But Is It A Mystery? By Sharon L. Dean

I’ve published two traditional mystery series that I’ve marketed as whodunits or cozy mysteries. Is it a mystery if an author doesn’t kill a character? I argue that there are lots of ways of killing.

On March 28, 2022, I published a piece in Mystery and Suspense Magazine called “The Classics are Mysteries, Too.” Although my fiction will never become a classic, like the books I wrote about, all of the pieces in my new collection Six Old Women and Other Stories are mysteries, though in some I’ve killed no one. What are the backgrounds of my six ninety-three-year-old women in the title story? They’ve chosen to live together on an isolated island. They’re old. How will they die or how will they live in this new environment that they know will be their last exit? Questions get raised in the other pieces in the collection. What happened at that lakeside resort nearly seventy years ago (“Shuffleboard”)? What happened thirty years ago on Cannon Mountain (“Hardscrabble”)? What prompted an old woman and an old man to become recluses (“Pavlov’s Puppies,” “The Man Who Loved Cribbage”)? Can a book be a mystery even if there’s no crime to solve?

 

Novelist Bobbie Ann Mason once wrote that "a scholar is a version of a sleuth." That was certainly the case when I edited a collection of letters by the nineteenth-century writer Constance Fenimore Woolson. Where would I find the letters? How would I date so many that had no dates? How would I identify the names of so many people, both well-known and obscure? What was Woolson’s relationship to these people and to the events of her world? These were mysteries. I solved many and left others unresolved, especially the mystery of whether Woolson accidentally fell out of a window in Venice or jumped to her death.

I have two outlier novels. Leaving Freedom will be reissued in 2023 by Encircle Publications. It’s a quest novel that was generated by my academic work on Constance Woolson. It has elements of mystery­­––where does my Connie’s mother get a scar on her stomach? What happened to Connie’s Uncle Charlie? The sequel, Finding Freedom, will be even harder to categorize. It’s a last-chance-for-adventure novel as Connie, now eighty years old travels across the United States alone to decide if she should move back to the town of Freedom where she was born.

 

Think about Moby-Dick for a moment. It isn’t just a sea yarn as Melville originally conceived it. It’s a story about the hunt for the whale Captain Ahab sees as a villain. For him, Moby Dick is the incarnation of evil. But the whale is more than that. He’s a physical representation of the inscrutable universe. He’s a mystery just as the universe and our lives in it are mysteries. Melville is a writer who kills––everyone except Ishmael and the whale.

           

I don’t like to get locked in genres. I like to let them bleed into one another. I don’t like to go into a bookstore and find a separate section labeled “Literary Fiction.” Mysteries, whatever the subgenre, can be literary fiction as well. Whatever Six Old Women and Other Stories is, I’ll make Amazon happy and categorize it as a mystery and as a collection of haunted stories.

           

What do you want in a book for it to qualify as a mystery?

 

Six Old Women

Six old women living on an isolated island in Lake Winnipesaukee, teenagers vacationing on Newfound Lake in 1959, paragliders and skiers on Cannon Mountain, an old woman in a house covered in gypsy moths, a man living off the grid in a shack he built himself. The characters in these stories all keep secrets. They are as tough and rugged as New Hampshire’s iconic Old Man in the Mountain. And like The Old Man who fell in 2003, their pasts survive only in memory. Sometimes that’s a good thing.

 

Sharon L. Dean grew up in Massachusetts where she was immersed in the literature of New England. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of New Hampshire, a state she lived and taught in before moving to Oregon. Although she has given up writing scholarly books that require footnotes, she incorporates much of her academic research as background in her mysteries. She is the author of three Susan Warner mysteries and of a literary novel titled Leaving Freedom. Her Deborah Strong mysteries include The Barn, The Wicked Bible, and Calderwood Cove. Dean continues to write about New England while she is discovering the beauty of the West.

Anchoring

By James M. Jackson

We call ourselves homo sapiens, meaning the wise or clever human. If ever there were a mislabeled product, we homo sapiens are it. Our big brains are easy to fool. Optical illusions use foreground or background to convince us to see something that isn’t there. This webpage has many terrific examples of optical illusions that “bend” straight lines (image on the right), make two lines of equal length appear to be longer and shorter, make the same color appear different to us, and more.

These optical illusions rely on our preconceived notions of the world to trick us. Anchoring is a related phenomenon that warps our perception. While academics do not agree on the causes of anchoring, they agree on the result, which is that prior information skews our perception of new information.

For example, in store one, you find a piece of attractive clothing in your size on the “remainder” rack. Its price tag shows mark-downs in stages from $149 to the current price of $39. What a bargain, almost 75% off. It’s not that you need it, but there’s only one left . . .and you buy it.

In a parallel universe, you find a piece of attractive clothing in your size on the “new arrivals” rack priced at $39. The surrounding racks have similar clothing priced at $29, $25, and $19.95. It would look nice on you, but you walk away without a whiff of regret.

Same clothing, same price, different result because surrounding clues affected your perception of the item. The first store presented you with a super-attractive “bargain.” The second presented you with the most expensive item of its kind.

Marketers know how to trick your mind. Restaurants will include an entrée priced well above anything else on the menu making the other entrées appear “reasonable.” Here’s an interesting article on other tricks restaurants use.

We often use anchoring when we make estimates. Quick: in five seconds give me your best guess of what the product of (1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8) is. Tick Tock. Tick Tock. Your guess is _________? In an experiment, guesses averaged 512. The same experiment asked a different group the question with the numbers reversed (8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1). Those people’s guesses averaged 2,250, more than four times higher than the first group. The actual answer is 40,320, demonstrating we’re lousy at math, but also showing that by starting with small numbers, we guessed a smaller result when presented with larger numbers first.

We build our knowledge of the world bit by bit, comparing the most recent information to what we already “know.” The first article of clothing seemed such a good buy because we anchored around it sitting on a “remainder” rack with a high starting price. We have a false confidence in our “knowledge” and give it priority over new information, especially if that information contradicts what we “know.”

That is why first impressions are so important for people. They become our anchor. We evaluate future actions given the model of the person we have accepted. If the first time we see someone, they are helping a little old lady cross a busy intersection even though afterward they return across the street and head in a different direction, we think them a good person, going out of their way to help others. If the next time we see them, they are strong-arming a youngster into the back seat of a car, we sympathize because we’ve all had to deal with our kids when they had a hissy fit about doing what we wanted when we wanted.

But, if the first time we saw the same person, one police officer was handcuffing him while another comforted a crying youngster, we’d have a vastly different reaction when we saw the “bad” guy strong-arming the child into the back seat.

Readers, step close and let me tell you a secret: authors manipulate you the same way marketers do. Shocking, I know. We show a character performing a nice or heroic act early in the story to “make” you like the person, and that positive vibe carries through even if later they’re going to do some nasty things. This trope even has a name: “save the cat.”

We create red herrings or hide clues by giving you false anchors. In Granite Oath (Seamus McCree #7), releasing at the end of August, a trail camera photograph shows two male thieves, one tall and the other considerably shorter. I think of myself as tall (I’m a six-footer), and so I picture the tall guy is my height, maybe a few inches taller. The short guy must be around 5’4 – 5’6”. Turns out the tall guy is nearly seven feet, and the short guy is taller than me.

When an author pulls the wool over my eyes, I enjoy flipping pages back to discover how they tricked me. Anchoring is often involved.

I’d love to hear in the comments about your fictional reading or real-life anchoring stories.

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James M. Jackson authors the Seamus McCree series. Full of mystery and suspense, these thrillers explore financial crimes, family relationships, and what happens when they mix. You can sign up for his newsletter and find more information about Jim and his books at https://jamesmjackson.com.

The Wide, Wide World of Mystery by Nancy Nau Sullivan

It’s still something of a mystery to me how I ended up writing mysteries, but it’s fun to look back down that long twisty road of reading and writing and see the markers. I read the Nancy Drew books, every one of them. I loved her and her roadster. She’s a keeper, the early YA equivalent of Agatha Christie, entertaining us with her craft and poise.  

We didn’t have YA—the Young Adult genre didn’t come into its own until the early 70’s, thanks to S.E. Hinton, Cormier, Lowry, and a cast of talented authors. I read the classics and every one of those biographies—Molly Pitcher, Betsy Ross, Amelia Earhart, all the pioneers. The books were worn and orange. They told stories about courage and faith in building the country, mostly.

In lit class, we continued with the classics. (I sometimes wondered if they were trying to kill our love of reading.) We had to write those dreaded essays and hope we were on the same page with the teacher. I was a terrible essay writer, so intimidated by grades. But after a while, the reading caught and superseded the grading business; it was all about getting something out of the book. It became a sort of interactive sport. Trying to figure out the puzzle, the tension, the mystery of it. And the motives. When I was 13, my father found me reading Forever Amber about a woman with many lovers in 17^th century England. Amber had motives. My dad hid the book, but he wasn’t very good at hiding stuff. The story was a page-turner to the end, and, of course, it fed my curiosity. 

In high school and college, we talked, in depth, about the books we read and the authors, dissecting them in light of the “elements of literature.” I determined, finally, to give those first 20 to 50 pages a chance. I can still see my high school English teacher, a little old nun, pacing back and forth in front of the room, getting all excited about the drama of Anna Karenina. If Anna could get Sister Celia Marie so worked up, there had to be something there. I had to find out what. I probably wouldn’t have gotten ahold of Russian writers early on had it not been for Sister Celia, and for that I am grateful. What a layered, intricate—mysterious—world it is.

I guess reading, curiosity, and life, have led me to write in an assortment of genre: a memoir, The Last Cadillac, a novel, The Boys of Alpha Block—about a woman who teaches in a boys’ prison and gets caught up in their escape plan—and now mysteries. I’ve settled there lately. I like the puzzle, figuring what’s next? How does the character do that? How do I write this? What’s the motive here? What’s the trick to keep the tension going until the end?

It’s a challenge, but it’s satisfying. Writing a mystery is a way to right wrongs. After finishing the memoir, which is set on an island I’ve loved for decades, I looked around and saw overdevelopment and environmental disaster, and so, I set out to fix things. Only on the page. I killed off a bad guy, a drug dealer, and restored some semblance of order. The first in the series, Saving Tuna Street (2020, Light Messages), was born. The setting gave rise to it, but my emotion brought it to life. Mysteries need a huge infusion of emotion. Without it, life, and death, are pretty flat, and, so, any story.

From the island setting, my main character, Blanche Murninghan, moved to Mexico City for Trouble Down Mexico Way (2021). Her third adventure takes her to Vietnam in Mission Improbable: Vietnam (2022), and after that, Ireland.

Writing mysteries has given me a broad brush to put experience and imagination to work. My main character can be impetuous. She’s a long way, and many pages away, from Nancy Drew. Blanche has flaws; she drinks too much and gets angry. She falls down, a lot, and gets up. She’s not going to set things right out of chaos sitting on the couch. I have to bug her, make her run down the bad guys, rescue and celebrate the good guys. In reality, that often doesn’t happen. Why not make it happen in the book? This fiction is meant to entertain, but it also holds out hope that things just might work out with effort and endurance, and there’s no mystery in that.     

BIO:

A former newspaper journalist, Nancy Nau Sullivan taught English in Argentina, in the Peace Corps in Mexico, and at a boys’ prison in Florida. Her novel, The Boys of Alpha Block (April 2021, TouchPoint Press) is based on teaching in the prison. Her memoir, The Last Cadillac, won two Eric Hoffer awards, and Saving Tuna Street was a nominee for best mystery 2020 at Foreword Reviews. Trouble Down Mexico Way is the second in the Blanche Murninghan mystery series (June 2021, Light Messages). Nancy lives in Northwest Indiana and, often, anywhere near water. Find Nancy at www.nancynausullivan.com, Facebook, BookBub, LinkedIn, and @NauSullivan on Twitter.

Counting Cards

by Tina Whittle

It was one of those social media things making its rounds on Facebook—share ten things that most people don’t know about you. I mentioned the usual—like being attacked by baboons on an elementary school field trip—but it was the last item that sparked the most conversation.

Once upon a time, I was a semi-professional tarot card reader.

Tarot is often associated with fortune telling, but I practice intuitive tarot, using the cards to engage the subconscious knowing so that it emerges in sudden hunches and gut feelings. This kind of tarot reading can feel a bit like playing hide and seek—sometimes it seems the harder you look, the more elusive your quarry becomes—but this is where my work as a mystery novelist comes in handy. For just like creative writing, tarot is all about creating a narrative

Tarot gives the subconscious a set of pretty pictures to play with, which sometimes lures it out of its hidey-hole. It’s this aspect of reading the cards that I find both most challenging, and therefore, most rewarding. When a reading starts to take shape, it’s the same feeling that happens during my writing when a crucial bit of backstory plugs right into a plot hole, or a previously misunderstood character motivation suddenly shines with clarity. There’s this bright burst of “aha!” followed by an almost effortless falling into place.

Like a good book, each tarot spread has a narrative thread running through the middle, connecting each image to a central theme. My job is to help my clients figure out this narrative for themselves. I interpret the cards, ask questions, make comparisons. But the heavy lifting of the reading is done by the client, not by me. I’m more of a midwife, guiding and encouraging and explaining as the answer to the question on the table starts to become more apparent.

The tarot functions as a tool, a channel, a container for meaning. And most of the time, the answer that bubbles up in response to the seeking isn’t a surprise. My clients already know what they need to know—sometimes they simply need a place to put that knowledge.

As a mystery novelist, I’m often stuck behind a computer making up imaginary scenarios for imaginary people. Tarot pulls me into the real world again, into the company of real people. It keeps me authentic, and it grounds me in the greater human narrative. Even with my skill at making stuff up, I don’t think I could have made up a better second job for myself than reading tarot.

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Tina Whittle writes the Tai Randolph/Trey Seaver mysteries. The sixth book in this Atlanta-based series—Necessary Ends—is available now. Tina is a proud member of Sisters in Crime and has served as both a chapter officer and national board member. Visit her website to follow her on social media, sign up for her newsletter, or read additional scenes and short stories: www.tinawhittle.com.