The working title for this fourth mystery-in-the-making is The Solitary. Even with a bodiless beginning, I think it offers plenty of tension. A murder is described, though not one that my main character, Sheriff Gideon Stoltz, must investigate, since it took place four months earlier in far-off New Hampshire. I’m also trying something a bit different: writing some chapters and scenes from the viewpoint of the person who committed that earlier homicide, and who now arrives in Adamant, the town where Gideon is charged with enforcing the law, with criminal intent.
Gideon has no idea of this when he’s confronted with the body of a prostitute and needs to find out who killed her. But readers, having gotten to know the villain, possess a greater understanding. They should wonder whether the perpetrator will get away with another evil act. And they should worry about what will happen to Gideon as he attempts to solve the crime.
All of which may swerve the novel more toward a work of psychological suspense rather than a mystery.
Lee Child writes the bestselling Jack Reacher series. He’s also editor of the Mystery Writers of America handbook How to Write a Mystery. In an introduction, Child suggests that four kinds of novels can be placed under the umbrella term “mystery.”
A traditional mystery, sometimes called a “whodunit,” tends to be complex and plot driven, a puzzle to be figured out. A thriller is fast-paced, full of tension, with a protagonist threatened by lethal danger, and focused on a dire event that may or may not take place. (Will a certain person be killed? Will a bomb destroy a building or a city?) A crime novel examines a criminal act, usually a murder, and is driven by the efforts of a professional or amateur sleuth to bring the evildoer to justice. (Alternatively, it can be written from the criminal’s point of view.) In a suspense novel, the reader knows important things that the protagonist, or hero, isn’t privy to (such as how powerful and dangerous the villain really is), creating a mounting sense of anxiety as the hero, unwittingly or not, places himself or herself in ever greater peril.
In fact, a given mystery can have characteristics of all four types listed above. Child says that when he starts writing, he thinks of his novel as a movie stuntman about to get pushed off a tall building. Rescue personnel have placed a square fire-department airbag on the sidewalk below. The corners of the bag are marked mystery, thriller, crime fiction, and suspense. “The stuntman is going to land on the bag,” Child writes. “But probably not dead-on. Probably somewhat off center,” toward one of the corners. Child doesn’t know which corner until he starts writing, and says: “I’m excited to find out.”
I don’t think much about genres when working on my Gideon Stoltz mysteries. I try to develop believable characters. I consider the several – or many – story lines that weave through the plot. I describe my setting so that readers can see and smell and hear the place, and get a feeling for the time period. I hope they will then put themselves in the shoes of my characters, whether good or bad, victim or villain, hero or antagonist.
