PJ Nunn
Chester Campbell (shown here with Libby Hellmann) is a long time friend of mine who very effectively manages the art of promoting his mysteries with a little help from his friends (and a lot of help from his wife). I've asked him to share some thoughts with us today:
Is It a Murder Mystery?
When I mention that I’m a mystery writer, the typical response is, “You write murder mysteries, huh?” Well, I write whodunits, and that’s what most people consider murder mysteries. So I suppose the answer would be yes.
On the other hand, my books don’t involve a detective going about the business of solving murders. That would only apply if I were writing police procedurals. Which I’m not. I write Private Eye stories.
Homicide detectives solve homicide cases. Private investigators don’t usually find clients looking for somebody to mess with murder except in rare circumstances, like Kinsey Milhone’s getting hired by a woman to find out who killed her mother.
My PIs Greg and Jill McKenzie are retained to look into a suspected homicide in The Marathon Murders, but that case was so cold it could have cracked off an iceberg. The guy was found dead in 1914. The book mostly involves a search for recently-found, and promptly disappearing, documents that might prove the long-dead victim was framed and murdered. They don’t start a serious hunt for a murderer until near the end, when they stumble onto the latest victim and are incensed at what they find.
Fictional PIs are occasionally hired to prove a murder suspect is innocent, and the best way to accomplish that is to track down the guilty party. But most private investigations, even in fiction, deal with less lethal criminal acts. The PI bumps into a dead guy in the living room while pursuing an insurance fraud, a domestic dispute, an embezzlement, or some other misdemeanor or felony of less magnitude.
Real PIs rarely get involved in murders of any sort. Unless they’re females, they probably don’t carry guns except for special occasions, like if they’re meeting someone at midnight in an abandoned warehouse. Just kidding. A friend of mine who has been a PI for 18 years says she’s only encountered one murder case during her career.
A typical PI’s daily routine would be rather boring to a reader, so mystery writers have to jazz it up with shootings, violence of the physical variety, tight surveillance, and other kinds of action to breed excitement. And our invented PIs have a convenient habit of stumbling over dead bodies.
Fictional private investigators come with a conglomeration of talents. Some are good at forensics, some are excellent interrogators, others have great powers of observation and intuition. A few are drawn to corpses like flies. Some of them relish getting into fights with the bad guys.
Regardless of who might be the protag, the great debate among writers and agents and editors is how soon in the story should we encounter a body? The question presupposes that in every mystery we’re going to deal with murder.
In my newest book, The Surest Poison, a murder occurs in the first chapter, but my PI isn’t concerned when he hears about it. He’s preoccupied with what he’s been hired to do, track down who is responsible for a massive toxic chemical dump behind a small plant. A second murder gets his attention because the victim was on his list of people to question about the pollution. He provides a little input to the homicide detective on the case, but he doesn’t actively pursue the killer until near the end.
So the question remains, is it a murder mystery, or a mystery with murders?
Leave a comment on Chester’s post and your name will be included in a drawing for his books. To see details, including prizes, follow this link (http://bit.ly/8F7eK) to the Blog Tour Page at Chester’s website.
Till next time,
