Choosing the Time of Death

When drafting a murder mystery, choosing the timing of the murder is critical to the pacing of your story. There are several methodologies for selecting the chapter where your victim will be found. Regardless of which chapter you choose, the murder should always happen somewhere in the first act; whether it’s in the beginning, middle, or end depends on your story. Each time has its advantages, so in this Mystery Monday post let’s take a closer look at why you would select one over the others.

STARTING OFF WITH A BANG.

This is the traditional mystery approach. You’ll find it in Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series. You’ll see it in modern mysteries like Karin Slaughter’s Triptych. You must start your novel with the crime itself; which means you have about five thousand words to set it up, paint the scene and leave your victim in a bloody heap.

The advantage of this approach is that you can get to the mystery solving right away. The general rule of thumb is that the more complex your mystery is, the earlier the crime needs to be committed. Killing off your victim this early can be especially useful if you have a lot of potential suspects to wade through or as a literary device to introduce your detective. For example, it’s a crime so ghastly that a specialist must be called in and your detective is the specialist in question. I’m looking at you, Patricia Cornwell.

You might have noticed that I’ve name dropped three of the most important names in mystery writing. There’s a reason for that: it works, really well. It sets up your story immediately by adding a sense of urgency in solving the crime. It also makes the story all about the crime, which allows you to explore the violence of human nature and the nitty-gritty details of how a crime is solved.

In Until the Devil Weeps, I sucker punch the reader with the crime right at the end of a very short first chapter. This gave me an entire novel to explore the effects of the murder on the victim’s family as well as providing a long ramp to build up to a big ending with a shocking conclusion. This approach does lend itself to a certain kind of story, one that revolves around the crime itself and the aftermath, making it very effective if that’s the kind of story you’d like to tell.

THE SLOW BURN.

With this approach, your victim’s fate is sealed smack dab in the middle of the first act and it’s one of my favorites. It has almost the same advantage of killing off the victim right away - in that you still have plenty of time to build a complex case to solve - but it has the added benefit of giving you some time beforehand to build suspense and establish your story.

This is also a great way to use the false flag mystery. You put one mystery at the beginning of the first act and then put the real mystery a little further on when you get to the middle. Dennis Lehane does this masterfully in A Drink Before the War. The detective is sent to look for a missing woman in the very first chapter, but the real mystery happens after she’s found.

Not only does this build some suspense and throw some red herrings around, it also allows Lehane to establish Patrick Kenzie as a detective and introduce the reader to the supporting cast of associates. This is a classic detective novel maneuver. Think Dashiell Hammett with The Thin Man. Or James Ellroy with LA Confidential.

I’ve used it myself in Devil Take Me Down, Chasing Those Devil Bones, and The Devil’s Luck. Like I said, it’s my favorite. It’s a great device if you have a bigger story to tell; one in which the crime is the vehicle for the events, but not the focus of the story. It also works well for a thriller crossover mystery like Devil Take Me Down. The book opens with a serial killer watching our main character; then focuses on our main character’s life, establishing her story; then BLAMMO!: someone dies.

By moving the crime a little further into the first act, you give yourself time for character development and to build up the suspense. The natural tendency for the reader will be to think that one of these characters they’re growing to like is going to be the victim of a horrible crime. It builds tension and adds a little drama to finding the victim, which is what makes it work so well.

THE BIG BUILD UP

This, my friends, is the trickiest of the three approaches because you run the risk of the reader shouting, ‘get to the point, already.’ I’ve only used it once in That Old Devil Sin and I honestly think the only reason it works is because I set up a minor threat of a mystery in the second chapter.

With this approach, your first act is your playground. You can tell a story that has very little to do with a mystery and everything to do with the mystery you know is coming. This gives you all the time you need to introduce your detective, your victim, and your murderer, if you like.

The best example of this by far is Murder on the Orient Express. Poirot is sent on a wandering journey before we finally get to the point and I have to admit that the first time I read it, I did have a couple of ‘get to the point, already’ moments. But once the murder happens, wowza.

The thing that makes it work is that Christie introduces you to every single suspect before we ever meet the victim.

Umberto Eco does this equally well in The Name of the Rose. By taking his time with the murder, he transports the reader back in time and has most of the first act to establish the historical context of his novel.

With this approach, you must have either an enormous cast of characters, a secondary story that is equally important to the mystery itself, or a vast world that needs definition for the reader to understand the context of the mystery itself.

Picking the timing of your murder is as vital to your story as the crime itself. But with a little careful planning and forethought, it can drive your story forward and provide you with the space you need to craft the perfect mystery.

The Red Herring

In every good murder mystery, it is important to choose your antagonist wisely. With a little careful planning, you can develop a smorgasbord of possible suspects from which your reader can choose their favorite candidate; dropping clues and motives and suspicious behavior; and the best part is: you can use your fellow mystery authors’ devices to your advantage.

In this Mystery Monday post, I’m going to take you through three common cons that I’ve found useful to deceive readers into thinking the plot was going to go sideways, zigging one way, when it was actually zagging another.

To avoid spoilers, I will not be referencing any of my books in this post to use as examples. You’re just going to have to trust me that these work well. Very well.

The Lifetime Movie Gambit

This one is easy because it plays on a plot structure that is used in so many predictable Made-For-Television movies that we all grew up watching, back before Hulu and Netflix ruined the genre by making them so damned good.

And you know this plot better than you think you do:

• Act 1: Our lovely heroine is struck by a tragic event. The death of a loved one. A stalker making her life difficult. A vicious attack from which she must recover.

• Act 2: Said lovely heroine meets a man. A wonderful man. A kind man. But she can’t see what the camera shows us and the clever film composer alludes to - there’s something off.

• Act 3: The wonderful man isn’t wonderful at all. He’s the reason for her tragedy and she must fight him to save her life.

There are many variations on this plot. And the reason it became so popular is probably because Mary Higgins Clark did it so fucking well and so successfully in more than a few of her best sellers.

But we know this one. We’ve grown immune to its deception. We roll our eyes and say, “The dude did it. What is wrong with her? Nobody is that nice.”

Out of the Past

This makes it a great one to throw in as a distraction. Because most readers will gravitate towards you being trite. Don’t feel bad. Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane teed up Mary Higgins Clark with that whole Femme Fatale nonsense. MHC just changed up the play and the Lifetime Movie Network took the ball and ran with it.

All you have to do is not be trite.

Sure, it’s fun to make the nice guy/gal really be the bad guy/gal and fuck with your main character’s emotions. But it’s predictable. A generation of authors has beat us all to the punch.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use it. It just means you’re going to have to be super cunning to pull it off.

For the rest of us, it does make a fabulous red herring to manipulate our reader into assuming the most obvious solution is the correct one. While we hide clues in plain sight pointing to the real killer.

The Stereotype Ploy

We all have biases. Gender bias. Sexual Orientation bias. And they’re not all bad. Hear me out on this. I am not advocating for you to cater to a reader's racist, sexist, or homophobic impulses. I’m talking about that other kind of bias.

I write what I like to call Feminist Noir™. My heroine is tough. Her husband is egalitarian as fuck. My readers, by and large, share my viewpoint. So, I know, for example, they’re not going to take issue with a drag queen. In fact, they’re going to have a natural impulse to defend her.

Let’s add fuel to that fiery impulse and make this drag queen incredibly charming. She’s talented and intelligent and witty and kind and the last person about whom any of my readers would ever think a nasty thought. Because they believe, as I do, that we’re all created equal and we all have the right to self-determination.

In the same novel, let’s add an ignorant white dude with anger issues. He pops off too easy. He says cruel and hurtful things. Maybe he drinks too much or has a drug problem.

Who, I ask you, are they going to suspect more? The charming drag queen with the fabulous shoe collection? Or the dick with the drug habit?

You following me, now?

The Stereotype Ploy allows you to play with society’s norms while leading your readers down the primrose path of distraction.

This is a James Patterson technique that’s brilliant. It’s the sweet and thoughtful cop who turns out to be a serial killer. It’s the caregiver who bakes the best chocolate chip cookies that happen to be slowly poisoning everyone around them. In other words, it’s the person you want to love. Usually, they’re also the underdog in some way. Maybe they’ve just gone through a divorce. Maybe they have a stutter. Some minor disadvantage that makes you root for them all the more.

But this works best when you throw in a character that is designed and developed to rouse the reader’s animosity. That’s when you really get them.

Which leads us directly to our next red herring technique…

The Douchebag Maneuver

The characters we love to hate are so much fun to write, making this technique a hell of a good time to create. For this to work, you have to develop a character has done something despicable that the reader will have a difficult time forgiving.

A mother who abandoned her children. A lawyer who defrauded their clients.

They’re not a nice person. But, someone we do care about, usually our main character, cares for them. This horrible person who really annoys you and gives you a great big case of the blechs is important to the character who was designed for you to only love.

This is a tricky one, and super fun, because it can actually play out either way. It works whether the douchecanoe in question is the killer or not.

And here’s why: Gone Girl.

That’s right. Love it or hate it, you can thank the viral success of Gone Girl and the books that followed for this technique working so well.

Your reader will not want to believe that you are being so derivative as to make this despicable person the killer while simultaneously making them hope that they are.

If you really want to cook their noodle, you can provide some acceptable motivation for this character’s douchebaggery. Maybe the mother didn’t leave her children at all; their father actually stole them from her. Maybe the lawyer defrauded clients who were horrible people themselves.

Now your readers are going to want the douchebag to be redeemed. And a desire for redemption is a powerfully manipulative emotion. Just ask anyone who’s ever been in a co-dependent relationship.

The trick here is the motivation revelation. If they are the killer, you’re going to have to draw this out a lot longer. Drop weird clues pointing to another viable suspect. Shift blame around.

In this game, you are not drawing a straight line or even a squiggly one, you are drawing a perfect figure eight that leads the reader right back to their initial assumption.

Like I said, it’s a fun one.

And the cool thing about this technique is that if your characters are like mine and have a mind of their own? You can always pin the crime on another character and use your Douchebag Maneuver as a distraction.

Think about the movie Clue and its three endings. The movie was shot in such a way that two members of the cast of despicable idiots could have committed any of the crimes.

Actually, that movie uses all three of these schemes really well. And that’s because they work well when used in conjunction with one another.

So, be creative. Be original. Break a rule or two. Crafting an interesting journey to the solution is the best way to ensure your novel is fresh and new. And even if a few of your readers see right through you? Make them glad they’re on that path with you. Because that’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

Chasing Those Devil Bones is NOW AVAILABLE!

I wrote another book, y’all! It’s a real thing. I have a copy in my hand right now and it feels yummy. It’s a strange thing to have written to completion, not one, but three novels, edited them, re-edited them, designed covers for them, and published them. But that’s what I have done. And I’m going to go ahead and brag on myself for a moment, if you’ll indulge me.

Now, please click on this link and buy Chasing Those Devil Bones for $2.99, that’s the price of your favorite large coffee drink. (And it stays way hotter and lasts longer, too.)

That was fun. Now back to work.

As Chasing Those Devil Bones makes its way through the digital birth canal and out into everyone’s Kindles and iPads, I am sitting at the 95% completion mark of the next book in the Clementine Toledano Mysteries, working title, The Devil’s Luck. And I am stuck. This happens, sometimes, usually when I’ve plotted out the crux of Q’s current mystery one way, but Q and the gang are running roughshod over the story and have another solution in mind. Unfortunately, they’re all thumbing their collective noses at my shouts of “We only have 10,000 words left! Wrap it up!” And, as much as I love the team’s additions to this plot during the writing process, I refuse to go full boat Umberto Eco and write a 200,000-word mystery.

[Author’s aside: Umberto Eco’s book, Foucault’s Pendulum, referenced above, is one of the greatest books in modern history and I will personally punch anyone in the nose who disagrees. Ok, I won’t really punch you, but it is one of only three books that I’ve read more than four times, so you should give it another chance if you didn’t like it.]

Part of my problem with The Devil’s Luck, is that I know how it ends. I just don’t know how it gets there. You see, I’d written the ending before #NaNoWr2017 even started, well, at least the emotional context of the scene. The scene itself came later and I big-huge-googly-eyes-LOVE it. So, it must stay. And as much as I loved writing more than half this book in three weeks, it’s left little time for the machinations and marinating that come with slogging along for six to ten months, writing 300 words one day and 3000 the next.

But if I’m being honest with myself, the larger part of me is just plain old scared. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you already know how much I LOVE this new book. It brings me so much joy to read it. It’s so full of life and breath and music and stench and laughter and everything that I love about the city I used to call home. What if I fail it in these last moments?

What if I fail?

Lord, I could write a novel that would put Eco to shame on word count about my fear of failure. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done some things in my life that a lot of people would consider to be brave.  I was scared shitless doing every last one of them. But I did them.

But there are other things I didn’t do because I was too scared. And those are the things that I regret.

A dear friend of mine constantly tells me to not worship at the Temple of Regret. Over the door of my personal temple is written a single word: FEAR.

During the bravest period of my life, I read the entire Dune saga from beginning to end (you know you’re a SciFi nerd when that’s on your Bucket List). If you’ve not read it, first, shame on you, but the omnipresent religion of the Bene Gesserit uses the following litany to overcome fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

There are many brilliant things about Frank Herbert’s Dune. For me, this continues to be the most brilliant. A simple, powerful series of words that so perfectly describes that feeling you get when you let go of your fear. A void. A nothingness. And there is tremendous power in that nothingness.

I repeated this litany over and over during that bravest period of my life. I repeated before I went I stage for the first time. I repeated it as I walked into Nothing Studios to interview for a job working for Nine Inch Nails. I repeated the shit out of it before I met Trent Reznor for the first time, followed by a whole lot of “act cool, act cool, just say ‘nice to meet you.’”

I don’t know when I stopped doing that. Maybe I should start again. Right now. Because, here I am, kneeling at the entrance to my Temple of Regret, looking at those big letters in iridescent green script: FEAR. Already convincing myself I’ll fail this novel when I’m so close to finishing it. Focusing on everything I’ve done wrong up to this point instead of all the things that I’ve done to make it so charming and wonderful that it terrifies me to have written something so good.

But I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. And only I will remain.

So, this is me. Standing back up and dusting off my knees to return to the fray and finish this lovely book I'm writing. Because let’s face it, I felt this same fear when I wrote Chasing Those Devil Bones and the wondrous thing still brings me to tears multiple times even though I have actually lost count of how many times I’ve read this final draft of it. And I hope anyone who reads it enjoys it as much as I still do.

Chasing Those Devil Bones is now available on Amazon.

Other Clementine Toledano Mysteries:
That Old Devil Sin
Devil Take Me Down

And, Coming Soon: The Devil’s Luck