Now Write! Mysteries

Elsewhere in this book (and in others on writing), you will see the phrase “Show, don’t tell.” What this means is that one wants the environment, culture, sense of place, and so on to be revealed through the characters and the plot. The reader of fiction doesn’t want a travelogue or a tour guide. It’s the story (especially in a mystery) that holds the reader’s interest, and it’s the characters that make it come alive. So sense of place and culture is really the background to a picture that shows real people engaged in doing interesting things.

The protagonist in our novels is a large, overweight detective in the Criminal Investigation Department in Botswana. His nickname is Kubu, which means hippopotamus in Setswana—the language spoken by almost everyone in the country. Right away we have a small start to the sense of place. Kubu is easy to pronounce (koo-boo) and remember, and more evocative than Hippo would be.

Returning to the theme of telling versus showing, telling is usually a narrative giving the reader pieces of information or descriptions that the writer thinks are interesting in their own right, will build up background, or will help with plot. But characters can tell, too. Take a look at this:

On his way to the scene of the murder near Ganzi, Kubu stopped his vehicle under a tree in a dry riverbed. He had a long drink of water and ate a sandwich.

He turned to Sergeant Nledi. “Most rivers in Botswana are actually dry,” he said. “But it’s interesting how the trees still grow along the river verges because their roots go down to the water table—not that far below the surface—and they can get moisture there.” He glanced up into the rolling dunes that headed out from the riverbed. “There’s no moisture up there,” he continued. “You’ll find nothing but hardy succulents, hoarding the moisture from dew, growing in that loose sand.”

Kubu was interested to see many animal tracks in the riverbed—even some from birds. One could follow those to where the animal had gone, he thought. The sand is a sheet on which the past is written.

Bongani looked at the area around the corpse. Acacia thorn trees, typical of Kalahari stream verges, scattered along the edges of the dry river. The riverbanks consisted of mud baked to hardness by the sun. From there scattered tufts of grass spread away from the bank, becoming less frequent as they battled the encroaching sand.

The two men stood under one of the trees, its canopy cutting off the heat, its roots sucking moisture from the subterranean water. The body sprawled on the edge of a mess of twigs, leaves, and branches, which had fallen to the ground over the years. Behind it lay the sand bed of the long-vanished river, patterned with tracks of animals, some old with the edges of the imprints crumbling, and some as recent as the hyena they’d disturbed.

Bongani focused further up and down the river. The wind, animals, and the hard stream verge could explain the lack of footprints, but a vehicle track would last for years in these conditions.

“Where’s the vehicle?” he asked.

“He’ll have got stuck in the dunes and tried to walk out,” Andries replied.

Bongani turned to stare at Andries. “So let’s see. Your tourist has enough knowledge of local geography to realize that following the watercourse will be the easy way back to camp. However, he doesn’t realize how much dangerous game he may encounter in the river. And, by the way, he’s working on his suntan at the same time because he sets off naked.”

Andries looked down. “What makes you think he was naked?”

“Well, do you see any cloth scraps? The animals wouldn’t eat them, certainly not with bone and bits of sinew still left. And what about shoes? Animals won’t eat those either.”

For example, witchdoctors play a powerful role in southern African tribal culture, and this is reflected today in the urban environment as well. There is nothing surprising about a woman shopping for potions in a traditional medicine store in downtown Johannesburg while speaking on her cell phone, yet this strikes a Western reader as quite odd. When you analyze it, however, the woman has only the faintest idea how the cell phone technology works and similar understanding of how the magic of the potion works. If anything, she probably feels more comfortable with the traditional remedy. Again, the reader is likely to be more convinced by being shown this than by being told.

Later in A Carrion Death, Bongani is hounded by a witchdoctor he knows only as the Old Man. His Western education and scientific training battle with his inherent beliefs shaped by his upbringing in a small rural village. Here is a selection from a scene:

The Old Man closed the door and sat opposite Bongani. He nodded in terse greeting. Suddenly he took the lion-skin pouch in his right hand and, before Bongani could pull back, grasped his right hand. Bongani stared at the Old Man’s hand. It felt like dry bone, warmed by the sun.

Then the Old Man reached across with his left hand, took Bongani’s left, their arms crossing over the desk. Bongani felt the hand suddenly cold as death. Colder. As though the witchdoctor had been carrying something frozen. The chill spread to Bongani. With a small cry he jerked both his hands free and jumped up.

EXERCISE