Now Write! Mysteries

FRANKIE Y. BAILEY is a faculty member in the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany (SUNY). She is the author of African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study (2008) and Wicked Albany: Lawlessness and Liquor in the Prohibition Era (2009). The fifth book in her Lizzie Stuart mystery series is Forty Acres and a Soggy Grave (2011). Frankie is a former executive vice president of Mystery Writers of America and the 2011 vice president of Sisters in Crime.

Writing a mystery novel in which the protagonist is alone on a desert island, or a recluse living on a mountaintop, is possible. But if you do, there had better be a good story about how he got there and why he is staying and who may be showing up soon. In a mystery novel, character relationships are crucial to what happens—to the whodunit, whydunit, and, often, even the howdunit.

These relationships can and should be used to add depth to both the characters and the plot. In the course of interacting with other characters, the protagonist reveals who he is—his attitudes about life, what he believes, what he values. The protagonist reveals what he will fight for or die for.

Certain relationships are common to the genre. Some relationships are specific to subgenres. For example, what would a classic noir novel be without a tough guy and a femme fatale? In crime fiction, some characters support the protagonist (provide aid and comfort). Others are antagonists, who are out to destroy him, or who stand between her and the solution to the crime. In mysteries, as in other fiction, characters have families—or not. And the presence or absence of those family members is significant.

Sometimes other characters can serve as sounding boards that allow the protagonist to avoid Shakespearean soliloquies. The protagonist can complain to his secretary or his ex-cop drinking buddy about how there is no justice in the world. Instead of keeping her thoughts about what the villain deserves to herself, the protagonist can vent to her best friend or sidekick over pizza.

In a crime novel, conflict often leads to violence. But there is also verbal aggression, simmering or boiling over, cloaked in humor or downright ugly. Some verbal exchanges can be both more disturbing (for the characters) and more revealing (for the reader) than physical violence.

For example, in the fifth book in my series, my protagonist, Lizzie Stuart, is in a car with her fiancé, John Quinn. They are on their way to a reunion of Quinn’s old West Point classmates on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Lizzie has been trying to read a tourist guide to the area, but she realizes that before they arrive at their destination and she meets Quinn’s friends for the first time, she needs to find out what has been bothering him. This chapter is titled “Talk to Me,” and in these few pages the two characters reveal themselves, as Lizzie probes and Quinn parries. The subtext to her questions about what he has on his mind is that she is concerned about the lack of emotional intimacy in their relationship. As the conversation goes on, Lizzie, the first-person narrator, shares with the reader her own sense of what the problem is between the two of them and why it makes her uneasy. And then something happens, and they are distracted from the conversation. But nothing has been resolved, and the tension between them—the things he hasn’t told her and won’t tell her, and her fears about this—play out as a subplot during the rest of the book.

I never feel that I understand what a book I am writing is about until I’ve gotten to know my characters. Before I dive into plotting, I like to spend some time thinking about their relationships. Those relationships will often take the plot in unexpected and rewarding directions.

EXERCISE