C is for Clue and Crime and Cauldron...

C is for Clue or Crime or a Cauldron of evil. Clues come in all shapes and sizes. The very observant person will see them, extract them and lace them together to provide an "aha!" moment for you the reader.

 The reader may have thought the red herring was the real clue [look for more on red herring later in this tour].

A clue might be two nearly empty wine glasses on the counter by the sink when only one person was supposedly present all evening. Were there enough other dishes to suggest a couple days of accumulation? Was there a faint lipstick smudge on one in a man's apartment? While it doesn't mean he had feminine company (he might be a transvestite,) it doesn't necessarily mean she provided the arsenic laden drink that killed the man.

A cauldron of stew present on the range. Was any of it eaten? Was it the source of his poisoning? Was it merely food poisoning and accidental lethal dose of death?

A Mystery Thriller  novel

Even if the woman, of the lipstick smudge, was seen leaving the apartment early that morning, you might ask did she? Again other facts and suppositions need to be examined, among them motive, access to the method—in this case poison—if indeed it was poison and not food poisoning by tainted food, and opportunity.

Will you find rat poison residue in the same woman's purse or jacket pocket? Rat poison contains arsenic, which could be the source of the arsenic found at the scene or in the wine glass, but why wouldn't she rinse the glasses if that were the case? So many questions. Clues should help a sleuth sort through them. 

Observe well, but decipher your clues carefully. That makes for an intriguing story. Unwrapping the clues as if you were unwrapping a much hoped for birthday present, thrills the reader and keeps them turning pages long into the night.

The Crime and Its Solution, the Backbone of the Mystery Novel

The crime and its solution remain the mystery novel's backbone. Fleshing that crime out, relating all those pieces to the whole is what everything else is clarifying or relating to and should do for you, the mystery writer, or you, the mystery reader.

A mystery may be construed as a contest between the sleuth and reader. In the best case scenario, between reader vs. writer, the sleuth will know just before the reader does the solution creating an "aha" moment for the reader. "I should have known that, I should have seen that coming, what did I miss," are the usual reader reactions if you, the writer, have done your job.

Gillian Roberts in You Can Write a Mystery, (1999)says "The unraveling of the clues provides much of the basic framework of your novel." 

She recommends trying to have one clue in each chapter. Of course, if your chapters are only 3 or 4 pages long this maybe unrealistic. However, it behooves you to plant enough clues to keep your reader engaged and searching for those clues like a game player in a game of Wheel of Fortune.

The red herrings reputation for diversion is not without caveat. Too many false clues, side trips, for your reader can get annoying and disrupt the  flow of the novel and the reader's enjoyment. You may wind up on their "do not read" list.

A clue can be nearly anything. Did you know that 85% of all communication is nonverbal?   Nonverbal communication, body language, especially to a detective, investigator or judge trained in reading what the person being questioned is not revealing via their body language is trusted more than words being said in answer to the questions they are asking. 

If a suspect fidgets, cannon maintain eye contact or starts to have a redness washing up form his/her chest, to throat, to face—would you believe anything much of what they are verbalizing?  Or would you read his/her body instead. 

This wouldn't be enough to convict anyone and if you gave several of your characters flaws, inconsistencies, imperfections, they could divert attention from your clues or your criminal. A physical condition that makes a characters eyes blink continuously, more often than seems normal, could indicate misdirection, or lies.  Or, it could also be just that a physical condition that causes this to happen in this particular person.

With cleverness and total recall, think "Colombo" here, a clue slipped in earlier, before it had any significance, becomes important. It could be the first few chapters of your novel sets those clues in place before the reader knows enough to notice them or their importance to the story. Or perhaps your sleuth will misinterpret the clue as June Fabrizio does in my novel Antique Armor when the armor seems bent on creating chaos and perhaps murder. 

As you do this remember the saggy middle, the hard to hold up ignorable middle of anything from a long rope, long sentence, long paragraph, long list of things, what a great place to hide a clue in plain sight.

Whatever you do play fair with your reader and your sleuth. If you started out with a list of clues you wanted to incorporate into your novel, as some writers do, did you and were the clues tactfully disposed of by the end of the novel satisfying sleuth, the story and the reader?

One way to make sure you have tied up all those loose ends and revealed your clues, in the right spot ,to the right people, at the right time and place, is to print out your manuscript draft and highlight all the clues you've planted. Do any of them still need explanation or follow up?

Satisfying the died in the wool mystery fan is simply being true to the craft, and not leading him/her down a dead end path or to a solution of the whole mystery by the introduction of a fly on the wall at the end that had no place in the novel until that exact moment before you wrote THE END. Play fair, play clever, play with your clues but do not play with your reader, at least do not try to trick them. You want to retain a fan forever with your wit and wisdom and sometimes chutzpah. 

Make your reading time absorbing. Pit your wits against the accidental sleuth, who may be in a job like yours. Subscribe to my free e-zine Mystery Readers and Working Writers, the free e-zine for mystery lovers. Get a free e-booklet “ A Nice Quiet Family” a very short/flash mystery. http://www.billiewilliams.com

Not All Mysteries Are of the Fictional Variety

“When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one but, you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.” Leo Burnett

Case in Point!
A mystery, no actually two, surfaced in our small community the past week that ended our, perhaps, laid-back, serene-country atmosphere. I’ll only discuss one here today.

Perhaps the least mysterious, or maybe not…Let's test it out.

Can you imagine an armed bank robbery?  A bank robbery in a town of maybe 500 people if we stretch a little and count the dogs and cats too.

In the summer time, summer people and with the weekenders and cottage vacationers we may stretch up to 1,000.

If even half of those people that live here use the bank in our town, most are retired. There are four businesses in our village. Given the current state of Social Security (and believe me payments are meager and they doesn’t stretch very far) and the limited resources, there is very little money in this bank.

Now, picture Monday morning, peak traffic time is usually 9:30 or there abouts when everyone is going to pick up their mail (there is no postal delivery in our town/village – unless you live on the outskirts at least several miles away). This is the time the armed robber thinks will be a great time for a heist.

What would possess anyone to think he could rob a bank at gun point and get away any day, but particularly given the scenario I just described.


He didn’t— succeed--that is...12 minutes later he was sitting in a squad car about 9 miles away, wondering what happened.

Clues—every mystery writer needs to ferret out clues. Even if your book starts with the crime solved, the reader wants to know why—if not—how and a myriad of other answers to questions he may not know to ask.

Three essentials in every mystery are:
Motive: maybe he needs money – desperately, is a given

Means: He has a gun, a truck and he has done something similar before –he was just released from incarceration we find out later. How he came into the possession of a gun is another mystery if he is already a criminal.

Opportunity: Driving along a deserted or nearly deserted section of highway, there right next to the highway a bank—quickly he surveys the area, a gas station to the south—neat rows of storage sheds to the west, quiet street, fairly early(for him but not us country folk)…He parks his truck in the driveway between those storage sheds, out of sight. He meanders back to the bank, a 1/2 block away. The rest, as they say, is still a mystery.

If jail didn’t teach this man anything, there is something wrong with him, our system or both. It’s a mystery to me.