Writing a Murder Mystery

The other day I was sitting in a meeting with other faculty when the campus play director said to me, “Why don’t you write me a play for next fall?”  Theoretically, the college has a contest and produces the winner in the fall production.  A seed was planted and I’m sketching it out on purpose. 

The idea of writing murder mysteries is attractive to me, and heaven knows I’ve watched enough of them, especially Agatha Christie’s, and read quite a few, specifically Sue Grafton, Susan George (Inspector Lynnley), and PD James (Commander Adam Dalgliesh).  By the way, I am currently reading an old Agatha Christie/Miss Marple.  It’s not great literature, and the character of Miss Marple is rather different.  In the book, she’s a busy-body who just sits and listens and then engages people in annoying conversations; in the TV shows she seems more prescient and in control and not at all a dotty old lady. 

However, in a murder mystery the person who is killed is usually not a person who is greatly grieved.  Sometimes there is even a reason to feel the death is a boon to the characters.  That goes against my value system and my view of good fiction, so these kinds of mysteries start out being nonrealistic, more a lark or an entertainment mode than real literary fiction.  PD James gets the closest to literary writing, but even she gets formulaic. 

Murder mysteries are only partially about finding justice.  There are some police procedurals where justice is the motive of the “detective,” but usually the motive of the author in mysteries is to uncover the solution to an intricately designed puzzle.

There are always two deaths, not just one.  The killer strikes twice so there is more evidence; or I should say there are two deaths, not always by the same hand, but it looks like it initially.  The detective must have something unique about him or her, and publishers like a distinctive character who can carry several novels, a Poirot. 

My potential idea is a comedy wrapped around a murder mystery—or is it a murder mystery wrapped around a comedy?  There will be one set (as a play must have, the main difficulty to writing a play that does not bear upon a novel or screenplay), too many characters, farcical elements, two murders, some stereotypes (the mainstay of these kinds of mysteries), and a happy ending because the people murdered, or dead, are not good people.  Still, my Christian sensibilities wonder about trivializing the death of any characters, because characters represent the human person. 

This is hardly a primer on writing a mystery.  There are different genres of them, of course, such as cozy, which I don’t care for.  A friend gave me (because she was getting rid of books) a cozy that seems to revolve around a women’s alteration shop.  The first two pages were over-run with references to fabrics, styles of clothing, sewing instruments, and fashion references.  That was enough; I tossed it aside.  I’ve read a few of the Alexander McCall Smith books, which he seems to crank out every two months (I’m exaggerating, of course).  They are sweet, but I’m too busy to read all of them. 

Does a mystery need a red herring (or two)?  Of course.  The detective can’t figure it out right after the crime, although it would be good because the second person would not die!  Does the writer/director have to play fair with the reader?  I think so.  I’ve watched enough Agatha Christie’s to know that sometimes the “detective” will pull something out of their “hat” (humhum, knowing cough) that hasn’t really been information anybody would have known.  But I like the more serious ones where the audience, if very observant, sees more than the characters, good old dramatic irony.  Since character is a secondary concern is most parlor mysteries, plot—logical, cohesive plot—is the real center.  And there should be intertwining subplots based on backstories.   

All this is easier said than done; I have the treatment but not the dialogue that must reveal the plot.  So we will see.  I thought about doing National Novel Writing Month to get it on paper, but I don’t have the time to breathe right now, much less write 1600 words a day for the month of November—although it’s a fun idea and I have done it.  It will be my next writer’s group project!

Input appreciated!  Any good books on this subject?