Karen’s Fiction Korner

By

Karen Newcomb

Do You Know What Type of Mystery You Are Writing?

I have two mystery writers in my critique group and both are very good writers, but I often wonder if an author really understands what category of mystery they are writing.  This is going to be a very important piece of information when the author writes that eventual query letter.  My suggestion is to write the type of mystery you enjoy reading.  Find publishers who publish your type of mystery before you sit down to write and analyze those books under the published imprint.

The Police Procedural.  John Lescroart writes this type of book.  The police detective uses deduction and scientific techniques.  With so much CSI type of TV these days, Law and Order, and others, you can almost see how this type of mystery works.  The hero does painstaking deductions and search, he’s an investigator that prefers working within the law to come up with the ultimate solution and capture of the villain. 

The Amateur Detective.  Think Sherlock Holmes.  A mastermind of deduction.  Often the hero amateur detective has an encyclopedic mind and a wide range of interests.  Don’t forget the ever present side-kick to make the hero look good.  To update this type of mystery I think of Monk here.  Of course Monk, our TV detective has a few obsessive compulsive hang-ups and his side-kick is his psychiatrist.   This makes for a very funny program. 

The Cozy.  This was explained to me many years ago as British.  The Miss Marple novels.  I didn’t read the novels, but I have seen the PBS series and I must admit they were very ‘British’ and the elderly heroine charming and found herself in silly situations.  Murders often take place in the country on big estates where they dress for dinner.  Cozies have often been called “indoor” mysteries.  These mysteries read gentle and witty and include a vicar.

The Puzzle.  Agatha Christie.  Earle Stanley Gardener’s Perry Mason.  This is a very gimmicky story that is solved backwards.  The entire novel is laid out to display the ingenuity of the gimmick used for the murder, which in the end, points to the villain’s guilt.  I put Mary Higgins Clark in this category.  Courtroom drama novels fit here.

The Private Detective.  Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade.  Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, Earl Derr Bigger’s Charlie Chan and Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. He’s everyman’s hero, a loner, tough with wisecracking tone.  Usually unmarried, knows that sexy women can’t be trusted and are always trouble.  On TV I’ll always think of Magnum PI and Tom Selleck.  Sue Grafton’s Alphabet Murders fit this category. 

The Romantic Suspense. 

This mystery deals with mainstream themes of love and through no fault of their own find themselves in terrible jeopardy.  The main character is a woman who is single, sexually appealing and seemingly unprotected.  Allison Brennan is a master of this genre, so is Brenda Novak.

Gothic novels fall in this genre.  These are still popular and you’ll need that creepy old mansion, a wild moor, and a dark stormy atmosphere thrown in.  Daphne duMaurier’s Rebbeca’s is the classic when it comes to a sexual, suspenseful and frightening novel.

I’ve been told that if a woman writes a thriller it’s called romantic suspense. If a man writes the same thing it’s called a thriller.  Go figure.

The Thriller

James Rollins, Dean Koontz, Ken Follett, Dale Brown, Tom Clancy, Ian Fleming and his James Bond novels are (were) all excellent writers of thrillers.  So much danger and back and forth action between one place and another is the backdrop.  Such things as the good country pitted against the bad country.  The latest in technology and beyond keep the reader glued to the pages.  Some thrillers use war as background.  A subgroup to this category is the techno thriller, which is where Tom Clancy and Dale Brown fit, both best-sellers who write page turning novels.

Note:  Sebastian Faulks is the author of the latest James Bond novel, Devil May Care, but Ian Fleming’s name is just below Faulks on the cover.

Others

True Life Crime writer Ann Rule is the master of this genre.  Psychological mystery, comic capers, historical crime, and my favorite from the old days, Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles, are all in the category of mysteries.  I haven’t read Maggie Sefton’s knitting mysteries or her real estate mysteries, but it seems any hobby or career is fair game.

A few years back an author said, “Today, we have to be hookers. Because of TV we have to hook the reader in the first sentence.”  I’d like to think that TV often helps us to update our genre…because TV is our competition.  So if a door creaks, the air is musty, you stumble on the secret to save the world, feel like someone is following you, something invisible brushes you or beckons with a boney finger…write about it.