Hello Mystery Lovers!
Welcome to my new-look occasional newsletter, designed to share with you some of the highlights and secrets of the world of the cosy mystery writer.
Planning a murder
Today, I thought I’d share a few insights into how to plan the perfect murder.
Firstly, if you’re writing cosy crime, it’s important that the readers haven’t bonded with the victim. It’s never a winning strategy to make your victim an adorable child who’s spent the first few chapters of the novel helping his elderly grandparents around the house and supporting his widowed mother emotionally. This is not playing by the cosy crime rules. Your victim should either be someone unknown to the other characters in the novel, or thoroughly disliked by them, so the reader doesn’t feel an emotional tug when the death is described and the other characters are not paralysed by grief. In an ideal scenario, the reader feels that the victim was asking for it, and had only themselves to blame.
Agatha Christie was very good at this – think about how many of her victims are unpleasant bullies who are just about to change their will and disinherit their family.
And – as an aside – if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from her novels, it’s not to tell your family of your intention to change your will. Tell them afterwards once it’s all signed and a done deal. Your nearest and dearest are much more likely to kill you to protect their inheritance, than they are to murder you in a fit of pique at being disinherited.
Secondly, don’t make the death too gory. A single stab wound, a bullet or poison that doesn’t leave the corpse contorted in agony and covered in vomit are best. Or you could consider a blow to the head with a blunt instrument, provided there isn’t too much blood. The reader wants to feel intrigued by the death, not revolted.
I’ve just started reading The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey, and the victim is an unknown man in a theatre queue who dies with a knife in his back, which has been plunged in with such force that there’s no blood. So that’s a double tick for Miss Tey: no emotional attachment and no blood.
And thirdly, make your sleuth quirky. Think little man with a large moustache, fluffy old lady fond of knitting, four pensioners living in a retirement home, a mystery writer who finds himself starring in his own books. These are all highly memorable protagonists who live on in the reader’s mind – as does my own protagonist, Polynesia Henman (I hope!). She’s a cycling-mad journalist with a terrible secret she must keep hidden at all costs.
That’s all for this month. Do let me know if there are any aspects of murder mystery writing that you’d like me to write about in a future newsletter.
And if you’d like to read my blog regularly, please think about joining my Readers’ Club (link in the top menu) and then you will also receive a free cosy mystery story, The Last Chapter, about the mysterious murder of an AI obsessed librarian.
Happy sleuthing!
Louise