True Crime Tuesday: The Randomness of it All

JULIA: When you consider the difference between real-life crimes and the fictional ones we mystery writers present to you, what do you think of? The way that fictional criminals are usually a lot smarter than real ones? The 100% solution rate for fictional crimes? How about having several murders a year in a town of 8,000?

The discrepancy that has long fascinated me is randomness. In mysteries, the murder is always intentional. There may be a red herring body thrown in, someone killed by accident or design to throw off the sleuths, but ultimately, the murderer has a motive. An actual, definable reason why Miss Scarlet wants Mr. Boddy dead. That can be a real struggle for the crime fiction writer, because for all the variations on a theme, all credible motives boil down to Love and Money. (There used to be a third motivator, Shame and Reputation, but that died the day the Jerry Springer Show went on the air.)

But in studying real crime, one of the first thing that strikes you is the randomness of it. Someone was walking down the wrong street. Stopped at this red light instead of that one. Spilled a drink on a guy at the bar. There was a woman who was killed in nearby Scarborough, Maine by two drifters. They took $20 off her body and her 10-year-old minivan. When they were caught, they said they just picked the first person who came out of the supermarket where they were panhandling.

The idea that one could be a victim for no other reason than walking out of the Shop 'n Save is terrifying. And I suspect it's why both crime fiction and true crime writers focus on elaborate schemes involving spurned lovers or disputed inheritances. The reader gets a great deal of satisfaction, not just from following the thread of clues through the labyrinth, but also from the thought that it couldn't happen to me. I didn't marry a con man, I didn't embezzle from my boss, I didn't hang around with gangsters at nightclubs. It couldn't happen to me.

I became particularly fascinated by the role of randomness in crime after reading Judgment Ridge: the True Story of the Dartmouth Murders by Dick Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff. In January 2001, Half and Susanne Zantop were found slashed to death in their Etna, New Hampshire home. The two were long married, popular professors at Dartmouth, with no obvious enemies or looming financial difficulties. The deaths shocked and horrified northern New England and became one of the largest investigations ever undertaken by the NHSP Major Crimes Unit.

I won't spoil the investigation for you—the book is well worth reading for it's depiction of the careful, meticulous policing that broke the case—but the murderers are a matter of public record: two teenage boys with knives and an almost unbelievable disconnection with reality. They picked the Zantops to rob and kill because there was no dog barking at the couple's isolated house.

Judgment Ridge directly influenced one of my own books. I wanted to see exactly how close to that terrifyingly random killing I could get and still meet the genre expectations of mystery. (I won't tell you which one it is. If you've read it, you'll know.) I still find myself flirting with that edge, and I wonder, do mystery readers always need a motive for murder? Or are they ready for truly realistic crime in their novels? After all, there's no reason given for Col. Mustard or Mrs. White to commit murder, They were there. The lead pipe was there. That was enough.

Guilty Pleasures

It's my first week to take the wheel here at Jungle Red Writers! I'm hoping it'll turn out better than my first week driving back in the day (I hit a Buick in Carl's Drug's parking lot.) So without further ado, let's take 'er out for a spin.

I have a confession to make. I like February 15th better than February 14th. You can keep your flowers and your I (Heart) You teddy bears and your spring-loaded cards that play "Love Will Keep Us Together." I want chocolate half off. Seventy-five per cent off. Eighty, if you're willing to wait until a week after and risk getting nothing but Red Hots and Necco wafers. I load up on red and pink M&Ms and Hershey's Kisses. I promise myself I'll just have a few, for dessert, but at the end of the day, I'm sitting in my comfy chair with my feet up and a litter of pink and silver foil on the rug.

It struck me that reading is often the same way. How many times do you hear people referring to mysteries as fluff? Mind candy? A palate-cleanser? I see this all the time when I volunteer at my local library. The patron comes up the desk. She rather proudly lays down a book we shall call Extremely Sensitive and Incredibly Plotless. This book has been on the NYT Bestseller list for 46 weeks and has been reviewed in the New York Times, The Sunday NYTimes, The NYT Review of Books, The NYT Book Review Monday--and the author's apartment has been featured in the style section.

Then, sheepishly, she adds four mysteries to her pile. "I know it's just mindless entertainment," she apologizes. "But sometimes I just need something light."
What I want to say to her is, "Ma'am, it's not just mindless entertainment. I and my fellow mystery writers work incredibly hard, sometimes for years, to master the language and characterization and plotting that will have you sitting in your comfy chair until 2 am, devouring our books. It's okay to enjoy reading. It's a good thing to be swept away by a story and to laugh and weep along with the characters."

What I do say is, "I'm sure you'll enjoy these."

How about you, ladies? What do you say--or not say--when someone dismisses our genre as a guilty pleasure? (And does anyone else besides me buy out the candy section after St. Valentine's Day?)

JAN: If we're talking pure status, Julia, I'd WAY rather be seen on a plane reading books with titles like -- One was a Soldier -- or Come and Find Me -- Dead Head - or Murder, Murder and more Murder - than The Nannie Diaries (which was actually a really good book.) Mysteries have a hard edge, tough chick aura that Jersey girls like me aspire to. Whereas love stories - even literary, NYT bestselling, award winning, love stories always make me feel like a such a featherhead girl - even though I really do like them. But I think the bottom line is this: there's high end, well done mysteries, love stories, memoirs and literary books, and there's complete crap or total fluff mysteries, love stories, memoirs and yes, literary books, with the no plot, no-point prose that makes you wonder how on earth they got published.

And while I think I might give you a good run for your money in the bargain-hunting frugality contest, I confess that the day after Valentine's Day, I can't even look at chocolate! However, the day after Christmas, I have been known to restock my lights and wrapping paper.

HANK: Who was it that said to some mystery writer--are you ever going to write a REAL book? Listen, I'm sitting here tearing my hair out because I'm on page 385 (uh-oh) and I've got to get person A and person B to arrive in the same place at the same time and have a perfectly natural and logical reason for it to happen.
So although I am generally a pretty nice person, if someone were unwise enough, right about now, to make one crack about "mindless"--well let's just say they'd be the ones having a "%#*&%$% conflict in every sentence.

(I buy white tissue paper. Fabulous. Day after Christmas? They almost pay you to buy it...Happy First Blog day, dear Julia!)

DEB: I hate categories--cozy, fluffy, hard-boiled, literary. People having the idea there is only one kind of book they SHOULD read is like thinking you should choose between granola and Cheerios for every meal. I don't mean we shouldn't be discerning, but how can we be discerning if we don't sample things? And there are different types of books for different moods and situations. I bought two at the supermarket here in London the other day: the new Val McDermid paperback, Trick of the Dark, and a Katie Fforde. You all know Val McDermid's books, I'm sure, but for those US readers who aren't familiar with Fforde, she writes "fluff" romances. (Yes, the girl always gets the guy, but what's wrong with that? And they can be wickedly satirical--the heroine's horrid family in this book could have been right out of Austen.) The Fforde was the perfect book for a day feeling under-the-weather, the McDermid will be the perfect book for another occasion. I can't see that snobbery, literary or otherwise, is ever to anyone's benefit, and it deprives people of a lot of pleasure.

Happy First Blog Day, Julia, and here's to books of all sorts.

ROBERTA: My good friend Deborah Donnelly, who wrote the wedding planner mysteries, used to talk about how much pleasure it gave her to hear from a reader telling her that one of her books got her through the aftermath of surgery or a relative's illness or anything hard, really. I can admire beautiful writing but most of all I want characters and a story that pull me in--I don't care whether it's mystery or romance or bestseller...

Hank, 384 pages and still haven't reached the denouement--that's a whopper! can't wait for that one. Also can't wait for Julia's new book! And Hallie's! and Rhys's! And Rosemary's! I'm salivating...

RHYS: More than one person has said to me, "So will you ever try to write a real book?" And it's something I can't understand because to me the mystery is the ultimate study in human nature on the brink. Nothing else shatters the wholeness of the universe of a community or family like a murder. Mysteries are perfect opportunities for in depth character studies. And what's more our stories have a beginning,a middle and an end, which is more than one can say about many so called "literary novels."

Have you noticed that Barnes and Noble has shelves marked Fiction and Literature and others marked Mystery. But you know what, I don't care. I love my fans. I love my friends in the mystery world and I'm quite happy!

I think that went rather well! I got the blog back without breaking anything. To celebrate, I'm giving away 4 Advance Reader Editions of my upcoming book, One Was A Soldier. Tell us about your guilty pleasures--reading or otherwise--in the comments for a chance to win.

Writers' Challenge Week FIVE

JAN: Okay, we are closing in on the end. I managed to write even while vacationing in a house right on the beach in Puerto Rico -- and I didn't check my email for three whole days. It was terrific.

I learned a trick to make myself write when I'm on vacation. I didn't bring my manuscript, which would have involved hauling along a lot of paper -- not just 250 pages of the manuscript, but also a critique from a writer friend. Instead, I decided to start an essay, and I told myself each morning that I didn't have to sell it. Didn't even have to show it to anyone.

And you know what? Writing didn't seem like work anymore. It seemed like this really fun thing I was doing every morning before I went to the beach.

This week I went back to the manuscript and got a lot done. I'm a third into what I hope is the final, final draft. Already new ideas for books are percolating -- a sure sign its time to move on.

After five weeks, I've gotten better about not checking the Internet in the morning, but I can revert to compulsive behavior later in the day. I'll have to devise a challenge for that someday.

Any ideas?