>The Fatal Flaw

>One thing that murderers have in common with the rest of us is that they’re not perfect and they’re not omniscient. They can’t plan for everything That’s how even the best-planned murders are discovered, and even the most careful murderers are caught. Of course, in real life, and in good crime fiction, some murderers are careful and wise enough to avoid getting caught for a while – sometimes even for years. But eventually, murderers often get found out. In police procedurals (Kevin Hughes’ work is an example), the police find the killer through a careful collection and sifting of evidence. But sometimes, the murderer makes mistakes or doesn’t plan well. Those “fatal flaws” in planning can make for an interesting plot point in mystery novels, because they remind the reader that murderers are human, too. That makes the murderer more realistic. It also can be very intellectually satisfying and almost cathartic when the sleuth finds the one mistake that the murderer made, or there’s one complication the murderer hadn’t expected.

Sometimes, the “fatal flaw” in the murderer’s planning comes from a mistake the murderer makes. Modern murderers don’t usually leave fingerprints or make other obvious mistakes. But sometimes, they make the kinds of mistakes in thinking that get the sleuth’s attention. For example, in Tony Hillerman’s Dance Hall of the Dead, Ernesto Cata, a Zuñi teenager, disappears with his friend, Navajo teenager George Bowlegs. When Cata is found dead, George Bowlegs becomes the suspect when he goes into hiding. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn gets involved in Cata’s murder as he searches for Bowlegs. As he investigates, Leaphorn finds that the Cata and Bowlegs had stumbled onto something far more sinister than just the cultural differences between their Nations. Leaphorn gets an important clue to the murderer’s identity when he finds a set of broken fragments of flint artifacts. His attention’s caught because they’re not broken in the way he would have expected, and that gets him curious. It doesn’t immediately reveal the murderer to him, but it gives him the first clue.

The murderer also makes a mistake in Agatha Christie’s Sad Cypress, only this time, it’s the mistake of saying the wrong thing. In that novel, Elinor Carlisle is accused of poisoning her wealthy Aunt Laura’s protégée, Mary Gerrard. Poirot is called in to investigate by Dr. Peter Lord, Aunt Laura’s doctor, who’s become infatuated with Elinor and wants her to be found innocent. Poirot gets involved in conversations with the witnesses to the murder, and discovers that one of them tells him a small, inconsequential lie. It’s such an unnecessary lie that it draws Poirot’s attention to that witness right away. That mistake doesn’t immediately tell Poirot who the murderer is, but it’s enough to set him on the right path.

We also see a murderer’s lapse of thinking in Ellery Queen’s The Roman Hat Mystery, in which Queen and his father, Inspector Richard Queen, investigate the poisoning death of wealthy attorney and blackmailer Monte Field. The two Queens deduce who the murderer is, but they don’t have any proof – not any proof that will stand up in court. So they trap the murderer into making the mistake of being a creature of habit by getting the killer to try another murder using exactly the same poison and the same method of killing.

In other mysteries, the murderer’s mistake doesn’t come from lapses of thinking, but from events the murderer doesn’t foresee and therefore, hasn’t anticipated. In Agatha Christie’s Hickory Dickory Death (AKA Hickory, Dickory, Dock), for instance, Hercule Poirot is investigating a set of seemingly meaningless thefts at a hostel for students. When one of the residents, Celia Austin, admits that she’s been responsible for most of the thefts, everyone assumes that confession will put an end to the goings-on at the hostel – until Celia Austin is found dead two days later. At first, everyone thinks she’s committed suicide. But Poirot and the police realize she’s been murdered when the manager of the hostel, Mrs. Hubbard, remembers that Celia had filled her pen with green ink the morning before she died. The supposed suicide note was written in blue/black ink. That one unforeseeable event – Celia’s pen running out of ink – gives Poirot an important clue.

In Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, Poirot is in the village of Broadhinny, looking for the murderer of a charwoman whom everyone thought was murdered by her lodger. Poirot gets an important clue to the real murderer because of the sloppy habits of the owner of the Guest House where he’s staying. In her haste to find something, she dumps out the contents of a drawer. Poirot, ever a stickler for neatness, puts the drawer’s contents back and slides the drawer in. Then, he goes out. When he returns, his hostess once again upsets the contents of the drawer, looking for something else. When Poirot once again replaces the contents, he finds something there that wasn’t there before, and that gives him an important clue to the murderer. That simple, unexpected event, for which the murderer didn’t plan, is enough to help seal the killer’s fate.

The murderer’s fate is sealed in a different, quite literal way in Robin Cook’s Contagion. In that novel, medical examiners Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery are trying to track down the cause of a series of deaths from nosocomial (hospital-caused) infections. All of the deaths occur at the same hospital, and Jack and Laurie suspect that the deaths are not coincidences. They find that those infections are spread through a deadly influenza virus, and that the virus has been deliberately introduced. As Jack gets closer to finding out who’s behind these deaths, he ends up trapped by the killers. What the killers don’t anticipate, and didn’t plan for, is just how virulent the virus is. In the end, the deadly virus has as much to do with the killers being stopped as Jack does.

The weather can also wreak havoc on the murderer’s plans, as we find in Emma Lathen’s Going for the Gold (my review of that book is here). In that novel, a French ski jumper at the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, NY is shot during a jump he’s making. Just after that, John Putnam Thatcher’s informed of a series of counterfeit traveler’s checks that have turned up at the Lake Placid branches of the Sloan Guaranty Bank. Thatcher soon realizes that the two incidences are related and he and police work to find out who the killer is. A sudden blizzard arrives, hampering the killer’s plans to throw suspicion away from Olympic Village, and trapping everyone in Lake Placid long enough for Thatcher and the police to find out who’s committed the murder.

Sometimes, it’s a simple little coincidence that the murderer can’t anticipate that sets the sleuth on the trail. That’s what happens in my book Publish or Perish, which focuses on the murder of a graduate student. Joel Williams, a former police officer-turned-professor, gets interested in the death and works with the Tilton police to solve the killing. One evening, Williams and his are wife are out to dinner when he meets one of the suspects who happens to be at the same restaurant. After dinner, Williams stumbles on an important clue by the pure accident of the suspect’s dead car battery and a jump start that he gives to the suspect.

How do your favorite mystery authors and novels handle that “fatal flaw?” Is that how the killer gets caught? Or do you prefer police procedurals where it’s the evidence that “gets” the killer?

>The Devil’s in the Details

>I’ve been reading several book reviews lately (for example, Bernadette’s review of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and and Sunnie’s review of Rennie Arth’s Dead of Winter) where the reviewer mentions the author’s use of detail. Since writers don’t have the luxury of using visuals, details and extra information are vital. They give the reader a sense of time, place and character. They also can add a great deal to the suspense. At the same time, though, too many details burden a book and distract the reader from the main point – the mystery plot.

Authors use detail to share the characters with readers – to make those characters more real. That kind of detail is important, because when readers believe the characters and identify with them, they get caught up in the characters’ lives – in the mystery. That was part of Agatha Christie’s genius. She created real characters and used detail to bring them to life. For instance, in Dead Man’s Folly, Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of a young teenager, Marlene Tucker, during an outdoor fete. At one point in the novel, Poirot visits Marlene’s family. Christie describes the home in which they live, the other members of the family, and their reactions to Marlene’s death. These details make the victim a real person and get the reader caught up in wanting to know why she died. Caroline Graham does the same thing in her Tom Barnaby series. In Written in Blood, for instance, Barnaby investigates the murder of Gerald Hadleigh, a member of a local writer’s group. Graham gives interesting details about each of the characters (and their reactions to Hadleigh’s murder); those details draw the reader into the circle of writers.

What’s interesting about Smith’s (and Christie’s) character detail is that neither makes the mistake of giving the reader too much irrelevant information. We learn enough about the characters and their backgrounds to make them interesting, but not so much as to detract from the main plot. Authors such as Smith, Graham and Christie strike this balance by giving readers information in the context of the mystery. That is, instead of just simply stating everything about a character, these writers weave background information into the plot, so it’s relevant. For example, in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, we learn a good deal about Precious Ramotswe’s background, including her disastrous marriage to Note Makoti. However, Smith integrates that information into the rest of the plot, and returns to Precious’ background only as it’s relevant for the story.

Smith also uses detail expertly to place the reader in the setting which, for this series, is Botswana. Smith describes the land, the kinds of trees and animals, and the food that people eat in just enough detail to give the reader the sense of setting without overburdening the reader. That’s also true of Tony Hillerman and Margaret Coel. They have different writing styles, but both of them give the reader rich detail about the Native American lands that are the settings for their novels. In their cases, that’s important because very often, the land is a part of the plot and the setting is integral to the action.

Sometimes, mystery writers use details about the setting to heighten the suspense. The more skillfully the author describes a bleak, dangerous or lonely setting, the more suspenseful the story can be. For instance, Jonathan King’s The Blue Edge of Midnight takes place in the South Florida Everglades. In the novel, Max Freeman, a former Philadelphia police officer, moves to the Everglades to find some peace after he shoots a young teenager who’s robbed a convenience store. When Freeman discovers the body of a child in the river near his new Florida home, he is drawn into the investigation against his will. King uses the river setting quite effectively to draw the reader into the drama and to build suspense. C.B. Gilford does the same thing in his short story, Swamp Rat. In the story, Claude Wetzel has escaped from a prison. He hides in the swamp that surrounds the prison, planning to cut through it towards the road on the other side of the swamp. Especially towards the end of the story, Gilford describes the swamp in murky, suspenseful detail; that detail adds to the power of the story.

Christie does the same thing in And Then There Were None (My review of that novel is here). In the story, a group of people is marooned on an island, where they soon discover that one of them is a murderer. The details Christie provides about the island itself and the house add much to the suspense of the novel.

Authors of police procedural mysteries (Kevin Hughes’ work is an example) use details to give the reader clues. Sometimes, those details are forensics details. Other times, they’re details about what suspects say and do. The balance in this kind of novel is between providing enough information for readers to find the clues, and not using too much jargon or being too graphic.

Taken as a whole, details make a very necessary and important contribution to a good mystery novel. They bring the reader into the novel, give the reader clues, set the scene and add to the suspense. But too many details, especially irrelevant ones, drag the reader’s attention away from the main plot. Then, the reader has to decide which details to ignore and which to note. That, too, takes the reader’s attention away from the suspense that’s supposed to be building up.

What’s your view? How much detail do you like in the mysteries you read? Do you prefer character details? Setting details? Evidence details? How much is too much?

The picture you see, by the way, was painted by my grandmother as a wedding gift to me and my husband. She captures the essence of an autumn day with important details, but without cluttering up the picture….

>Getting the Evidence

>One thing that murder mysteries have in common is that there is some kind of evidence that links the killer to the crime. The way that the sleuth finds that evidence varies, of course, depending on the sleuth, the kind of crime fiction, and the author’s expertise. There’s also variety in the way that the author shares that evidence with readers.

In early mystery novels, such as The Purloined Letter and just about all of the Sherlock Holmes novels, the evidence was obvious, physical evidence such as footprints, distinctive markings, ashes and the like. These novels were written before the advent of modern-day psychology and forensic technology, and you can see that clearly as you think about the way the sleuth gets the evidence. Holmes, for instance, is an expert on a wide variety of different sorts of tobacco ash, chemicals, and even London mud. He recognizes evidence because he has studied so much.

Some kinds of modern murder mysteries also make extensive use of physical evidence. Many are police procedurals. I had an interesting comment exchange about police procedurals with Mack from Mack Captures Crime (a blog well-worth visiting, and one of my Splashed and Lovely nominees). In our comment exchange, Mack mentioned that in police procedurals, the police get evidence bit by bit as they investigate crime. It’s not usually all there at once. Good procedurals show how the police accumulate the evidence, and they acknowledge modern forensic technology such as DNA matching and ballistics. Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series and Kevin Hughes’ novels are good examples of solid police procedurals. I respect police procedurals in which it’s obvious that the author has a good knowledge of gathering and analyzing evidence.


Not all evidence is physical, of course. Some evidence, for instance, comes from what witnesses have seen (or say they’ve seen). A great deal of Golden Age crime fiction emphasizes that kind of evidence. For example, many of the Ellery Queen mysteries include interviews with witnesses. For instance, in The King is Dead, Queen and his father rely heavily on what they’ve seen and heard, and what witnesses saw and heard as they unravel the death of a megalomaniac tycoon. They sift through what they’re told, compare it with what they’ve seen and in the end, Queen uses that evidence, together with what he learns when he visits the tycoon’s hometown, to solve the crime. You can see the same kind of evidence in several of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse mysteries, as well as in Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey series.


As we all know, physical evidence and “witness” evidence can be deceiving, and part of what engages the reader in a good mystery is sorting out which evidence is real and which is a “red herring.” Agatha Christie was a master at offering both kinds of evidence, and challenging the reader to sort things out. She even addresses that issue directly in The Murder on the Links. In that novel, Poirot investigates the death of Paul Renauld, a wealthy Canadian who has relocated to France. As he investigates the murder, he finds several pieces of physical evidence (among them footprints, a piece of pipe and some tattered clothes). Inspector Giraud, who is the official investigator, sees that evidence, too, but draws the wrong conclusions and therefore, discounts important physical evidence. In the end, Poirot shows that a long piece of pipe can be just as valuable a clue as a short piece of pipe, and that physical evidence itself isn’t enough to solve a crime. Making sense of that evidence, and organizing what one learns from the evidence, is more important.

Christie returns to that theme in Murder on the Orient Express, in which there is a great deal of physical evidence. Most of it is intended to deceive; some of it is actual evidence. In the novel, in which he investigates the murder of a wealthy passenger on a luxury train, Poirot shows that reasoning, and fitting all of the evidence into a pattern, is much more important than the physical evidence one finds. For instance, one piece of evidence is a set of threatening letters. Another piece of evidence is a pipe cleaner, and another an expensive lady’s handkerchief. As he interviews the suspects and forms his ideas about the crime, Poirot shows that physical evidence can be extremely misleading if one doesn’t use, as he put it, “the little grey cells of the brain.” Murder on the Orient Express, a real Christie classic, is one of several Christie novels reviewed in this month’s Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Blog Carnival. The carnival is a wonderful place to learn about Christie works you may not have read, and to see others’ insights on the books – I recommend it highly. Thanks, Kerrie, for setting up the carnival!

In my own Joel Williams mysteries, Williams has a healthy respect for careful gathering of evidence. He’s a former police detective, and cooperates with the active police force. He doesn’t gather evidence himself (although he would sometimes like to), but when he comes across it, he fits it into the overall pattern of the crime. One of the challenges I face as a mystery author is that I am not a forensics or police expert. So when I write about the gathering and analyzing of evidence, I try to be careful not to overstep the bounds of my expertise. I rely heavily on input from people who are experts in those fields, and, to be candid, I avoid lengthy discussions of the analysis of evidence. Not only is it not my area of expertise, but too much detail, even of evidence, can detract from the focus I like best – the focus on the mystery.


One final note on getting evidence: In some of the best mystery novels, the sleuth gets the evidence from conversation. Poirot makes this point in several Christie novels, and so does Mma Precious Ramotswe in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Both sleuths have found that people like to talk. When people talk, they cannot help revealing themselves, and the sleuth can learn as much from what people say (even when they lie) as from anything else, including physical evidence.

What do you think about getting evidence? How does your favorite sleuth find out the truth? Are you more attracted to novels where the evidence is mostly physical, and the sifting of it yields the truth? Or do you prefer novels in which the evidence comes from what the sleuth sees and hears and learns from conversation?

>Call the Police!

> The police play a role in most mystery novels. After all, the police investigate crime. It wouldn’t be realistic to have a mystery/crime novel without them. What’s interesting is the role the police play in crime/mystery novels, and how the author portrays them.

In Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Inspector Lestrade was portrayed as somewhat vain, sometimes foolish, and quite often threatened by Holmes’ deductive abilities. He often saw himself in competition with Holmes. Conan Doyle seemed to take pleasure in having his sleuth get the better of the official police.

The police play quite a different role in Agatha Christie’s work. Miss Marple has a good relationship with Chief Inspector Craddock, whom she helps in more than one case. She and Craddock have a mtual respect. Craddock appears in such novels as 4:50 From Paddington (AKA What Mrs. McGillicudy Saw!), The Mirror Crack’d and A Murder is Announced. In these novels, Craddock is portrayed as painstaking, intelligent and detail-oriented, but a man who gets to the bottom of the case at hand. Christie’s other most popular sleuth, Hercule Poirot, also has a good relationship with most of the police force. He works most commonly with Chief Inspector James “Jimmy” Japp, who thinks Poiort has “a tortuous mind,” and likes to make things difficult, but who does respect Poirot’s abilities. Japp himself is portrayed as highly capable and efficient, and Poirot, in his turn, respects Japp. However, it’s clear in most of the novels that Japp is usually one step behind Poirot. Still, the two work collegially. Japp appears in numerous short stories and novels. Thirteen at Dinner (AKA Lord Edgeware Dies), The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Death in the Air (AKA Death in the Clouds) and Peril at End House are just a few of them. Poirot also has respect for Superintendent Spence, who appears in Elephants can Remember, Hallowe’en Party, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead and There is a Tide (AKA Taken at the Flood). Spence is portrayed as an honest, ethical police officer who may not be as quick as Poirot, but who “gets his man” in the end.


Rita Mae Brown’s Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen gets along very well with Sheriff Rick Shaw and Deputy Sheriff Cynthia Cooper. In fact, Harry and “Coop” often get together for commisseration and Chinese take-out. Both Shaw and “Coop” respect Harry and certainly appreciate her insights, but they get exasperated at her insatiable curiousity and her habit of taking too many risks when her curiousity is aroused. Still, in this series, too, the sleuth and the police have a fairly good relationship. Brown portrays both the sheriff and his deputy as smart, capable, hard-working police officers.

Not all sleuths have such a good working relationship with the police. Laurien Berenson’s Melanie Travis often locks horns with the local police. She’s an amateur who can’t seem to stay out of trouble, and that leads to conflict sometimes. Still, Berenson doesn’t portray the police as stupid or inept, and Melanie Travis doesn’t seem to take any pleasure in “scoring off of the cops.” Even Hercule Poirot, who normally works well with the police, finds himself in conflict with Inspector Giraud in The Murder on the Links. To be fair, that’s not because Giraud is a police offier; it’s a personality clash.

Of course, in many mystery novels, a police officer is the sleuth. Ruth Rendell’s Chief Inspector Wexford, Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse, Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn and Kevin Hughes’s Toby Jenkins fall into this category. So do K.C. Constantine’s Mario Balzic and Donna Leon’s Comisario Guido Brunetti. In these series, we get a completely different perspective on the police, since they are the main characters. We get to see the police detective as the protagonist, instead of as an obstacle or even a “sidekick” or ally.

In my own Joel Wililams series, I try to portray the police in a postive way. Williams is a former police officer, so his relationship with the local police is a good one. He trusts and respects their ability, and they work well with him, too. In fact, he’s still friends with the local precinct captain. This is important to me, because I don’t want the police portrayed as bullies or buffoons; yet, WIlliams is the sleuth. He finds the key clues and makes sense of them. That balancing act is at times delicate, but I think it’s realistic.

What do you think of the way the police are portrayed in your favorite series? Is it fair? Are the police portrayed accurately?

>Do Your Homework!

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One of the things that separates a good mystery novel from a not-so-good novel is accuracy. By that I mean that the novelist should get his or her facts straight. For instance, if the novel involves the use of a pistol, the novelist should know enough about what a pistol is like to be accurate. Otherwise, the mystery isn’t believable, and the reader is left thinking, “Wait a minute! That could never happen!” It’s distracting for the reader, and takes away from what should be the central part of the novel – the crime.

Of course, being accurate isn’t as easy as it sounds. We novelists have enough on our hands, what with creating believable characters, an interesting crime, motives, and all of the other elements of the novel. It’s sometimes hard to remember that accuracy matters. But it does. Mystery readers want authentic stories, and they sometimes complain if those stories play with the facts. In Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table, fictional sleuth and writer Ariadne Oliver puts it quite well:

“I’m always getting tangled up in horticulture and things like that. People write to me and say I’ve got the wrong flowers all out together. As though it mattered.”

To most people, though it matters. So it’s important to do one’s homework and find out facts. Many of us novelists use our own backgrounds to do that. Patricia Cornwell, for instance, has used her background in forensics brilliantly to make her Kay Scarpetta series authentic. Robin Cook’s medical background has given him a lot of useful knowledge about the world of medicine. In fact, Cook was trained as an ophthalmologist, and you can see his technical accuracy in books such as Blindsight. Kevin Hughes uses his experience as a former police officer to add acccuracy to Dogging the Truth and Casualty Crossing. Agatha Christie spent World War I working in the dispensary of a Voluntary Aid Detachment Center. That experience gave her a great deal of knowledge of poisons, which she used so well in books such as Murder in Three Acts (AKA Three-Act Tragedy), Peril at End House, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Sad Cypress and Poirot Loses a Client (AKA Dumb Witness).

In my own Joel Williams series, I rely a lot on my years in higher education. Williams is a professor, so I know his professional world fairly well. That makes it easier for me to be accurate. I understand about things like the tenure process, committee work, and some of the other aspects of university life.

Of course, even the best of us don’t know everything. So we novelists need to do our homework. We need to make sure we have our facts straight before we write. Most of us do this by asking experts. Nearly every Robin Cook novel, for instance, includes acknowledgements to others who’ve given him technical input. Most other novelists do that, too. For my part, I’ve been known to take “field trips” to talk to people who are experts in their field. I’ve talked to police officers, store managers, the mother of a child who is at risk for anaphylaxis and a forensics expert, among other people. I learn a lot when I do that, so I actually enjoy the process, and I think it makes for a better novel. Besides, most of the people I’ve asked for help are flattered and eager to help.

Does accuracy matter to you? Do you care if a victim is killed with a pistol, when you know that the author really meant “revolver?” Do you look for those details?