspect from your hotel room last month.

So, what do you do, how do you react? Do you find something that exonerates the suspect, or that proves he/she did not work alone?

I hope you guys have fun with this, and feel free to post your ideas in the comments!

Death as a Writer

Here's a funny comic that i found on Inkygirl.com. :)

Know the Rules Before you Break Them

I first came across "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories," by S.S. Van Dine in High School and it really changed the way I read mysteries and approached similar kinds of writing. I don't agree with all of it. For example, I think a background love interest, if done correctly, can work in a nice extra dimension to a detective story. And rule 11, is of course still very relevant: "A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit...The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person." However, I still think there's a lot to learn from this, and many of the points articulate why I so strongly dislike some mysteries.

A good example of this is a book a friend gave to me a couple years ago, Pride and Prescience, a Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mystery. I'm writing a blog on mysteries, so it's pretty clear that I like those, but I also love Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, so this seemed like a slam dunk for me. Throughout the book there were a lot of pretty obvious "clues" that Caroline's mysterious behavior might have something to do with the ring she wore. But I figured the author wouldn't actually make me read a whole mystery book only to discover the mystery was a cursed ring.... (This was not only a very annoying conclusion for a mystery, but it made no sense in the Austenian world either. So Blehs all around).

S.S. Van Dine got it right, and still has it right, when he wrote rules 8 and 14:

"8. The problem of the crime must be solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio."

"14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure."