Some like it hot! Deborah Coonts talks about mixing sex and murder

HALLIE EPHRON: Today our special guest is Deborah Coonts, a very funny writer who goes where I, for one, don't dare. She mixes romance and mystery. SEX and mystery. Oh yeah, and humor. And, as she says, tongue firmly planted in cheek: "After fifteen years learning the craft of writing, I am now officially, an overnight success."

Book 5 in her Lucky series of funny, heart-felt mysteries, LUCKY CATCH, came out in August. (The series first, WANNA GET LUCKY? was a NY Times Notable Crime Novel for 2010 and a RITA finalist.)

And yes, she has definite opinions about sex and mystery. I'll let her tell you. In my opinion, she makes some seriously good writing sense...

DEBORAH COONTS: Sex and murder. Ugly little bedfellows.

They do sort of go hand-in-hand, though, don’t they? Especially when you’re talking about a motive for murder. Heck, I’ve been spending time in Texas where the trial of a woman who ran her husband down, then backed up and did it again… and again…and again… made titillating headlines for weeks.

Love and hate, such a fine line.

But what about love and sex, not as a motive for murder but as part of the story?

I’ve found folks have pretty strong opinions about that. Some think that love and sex just sully a great mystery, diluting it. Others, such as myself, think a story is a slice of life, tugging at common human threads to pull us in. And what’s life without love? And where there is love, there is sex. But what is the right balance of between the sheets time and between the ears time?

Now, I’m here to give you a definitive answer. Wait for it...

It depends. I know, sort of a cop out, but it’s really true. The story dictates the balance.

Technically my stories are romantic mysteries. I know that’s not a “real” genre, but to readers it is. And this means that, while the mystery is the main plot thread, the romance better be pretty darn important. And my setting, Las Vegas, also plays a part in reader’s expectations.

If Vegas is about anything it’s about sex. Gratuitous sex.

But, in a story, nothing can be gratuitous—every scene, every word, every…. dalliance, must serve the story. It must either advance the plot or develop character.

In the first book, WANNA GET LUCKY, the romance was integral in showing my protagonist’s growing ability to learn to trust, to open her heart. Having been raised in a whorehouse, her mother the madam, her father unknown, trust was a big issue for her.

The key here was to advance the romance without taking from the mystery. I remember reading a romantic suspense story a while back and, while being chased by the bad guys, the police and just about everyone else, the hero and heroine pause to have a romantic interlude. I read that section twice, then I stopped reading. Yep, I was done. Fatal storytelling flaw. I don’t know about you, but if the entire Universe is armed and after my blood, I’m really not thinking about sex, nor would I be in the mood if propositioned. And I wouldn’t care if it Tom Selleck, Colin Firth, or Robert Downey, Jr. was doing the asking. But, hey, that just might be one of my weird little peccadillos.

And this is a really good point. In mysteries, the mystery has to be front and center. The romance must add, supplement, complicate, but it should never overshadow.

The story dictates the balance.

And I’ve discovered that even in writing a series, the balance is fluid. Each story is different, so the amount and importance of relationship stuff is different. In the third book, SO DAMN LUCKY, there was a sex scene that was integral to my protagonist’s story line, but not to the murder. That scene went toward the end of the book. The danger is over, so the sex was a release, not only for the characters but the story as well. And it was hot. I could do that at that point in the story. Just thinking about that scene now still leaves me blushing. And I cringe to think my son read that one. Of course, he’s grown and married, so sex isn’t a huge surprise. But still….

And in the latest book, LUCKY CATCH, the sex takes a back seat (not literally—but, now that I think about it, that’s an interesting idea) as Lucky is caught in an awkward position: having to clear her current lover’s name and enlisting her former lover’s help. Love—here I used it as a complicating factor. Can Lucky really trust the man she loves, even when the evidence against him starts piling up?

So, as one would suspect, when talking about love and sex and a good balance, nothing is straightforward.

So what’s your take? Do you like some spice in your mysteries or do you like them hard-boiled?

HALLIE: I so admire it, enjoy reading it, so cannot write it. Every time I try to write about sex I end up writing about... oysters. Or brie cheese. Or ripe peaches.


What about the rest of you? Hard-boiled or over easy... or maybe a little of both, please? Today Deborah is giving away an eBook to a lucky commenter.

Sophie Hannah writes a Golden Age Hercule Poirot for today's avid fans

HALLIE EPHRON: Okay, here's a test. I give you a bit of internal dialogue. You give me the sleuth. 

Ready? Okay: WHO THOUGHT IT?
1. When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it.
2. There are some men who enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever.
3. I should have counted to eleven before I squeezed the trigger.
4. He saw no reason why a warped shelf could not easily be replaced with a straight one, in the same way that he could not comprehend why anybody would place a fork on a square table and not ensure that it lay parallel to the straight line of the table's edge.

ANSWERS:
1.The character who is honor-bound to avenge his partner's murder, even though he disliked and distrusted the man, is Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade.
2. The man-crazy sleuth is the Jersey girl, Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum.
3. The character who counted to ten and then blam is the off-the-grid, ex-military cop, Lee Childs's Jack Reacher.
4. If you guessed that the character who is obsessed with the symmetry of his cutlery is Hercule Poirot, you are right. The sleuth Agatha Christie conjured. So many of us gobbled up the Poirot novels right after we powered through Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. But this is M. Poirot in brilliant new hands. Sophie Hannah is the author, and the quote is from her delightful Poirot mystery, The Monogram Murders.

Today we are thrilled -- sacré bleu we are tickled pink -- to have Sophie Hannah as a guest on Jungle Red.

Sophie, your books, from Little Face with its new mother living with the family from hell, convinced that her baby has been replaced by a doppleganger, wade deep into dark psychological suspense and twisted family drama. The Monogram Murders is fun, frothy, exactly the kind of clue-driven puzzle mystery that Poirot readers adore.

How did you make the switch?

SOPHIE HANNAH: I don't see it as a massive switch - my psychological thrillers also contain lighter moments (often in the banter between the police characters!) and The Monogram Murders also has much darkness in it, and many warped psyches!

The main switch is in terms of narrative style.

In Golden Age detective novels, the storytelling aspect is overt. Golden Age mysteries are easier to write than contemporary mysteries because you don't have to be ashamed of storytelling in an upfront way.  They can literally begin with something like, 'Let me tell you about the baffling mystery I solved last summer.  It all began when...'  Whereas contemporary crime novels go to great lengths to create the illusion that no one is telling anyone a story, but, rather, that the reader just happens to be observing these events.

HALLIE: Did you plot the story out  out in advance the way Christie did?

SOPHIE: I always do. It's crucial for getting the story architecture right. Once that's in place, I can write the novel, and focus all my energy on writing it well, without worrying about the plot.  Planning is huge fun - almost my favourite part of the process!

HALLIE: In Monogram, Poirot feels utterly recognizable. Did you have to immerse yourself in the Poirot novels to achieve this, and how is he different now that he's in retirement?

SOPHIE:  I read all the Poirot novels again - that was my homework, and very enjoyable it was too! The Monogram Murders is set in 1929, so relatively early in Poirot's timeline, which means he's no more retired here than in Roger Ackroyd and Orient Express.

HALLIE: Poirot has been played by tons of actors -- Tony Randall, Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov, David Suchet to name a few. Which one do you think best captured the essence of Poirot, and what do you think it is about the character that has made him such a mystery icon?

SOPHIE: I think it has to be David Suchet, for sure. He plays a real man with depth and wisdom, but Poirot is also, in some ways, a superhero and therefore larger than life - instantly memorable with his elaborate moustaches and egg-shaped head! - and so in this sense he is a caricature.  He is so popular with readers for all kinds of reasons, I think: his compassion, his fairness, his wisdom, his loyalty - and of course all his strange little obsessive-compulsive ways!

HALLIE: Are you working on another Poirot? Another suspense novel? What can we look forward to?

SOPHIE :  I'm writing a book called A Game For All The Family at the moment. This is a standalone psychological thriller and will be published next year.  It's set in Devon, and inspired by Greenway, which was Agatha Christie's holiday home! 

But I'm massively looking forward to the release of my next Simon Waterhouse and Charlie Zailer novel in America next summer.  In England it's called The Telling Error, but in the US it will be called Woman With A Secret. 

As for whether or not I'll ever write another Poirot...the official answer is wait and see!

HALLIE: I hope we don't have to wait too long!

Sophie has promised to drop by today to answer questions... so ask them early (it's a lot later in the UK.)

And please, share: What is your favorite thing about Poirot?

I'll start.  His little gray cells: "It is the brain, the little gray cells on which one must rely. One must seek the truth within--not without." And I confess, I hear David Suchet delivering the lines.

Kate Flora juggles facts and fictions...

HALLIE EPHRON: The fall harvest of wonderful books includes a bounty from Kate Flora: two new books, one crime fiction and one true crime.

Kate, who struck gold with her Edgar nominated true crime Finding Amy, follows it up this month with Death Dealer. Then next month she follows her third Joe Burgess mystery, Redemption, which won the 2013 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction, with a new entry in the series, And Grant You Peace. 

Crime fiction and true crime. I confess, I can more easily imagine juggling cats. Kate, how do you do it?

KATE FLORA: I can’t juggle. Tried to learn years ago, thinking it might help me draw a crowd at book signings, but every time I introduced the third ball, I hit myself in the head with it. Juggling being out, I went in search of other adventures, and while I was messing around trying to learn to write cops, true crime found me.

My first true crime, Finding Amy, I co-wrote to help out my friend Joe Loughlin, who was the lieutenant in charge of CID at the Portland, Maine police department when Amy disappeared. Research led me to meet Lt. Pat Dorian who headed search and rescue. At the launch party for Finding Amy, Pat said to me, “So, Kate, when you’re ready, I’ve got another one for you.” It turned out to be a murder in Miramachi, New Brunswick.

True crime takes twice as long to write as a novel, and I have to spend years with images of real crime victims in my head. On the flip side, the research gets me away from desk into a world that is fascinating.

The story seemed compelling to me. First, the suspect threatened to harm the investigators’ families when they pressed him about his lies. They hadn’t found the victim’s body, which turned out to have been hidden in the woods. And they had only a small window of opportunity to find it when it had thawed enough to give off scent that the dogs could work on, but before bear emerging from hibernation found the body and consumed it.

It took seven years to get justice for the victim in that case, and for me to have a final ending for Death Dealer.

HALLIE: Tell us about the process you went through to write Death Dealer.

KATE: I started out by getting introduced to investigators who gave me access to the case. I spent hours reading files and doing interviews and watching videos and sitting in courtrooms. I ate a lot of Miramichi salmon drove an ATV deep into the woods to see where the body was hidden. Learned all about training of search and rescue dogs and cadaver dogs. As always, I am amazed at the generosity and openness of the people I interviewed to write this book.

HALLIE: Is there a ‘hero’ of that true story, as there is with your Joe Burgess novels?

KATE: As Joe Burgess likes to say—he doesn’t do it, his team does. In Death Dealer, it was the team of investigators who worked the case; the wardens who organized and participated in that search; and MESARD volunteers.

And then there were the friends of the victim, Maria Tanasichuk, who were terrified of the suspect yet came forward to speak on behalf of their murdered friend. The code of friendship triumphing over any code of silence.

HALLIE: What are the special challenges of making it up versus hewing to the facts?

KATE: Well, I think the challenge of making it up, in a world where our readers are often well-informed by other writers, and real world news stories, is trying to get it right.

When I was working on And Grant You Peace, the new Joe Burgess book that’s out next month, Burgess and Terry Kyle watch a young man they recognized walking down the street toward a convenience store with a suspicious bulge in his pocket that tells them he’s got a gun. I knew they were going to be going into that store, and that it was a very dangerous situation, so I e-mailed two police officers I use as resources, and called a third, and had them walk me through the scene.

That’s the challenge. Writing cops who feel credible.

HALLIE: Does one kind of writing enrich the other?

KATE:  Absolutely. What I’ve learned from all of my time with cops informs my writing when I am writing fictional cops.

When you flip that question, all of the time I’ve spent learning to reveal character to a reader, in shaping story so that it has a dramatic arc, in finding the right voice and stance to tell the story—those things have been invaluable when I’m writing a true story.

HALLIE: My hat is off to you, Kate. Years of work and a commitment to justice. And meanwhile you’re spinning out novels.

Kate will be checking in today so feel free to pepper her with questions about how she manages this true juggling act.

ABOUT Death Dealer: How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice by Kate Flora

When the hunters become the hunted, life for law enforcement officials and their families in Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada, turns upside-down. It takes a months-long investigation by police, search and rescue dogs and their handlers to catch a suspected serial killer.

ABOUT And Grant You Peace by Kate Flora

This 4th book in the Joe Burgess mystery series finds Burgess pulled inadvertently into a case rife with religious tensions after finding a young mother and a baby locked in a closet inside a burning mosque. His search for answers leads him to an outlaw motorcycle gang, a fishing boat captain who may be supplementing his income with illegal activities, and an immigrant community suspicious of the police.