by Melissa Westemeier
When my editor at Tule Publishing recommended adding a Christmas-themed book to the Nun the Wiser Mysteries, I readily agreed, but immediately got stuck plotting it. Balancing lightness and humor with crime is required in the cozy genre, but setting a murder mystery during the hap-happiest season of all is especially challenging.
With an inciting incident established, I set Mavis Oldenberg’s house on Spruce Street ablaze. Detective AJ Lewis gets called to the scene first to manage crowd control during the fire, and the following morning the fire inspector discovers a corpse in a second-story bedroom. AJ’s on the case to identify the dead man, figuring out why he’s there is less important, but ultimately significant.
Sister Bernadette Ohlson overhears Mavis’s grandchildren discussing how to dismantle the ruined building so they can sell the lot. To their surprise, the eighty-year-old nun offers to do it for a price. You see, Bernie’s in charge of a charity to help needy families in the community. She’s struggling to gin up enough donations to grant Christmas wishes to those kiddos. Once the crime scene tape comes down, she’s prying away paneling with a crowbar. One loose board reveals a hiding place inside a bedroom closet where Bernie discovers an old box containing items connected to a decades-old family tragedy.
By page eighty, I faced an unexpected challenge in writing a cold case mystery: inadequate suspense.
The cold case mystery froze up the action in my story worse than a Wisconsin winter!
The trouble with a plotting a cold case mystery is that nobody cares how long it takes to solve it. No urgency, no emergency. Most of the evidence is long gone, as are most of the witnesses. My killer got away with murder decades ago, they pose no immediate threat, nor do they suspect the jig is up after so much time has passed. There’s zero chance of a chase scene or confrontation with a killer anxious to cover their tracks. Sure, Bernie and AJ had a mystery to investigate, but they had all the time in the world to solve it. My story lagged and sagged until I remembered one crucial fact. It’s set during Christmas. Sure, the central mystery lacked razzle and dazzle, but Christmas is FULL of pressure situations that add excitement. I could balance the dull, tedious work of solving a cold case with the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.
I began making my characters do Christmassy things, which advantageously boosted the holiday aspect of A Holiday Habit. They got busy rehearsing Christmas carols, baking cookies, and swapping Secret Santa gifts at work. Their activities had deadlines. The house on Spruce Street had to be torn down in time to collect funds so Bernie could keep the Christmas charity afloat. The children’s gifts needed to be purchased, wrapped, and delivered by Christmas Eve.
With December 24 looming on the calendar, I had an abundance of time-sensitive subplots. On AJ’s end, I torqued up the heat by adding teenaged thugs terrorizing shoppers and store owners at the local mall. Now the drama could include a chase scene through throngs of holiday shoppers. Exciting! Thrilling!
I’m not the first author to crack the mystery of making a cold case investigation exciting. Writing A Holiday Habit taught me how including external events with deadlines can create urgency, add suspense, and accelerate the pacing when the sleuthing work goes slow. A little holiday hubbub spiced up with subplots involving big crowds, dangerous activities (like swinging a sledgehammer when you’re in your eighties or tackling a teenaged shoplifter in the middle of a food court), and important deadlines (like Christmas Eve) can do the trick.
Uncovering age-old secrets can make a satisfying cozy mystery, but in my book, the stakes weren’t exciting enough without extra drama. Thank goodness for the chaos and craziness that Christmas brings!
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