Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Finding Inspiration in Strange Places by Martha Reed

When people find out I’m an author, one of the first questions I get asked is: “Where do you get your ideas?” Since I write crime fiction, I try to play nice and not scare them with my answer. It is true my research rabbit holes tend to go dark and deep, teetering on the borderline of the macabre, but as Manfred Mann’s Earth Band sang in Blinded by the Light, “But Mama, that’s where the fun is.”

Earlier this month, I was handed a cracker of a deep dive research opportunity when I toured the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office (and associated state-of-the-art laboratories) with fellow members of the Pittsburgh chapter of Sisters in Crime.

I’ll admit I earned a few wide-eyed surprised face emojis on my Facebook page when I posted this field trip event.

First, a bit of history. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office we toured opened in 2009. Working downtown, I’d passed the block-long building hundreds of times never knowing what it was. The previous Pittsburgh Morgue looked like a properly ghoulish Victorian House of Horrors. Bodies were stashed in basement coolers. The old morgue was infamous for being the late night Pittsburgh post-Prom date rendezvous location. I kid you not. What can I say? Pittsburghers are my kind of people.

During our tour, there was knowledge on the slabs. The visit turned out to be a goldmine of previously unknown forensic information that I was able to fold into my current developing work-in-progress manuscript. Details like: How long can sealed evidence submitted to the ME’s laboratory be held before the lab receives a court order for its return or its destruction? In the Allegheny County ME’s Office, the minimum hold policy is one year. So, for my story, what does it mean if the evidence is destroyed before the year is up? Was it simply an accidental oversight, or was it enemy action?

Did you know that a baseball cap is a great resource in aiding identification? The brim may hold fingerprints while the sweatband holds DNA. Did you know that one part of the standard equipment of an actual morgue unit is a bug zapper?

In the laboratory, who is responsible for comparing dental records to establish identity (Forensic Odontologist). Who studies bone records to uncover possible trauma (Forensic Anthropologist). Any CSI nerd might guess these two answers, but did you know that a Forensic Engineer studies and deconstructs any floor or building plans that are involved in a suspicious death? Would developing any of these back office laboratory characters or adding a sentence or two about the labs add to your story and give it a better sense of being real?

Crime fiction and mystery readers these days are so over-saturated with CSI TV forensic details that I give thanks whenever I uncover anything new and interesting that might capture their jaded attention and keep them glued to my pages.

Do you have an inspiration resource? What are your surprising sources of inspiration?

13 comments:

  1. Lots of great ideas. Sounds like a great field trip!

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    1. Hi Heather - it was inspirational. The key takeaway for me was the level of professionalism I saw and that the majority of lab technicians were women. It changed my perception of what a morgue was (and did) and it added great details to my Professional Death Investigator character Dr. Tamerlane Sabatier.

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  2. It was a fabulous day. Much more thorough than my first tour there back in 2011.

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    1. Hi Annette - Yes, it was and it opened my eyes to a bunch of new possibilities for my stories. Thanks again for arranging it!

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  3. My characters have had a chance to be temporarily incarcerated in several different locations. Each time I was able to secure a tour of the jail and always learned something new or unique to that situation.

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  4. Hi Jim - I agree. There's great value in boots on the ground research (and it provides a great reason to visit potentially interesting new places). My favorite advantage to being a writer is that it gives me an excuse to ask impertinent questions.

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  5. I attended the local citizen's police academy and still use the local department as my to-to source. I have to tackle the local FBI office for my current project.

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    1. Hi Margaret - yes! Another great resource. I attended the Citizens Police Academy in St. Pete. They brought in a laundry list of great subject matter experts. My favorite was the horse patrol.

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  6. Fascinating information, Martha. I’m fortunate to know a bunch of cops and pick their brains regularly. I was also part of a search, rescue, and recovery dive team which helps for the Kent mysteries. As for inspiration—often real life and the news. At least for the seed.

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  7. Hi Kait - I find it odd how often a germinating idea I'm noodling around with is suddenly reflected in the local news. I'm not sure if its coincidence or if I'm only noticing it because it's already on my radar.

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  8. Lori Roberts HerbstJuly 23, 2024 at 2:01 PM

    Absolutely fascinating! Great post!

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  9. Thanks, Lori! This field trip has inspired me to look around for more opportunities. It's refreshing to think outside the box.

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  10. When I'm actively pursuing inspiration for my writing, whether it's a journal entry or a story idea, I find myself becoming hyper-aware of my surroundings. Rather than going about my day on autopilot, I start to notice details that I may have otherwise missed. Your mention of the bug zapper being part of the morgue's standard equipment was a fun detail that I found myself thinking about. I'd never really considered that before, but it makes sense when you think about it. It's a detail that most people probably wouldn't know, yet it's something that seems obvious once you've been made aware of it.

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