Now Write! Mysteries

RHYS BOWEN’s books have been nominated for all the major mystery awards. She currently writes the Agatha- and Anthony-winning Molly Murphy books, featuring an Irish immigrant in turn-of-the-century New York City, and the bestselling Royal Spyness series, about a penniless minor royal in the 1930s. Rhys is a transplanted Brit who now divides her time between California and Arizona.

I remember the first time I went to India. I arrived after an overnight flight, and went straight to sleep at my elegant hotel. I awoke to the rhythmic clang of a bell, went out on my balcony, and there was an elephant walking past. I still remember the surprise and delight, realizing I was in another, very different place.

That trip left many indelible memories—in Delhi the sweet herby smell of the dung fires of the poor; life happening on the streets—people being shaved, children being bathed. Cows and donkeys pushing their way past street vendors, and the early morning boat ride down the Ganges, seeing the riverbank full of pilgrims as they came to bathe. The sparkle and swish of silk saris, the enticing colors and tastes of a big curry dinner.

You will see from this anecdote that my memories are of all five senses. This is how we perceive our world. So when we want to bring a setting to life in our books it is obvious that the description should not just be a visual one.

I came to writing mysteries through a sense of place. I had long enjoyed the classic English mysteries, and then I discovered Tony Hillerman. Here, for the first time, was a writer who took me to a place and made me believe that I was there. When I read his books I was in the Southwest, and even though I had never been there in person, I was able to act as guide the first time my husband and I drove through Hillerman country.

So when I decided to write mysteries, I knew what I wanted to achieve: I wanted to write books that would take people to another time and place. Not tell them about another time and place—make them feel as if they were there experiencing it for themselves.

I started with the Constable Evans books and re-created my childhood memories of Wales in those stories. Then when I switched to Molly Murphy, I tried to emulate Hillerman and bring the world of New York in 1900 vividly to life. I wanted my readers to feel that they were there with Molly.

I was lucky because my heroine was a newcomer to the place, and the easiest way to bring a place to life is to see it through the eyes of a character. Coming from the lonely west coast of Ireland, Molly is overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, smells of the crowded streets of the Lower East Side. I could evoke those streets, because I had walked them myself. I had heard how sound echoes back from the tall tenements, and I pictured how it would have been when hawkers shouted their wares, children played, babies cried, and teeming life went on day and night.

It’s hard to bring to life a place where you have never been. You can’t really give the feel of London, unless you’ve been there. Obviously we can’t go back to the fourteenth century, we can’t all go to Prague or to Antarctica. But we have to have been somewhere similar to Prague or Antarctica, if we wish to create the feelings of those places.

So I do my homework and make it accurate. I go to New York and walk the streets that Molly walked. I also have a huge collection of photographs taken at the time. So that if I’m writing about a certain street, I can see what the name of the tailor shop was and what was on the billboards. Remember, if you make one slip, everybody will tell you about it.

I reckon that I use about a tenth of the information I know, but the fact that I know the other nine-tenths makes it a better story. It’s those one or two telling details rather than every historical fact or every geographic fact that bring a place to life. The cry of a hawk on a bleak hillside can evoke a sense of loneliness more vividly than saying how remote the hillside was. Our sense of smell is the most evocative as far as memories are concerned, so evoking a particular scent can take your readers to a time or place, by bringing to life their own memories....

EXERCISE