By PJ Parrish
I have to vent. I hope you all don’t mind. Maybe this has happened to you.
You crack open a new book. It has stellar reviews. It has been nominated for a couple awards. The author isn’t an established bestseller but has some good bonafides. It has a jazzy cover and great buzz. A good and trusted friend recommended it.
It starts out great. A killer opening line. Snappy dialogue, a likeable flawed protag, great pacing. It’s an amateur sleuth, which is not my favorite cuppa, but I was willing to go for a ride.
Then…
Around page 50, it stalled in mid-air. I gave it another 25 pages, thinking maybe it could glide into to a good landing. Nope. It got worse. I gave up. I was in bed, reading, and threw it across the room, scaring my dog. I think I am most angry at the author for that, waking my chihuahua out of his deep-dog sleep.
What happened? How did a story with such promise fail? I’ve given this a lot of thought because often we as readers focus on what we enjoy about a book, why it entertained us or moved us emotionally, why we remember the characters long after we’ve finished the last chapter. (Gus McCrae lived in my head long after I closed Lonesome Dove). And as writers — and we can’t help ourselves here — we also tend to analyze why a book doesn’t work.
This book, as I said, was well written. But it failed, I finally realized, because the writer was dealing with an amateur sleuth who lacked all the basic, vital elements needed to make the plot succeed. Now, I’m not here today to diss amateur sleuths. I don’t write cozies or amateur sleuths. All of my books, save one, have dealt with private eyes or cops. My stand alone She’s Not There featured a skip tracer but he was a failed private investigator.
My lone amateur protag was my other stand alone, The Killing Song. The protagonist, Matt Owens, is a seasoned investigative reporter who tries to unravel the gruesome murder of his kid sister. I learned a lot about writing an amateur sleuth when dealing with him. It was, in many ways, the hardest book I wrote. That book gave me great respect for those of you who attempt to write an amateur sleuth mystery or thriller. Why? Mainly, because you can’t rely on the usual police procedural process and the oft threadbare tropes.
Here is what I learned about amateur sleuths. Maybe it can help some of you who might be struggling with this.
1. Give them a relevant job or hobby. Unlike a cop or PI, an amateur can’t just stumble upon bodies without a logical reason. You have to ground them in a profession or avocation that grants them access and freedom of movement within the world you’re building. They have to talk to towns people and uncover secrets without raising suspicion. Classic examples — hair salon owner, baker, bed and breakfast owner. Or as Michael Connelly did so splendidly in The Poet, a newspaper reporter.
2. Give them a good reason. Mere curiosity isn’t a strong enough motivation. Without a badge or professonal training, the amateur has to have some sort of invested stakes. In my case, Matt Owens is trying to find his sister’s killer. Maybe your sleuth is a primary suspect and must solve the crime to clear themselves. Maybe someone close to them is wrongly accused. There has to be credible motivation or you’re just being cutesy. Oh, look…the local vicar figured out who killed old Maud! Praise the lord and pour the G&Ts!
3. Give them credible secondary skills. Without law enforcement training, an amateur can look just silly. You have to give them something extra — a grasp of human nature or a background in psychology. The owner of a nursery might know about poisonous plants. Our own Elaine Viets wrote a popular Dead End Job series and got great mileage for her protag Helen Hawthorne, on the run for an ex while she grinds out a living in lousy jobs. (Helen is the main reason I over-tip hotel maids and never use the coffee pots.)
4. Give them a supporting cast. This one’s important because an amateur needs some access to law enforcement, forensics folks, and other crime specialists to be credible. The amateur cannot operate in a vacuum. Maybe your protag has a business partner, or is close friends with the local police chief. And don’t forget to give your hero a sidekick or foil whose prime role in the story is a sounding board for the amateur’s investigations and plain old figuring out stuff.
Back to my character Matt Owens. Yes, he was grounded in the basic skills of any investigative reporter. But I found it wasn’t enough. His deep grief and guilt over his sister’s gruesome murder was blinding him emotionally. Plus early in the story, he realizes the killer might be in France. In my ardor to set a story in Paris, I had painted myself into a real corner. (I am a rabid pantser). He was truly a poisson out of water. So I had him pair up with a biracial Parisienne police woman, who, subject to chauvinsim and racism within her department, has her own demons to tame. Their friction — and then prickly friendship — made for what I consider one of my best stories.
So…back to the book that I threw across the room. Where did it go wrong?
- First, the main character’s motivation is never well defined and when the reason for her wanting to snoop is finally revealed, it comes so late in the book that it makes the protag seem dumb as a bag of rocks. Hello, Marty McFly!
- Second, the protag has no acess to anyone in police work, and in fact she is fatally antagonistic toward law enforcement, especially those leading the murder investigation. She is isolated by her own stubborness and social anxiety.
- Third, she’s unemployed, whiny and a little too concerned about finding a man to bed and to right her life ship.
- Fourth, she is operating in a near emotional vacuum. When she does finally trust a friend to help her solve the murder, the friend comes across as the more vivid character, who gets all the great lines and insights.
Normally I feel bad when I don’t finish a book. But not this time. Life is short, my bookshelf is full and I have miles to go before I sleep. So does my dog.
Postscript. Thanks for letting me vent. I hope those of you who write amateur sleuths will weigh in.
Good points. An amateur sleuth definitely has to have a ‘network’ of people that can help them investigate. I’m currently working a story relating to an amateur sleuth who is a newspaper reporter in the early 1900’s in a small town. Among other things, she has a brother-in-law on the force, plus a few other people around her that can serve the purposes you mention.
I had never intended to write mystery, it just sorta happened. But to me at least, I find it one of the hardest genres to write — which shocked me. I always considered myself a pretty logical person (I love you, Mr. Spock!) so I didn’t think it would be as difficult as it is to lay out a path of suspects and clues.
And when it comes to the amateur sleuth part, the toughest thing to me is walking that fine line with the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ when it come to how involved the sleuth can truly be in meddling with an investigation, no matter who their well-placed contacts are. I hope the fact that this story is early 1900’s gives a little cushion on that.
And willing suspension of disbelief will only get harder as the series rolls out–you kill off enough people in a small town eventually there won’t be anybody left (and the paper she works for will run out of subscribers so she’ll be out of TWO jobs!). LOL!
Good points all BK. I had the same trepidations when I transitioned from writing romance to mystery. I didn’t have a clue about how to lay out a proper breadcrumb trail of clues or how a cop conducts an investigation. I made a million mistakes (most unpublished) before I finally got some help and started to find my stride. I think it is helpful to have an amateur who is working in a historical sense. It frees you from much of the hubbub and confines of modern science. My series began in 1985 and my good friend the late Jerry Healy used to joke that I wrote historical fiction, 🙂
I’ve run into similar problems when I wanted to set books in international locations I’d visited. My American characters would have had absolutely no jurisdiction, turning them into what amounted to amateur sleuths.
That was part of the fun for me in setting my fellow down in Paris. For all his savvy and reporter skills, he was completely stymied by the culture, the police there and of course the lack of language ability. It was interesting to show his growth.
Your well articulated concerns over amateur sleuths made me consider those I’ve read and liked and the ones I’ve written, asking myself what makes them work for me. I think of Earlene Fowler’s Benni Harper “quilt” series. Benni is the curator of a local folk art museum where an artist is found dead. The killer links back to Benni’s husband’s death when she solves the murder. Benni is one of the most well drawn grieving widow, tough rancher chracters I’ve ever read. Still she ends up marrying the chief of police, which gives her leeway to meddle in other investigations more easily. I also enjoyed Diane Mott Davidson’s Goldy Schultz caterer series. She solves murders while catering divine meals. She also dates and marries a sheriff’s deputy. Again the connection to law enforcement. My protagonists have included a photographer who’s dating a TV news reporter, a court reporter who is stalked by a serial killer, a restaurant owner searching for her missing ATF agent brother, a framing shop owner whose best friend is murdered the same way the shop owner’s brother was 10 years earlier. These are all standalone novel, not series, which seems to me to be the biggest challenge with amateur sleuths. How many crimes can they reasonably be expected to get involved in. I shudder to think the number of murders that occurred in little Cabot Cove!
Ah yes. Excellent point about the Cabot Cove syndrome. I think some amateur series really stretch credibility when the body count starts to go up!
Great post, Kris. This is a subject near and dear to my writer and reader hearts. I love amateur sleuths, but we need a foundation for the suspension of disbelief around an amateur solving murders. Your list is terrific. It’s essential, for my own amateur sleuth, that she have an attraction to solving mysteries and, as you note, secondary skills. Even more than that, a flair for investigation.
Knowing the community they are a part of (and they need to be very much in the community) is also essential.
I am guessing here, but I think avid readers of cozy amateur series are more willing to suspend belief than your average mystery reader. Of course they understand that a string of murdersr in an insular small community isn’t realistic. Or that one protag is going to keep encountering crimes to solve. But it’s a charming quirk of such a series — when it is done well. (See Miss Marple).
Great points about cozies, Kris. Suspension of belief is hard to get past b/c in real life few people are exposed to murders, let alone have reasons to become involved in solving them. The tropes you mention wear pretty thin pretty quickly.
From your description, I probably would have thrown the book across the room, too. Yet it received great reviews??? Apparently many readers happily suspend disbelief to escape into an implausible world.
Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks.
Was talking to my sister Kelly about this book today at pickleball, and I think what really bothered me about the book, even given all I said in my post, was its tone. It was smart-alecky to an annoying fault yet the writer was trying to deal, beneath the wise cracking, with a serious subject. (don’t want to give much away here). The humor just felt forced and flippant given the crime. As for the reviews, I dunno…I’m an old fart and general audience tastes do change.
Amateur sleuth writer here. My genre is cozies, and I’d say one difference between cozies and other crime novels is that readers tend to gravitate toward them not for the mystery, but for the community. I just finished writing a series featuring a witch librarian in a tiny town with a staggering body count. Instead of asking why a librarian is sussing out who knifed the poor stiff found slumped on a stool at Darla’s Café, my readers tend to comment on the characters and their evolving relationships. This helps.
Last year I heard an interview with Laura Lippman where she said Murder Takes a Vacation–a cozy–was the most difficult book she’d undertaken. I bet it was for many of the reasons you lay out here.
Excellent point, Angela, about the need for a rich cast of secondary characters. I agree that this is probably what draws such readers and makes them so loyal. A sense of community is a precious thing these days. We all crave it.
Amateur sleuths and cozies are two different types of mystery. The amateur sleuth has to be more grounded in the more realistic elements of the death. The cozy sleuth is grounded in the place and the people because the small town is as much a character as the humans.
Good distrinction Marilynn. My amateur sleuth book was indeed, quite hardboiled, as is Connelly’s The Poet. I should have been clearer in dealing with that difference.
I used to feel bad about not finishing a book. Now? Nope. Life’s too short for a slogging or ridiculous plot.
Btw, I loved The Killing Song. It might be my favorite book of yours.
After I finished my graduate school work in literature and my life moved in a different direction from academia, I promised myself I would not force myself to finish a book I wasn’t enjoying. My only exceptions since have been books I’m working on as a teacher or book judge, books I need for research, and books so bad I can’t look away from such a train wreck. The train wreck books can fuel the content for my writing blog for weeks.
Aw thanks Sue. It has a special place in my heart because I so love Paris. It was supposed to be a series book, starring Louis. But my sister, wisely, said, “Louis isn’t a Paris kind of guy…”
Thanks for the shout-out, Kris. I agree that cozy writers need a community to solve a mystery, but it’s easy to fall into another trap: the relationships overwhelm the plot. Too much time is spent discussing romantic problems and Grandma’s apple pie recipe and the story gets lost. I’ve thrown some books in my time, but so far I’ve missed hitting the cat.
Ha! I know. We had iong interesting talks about this when you were contemplating starting a new hardboiled series.
It’s articles like this that make TKZ such a great mentor to authors and wannabes.
Thanks Marshall. That makes this ex-teacher feel really good today.
Marshall is right, Kris–TKZ is a great teaching tool, and I recommend it every chance I get. There is so much to learn here, including this great post!
I have no problem not finishing a book if it hasn’t captured me by the end of Chapter 1–too many books and too little time left!
I will go far to give a “slow build opening” book a chance. I don’t need wam-bam openings. So it is very rare for me to give up really early on a book. Esp first novels because sometimes a novice write has to find their footing. But I just grew weary of the main character. There are flaws (good for character arc) and then there is plain old dense-ness.
Excellent article with much to think about and wise advice. My amateur is a gangster given his ‘cases’ by bosses he can’t say no to. (Motivation) His ‘outlaw’ status prevents any real connections with law enforcement but that gives him solution sets from his world. He has ‘earner’ status as a gambler as employment, a ‘crew’ of sidekicks, and contact with interesting ‘flawed’, strong female characters from his world. I’m hoping these make good work arounds for much of your criteria. Didn’t really realize all this until your article caused me to review my writings. Thanks and thanks to TKZ for helping me be a better writer.
“Solution sets.” What a great turn of phrase. Am going to steal that, but will try to remember to credit you. And “earner status” is also a good way to think of your protag — that something in the person’s past or experience gives them credibiity to operate as a sleuth. Thanks.