The Psyche of a Mystery Writer

When I meet new people, I often introduce myself as the little old lady who murders people. I watch for the widened eyes and the hint of a smile before I add, “on the written page, of course. I’m a mystery writer.” And then they usually laugh and sometimes ask me what I write. If they do, I tell them, but if they don’t I let it drop.

Since I started writing mysteries I’ve murdered over twenty people, not counting the several I’ll murder in my current book or those in short stories started but not finished. When I think about it I wonder what sort of person can murder people gleefully or at least with impunity even though it’s only in books or stories. Is there something abnormal about us? And yet when I think about all the mystery writers I’ve met, especially at the Malice Domestic convention I recently attended, in my mind I still see masses and masses of happy people smiling and hear their happy chatter. I can’t imagine a convention of accountants, scientists, academics, lawyers, doctors or any other profession with so many happy, laughing people, or sometimes exhausted from all the social stimulation.

Because it was hot that summer, my son had shaved his head.

That reassures me to some extent that I’m not abnormal although I’m not sure how many mothers would ask their son to pose as a dead body for them because her granddaughter, couldn’t find a good dead body to use for the cover of my first book. He not only agreed, but dressed in decent clothes to lie down on his lawn and let me take numerous pictures from all angles. Another time while visiting a nature museum in a state park in Virginia, while I was looking at a display of something, I blurted out to my youngest sister standing next to me, “I just figured out how to murder someone.” Needless to say, she quickly walked away from me looking around surreptitiously, I’m sure.

But there is also that emotional side of me that is saddened when I read of anyone who has suffered. I recently read about a Vietnam Veteran, who has lived in a group home for mental illness for years and never received the medals due him. The people who ran it contacted Sherrod Brown, our U.S. senator, who saw to it that he received all that were due him and a ceremony was held at the home for him. My eyes got moist when I read that. Also, this past weekend on Prairie Home Companion in honor of Memorial Day, Garrison Keillor and Heather Massey sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” I sang along with a lump in my throat. The same thing happened earlier in the day at my granddaughter’s graduation when the band played “Pomp and Circumstances” and then later when we all joined the choir in singing the “Star Spangled Banner.”

So then how do I appease my conscience over my murderous tendencies in my writings? Well, in my books I mostly kill not very nice people, who no one would mourn. Notice I write mostly. In my last book two women were murdered and left grieving family members behind. Or if they’re not exactly nasty, there is some other reason the reader won’t feel saddened by the death. As for short stories, the characters, including the victims, are not developed enough for any reader to grieve over their death – not even me. And I will never harm a child or animal in my books or stories.

Am I glossing over something in my psyche like a Mafia boss who has many people killed, but loves his family and treats them well? I think not. Instead, I feel I’m exposing evil and seeing that justice is served in the end to those who murder; at least in my books and stories.

If you’re a mystery writer, how do you feel about your propensity to murder on the written page?

If you’re a reader and not a writer, do you feel there’s something abnormal about those who write mysteries?