Mark Pryor--Fact or Fiction

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm very happy to have our Jungle Red friend Mark Pryor back on the blog today! His new book, THE MOST MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP IN PARIS, is out today, and not only does it feature one of my favorite fictional detectives, Hugo Marston, but it's the first book in a spin-off series! How can you beat bookshop, Paris, and a handsome ex-FBI profiler? Oh, add chocolate! And Mark's special expertise, as he will explain.

Mark Pryor:  Fact or fiction? If it's really weird, it's probably true...

I will be doing a fair few book events over the next month or so, and I can guarantee one question will be asked of me at each one. And, to be clear, it's a question I love answering because I'd ask it, too:

"Do you use any of your real-life criminal experiences in your books?"

Oh, let me back up and be clear: those "criminal experiences" do not involve me committing crimes (not that I'd admit to, anyway!), but refer to my sixteen years as a prosecutor and my current profession, a criminal defense attorney.

In that time, I've handled dozens of murder cases, and thousands of other criminal cases, everything from the theft of a watch from Target to gang-related robberies and assaults and... well, if you can think of a type of crime, it's probably landed on my desk. 

So what's my answer? Well, I'm a lawyer so it's not a straight Yes or No, of course. It's both, and here's what I mean.

Yes: what I use is my knowledge of the investigative process. When a crime happens, usually murder in the case of my books, I know what steps the police take to secure the scene and collect evidence. This lets me set a genuinely accurate process in place but also, if I choose, allows me to insert mistakes (or clues) by whoever is investigating. I don't have to call a detective or rely on Google (or, heaven forfend, AI) to get it right. Or wrong, if that's what I'm going for.

No: the truth about most real-world crime, murder included, is that it is one of two things, either (1) grubby, sordid, and "unsexy" in the sense that it wouldn't be at all interesting to read about. For example, a man strangling or beating his wife to death in a drunken, jealous rage. Horrific and tragic, and I don't mean to minimize that, but novel-worthy? Probably not. If not in that category then those few cases that aren't dismal and gross, well, to be honest they are (2) often so weird and bizarre that if I tried to put them in a fictional story, you'd throw that book across the room with an anguished cry of "Ridiculous! That could never happen!"

Two quick examples of this: Picture a recycling plant and the large conveyor where people are sorting the types of recycling, when someone ponders aloud, "Would you look at that - why would someone recycle a mannequin?" and someone closer to this odd sight hits the "Stop" button while pointing out that it's not a mannequin at all. The investigation was quick - mail and papers around the body led police to a specific street address, where blood in a recycling can matched that of the victim, and a nearby surveillance camera captured the killer dumping the body. It also captured what was beside the recycling bin: a trashcan. And in case you didn't know, if you put a body in a trashcan, it goes to the dump and is never seen again.

Which is to say, if I write a novel where my murderer is standing there, a body over his shoulder while deciding whether to use the trash can or the recycling bin, and he goes for the recycling, you would be understandably irritated and incredulous. But it happened. And is why he was caught. 

Second example: a 1985 murder of a beautiful young mother, beaten in her apartment by a person or persons unknown. Here are some of the oddities associated with that case, and why writing it as fiction would render a story contrived and unbelievable:

• At the time, the police collected a written alibi statement from the jealous ex-boyfriend (and as we all know, it's always the jealous ex-boyfriend!), but never checked it;
• Twenty-five years later, a phone call out of the blue pointed police to that ex-boyfriend, the call coming from his current jealous wife (!);
• The cold case detective, Tom, and I visited the scene of the crime, and the woman living there was an absolute carbon copy of the victim, she looked startlingly like her;
• Tom then found the alibi witness, still living in her same neighborhood in Austin;
• That witness remembered the suspect, but not if she was with him at the time of the attack, but told Tom she used to keep a diary of her life;
• She literally went up to her attic and found the diary for that week, and busted the alibi (helping lead to a conviction at trial);
• The suspect's wife then did an about-face and sided with her husband at trial, throwing a dramatic fit when the guilty verdict was read.

All of that was pretty interesting and exciting to be involved in, no question, but if I stitched that sequence of events and coincidences into a novel, you'd be rightly skeptical. 

Which, I suppose, brings us to that famous saying, that truth is stranger than fiction. Is it? Not always... but when it is, it's too strange even for mystery novelists and our ever-discerning readers!

DEBS: Mark, these are great stories! But I agree, not very good for book plots. My husband is a former cop and would agree with you that in real life most criminals are really dumb. Fortunately for us, if not for fiction.

I'd much rather read about fictional crimes, especially ones set in Paris!

Here's more about The Most Mysterious Bookshop in Paris:

Hugo Marston, former head of security at the U.S. embassy in Paris, has retired and is ready to realize his lifelong dream of owning a mystery and antiquarian bookshop. But when a blackmail scheme targeting a chocolatier leads to murder, Hugo is again called to investigate in the first Paris Bookshop Mystery.

And more about Mark:

Mark Pryor is the author of the Hugo Marston series, set in Paris, London, and Barcelona. With nine books in the series thus far, THE MOST MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP IN PARIS is the first in a new spin-off series. It sees Hugo Marston still in Paris, and with the same characters around him, but instead of working at the US Embassy Hugo has opened his own mystery bookshop!

Mark also authored the Henri Lefort trilogy, historical mystery novels set in 1940s Paris, and has two books set right here in Austin, the psychological thrillers HOLLOW MAN and DOMINIC.

Away from books Mark is a former prosecutor, and now a partner at a criminal defense firm in Austin, Texas. He began his career as a journalist in England, where his beat was also crime-related - the police blotter. He has been a guest analyst on CourtTV, and appeared on CBS News's 48 Hours, NBC's Dateline, and Discovery Channel's Discovery ID: Cold Blood