This weekend, Malice Domestic approaches, and thousands of cozy and traditional mystery fans will descend on Bethesda, Maryland, bringing with them good cheer and great taste in crime and mystery fiction. Authors, fans, and publishing industry professionals gather once a year in the DC metro area (as they have done for over thirty years now) to discuss and celebrate cozy and traditional mysteries. They won’t be there in time for the most vivid iconography of a DC spring—the cherry trees will no longer be in bloom, having given way to the heavy purple blossoms of….Eastern Redbud? Wisteria? Hibiscus? The only certainty is that, whatever blossoms greet the attendees of Malice Domestic, they will be glorious.
Ahead of the convention, we caught up with the nominees for the Agatha Awards, annually presented to the best and brightest of the mystery world, for a conversation on the “State of the Traditional Mystery.” We asked authors to answer the most difficult and pressing questions in the mystery-verse (including, of course—what exactly is a cozy or a traditional mystery?). Thanks so much to those who participated in the discussion, and best of luck to all ahead of Sunday’s awards ceremony!
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HOW DO YOU DEFINE A “COZY” OR “TRADITIONAL” MYSTERY?
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Leslie Budewitz (Nominated for Best Short Story – “All God’s Sparrows” – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine): A crime disrupts the social order of the community. In a traditional mystery, law enforcement works to restore the external order by finding the culprit and bringing him or her to justice. Whenever you have an amateur sleuth, as many traditional mysteries do, their role is a hybrid—they assist in that effort, of course, and typically find the key pieces the pros overlooked, because their perspective or their role in the community allowed them to see other things, look in different places, or to see the same evidence differently. In the cozy, which I see as a subset of the traditional mystery, that community role is paramount. The cozy protagonist embodies that ability to see things differently and solve the crime, while at the same time, restore *internal* order and help the community heal.
Susanna Calkins (Nominated for Best Short Story, “A Postcard for the Dead” – Florida Happens): Before I came to learn how others define these terms, I just assumed that “cozy” referred to any mystery that you want to curl up on the sofa to read, tucked in with a warm blanket, a furry kitty and a nice cup of tea. Then, I came across Danna’s Cozy Mystery Blog, where she defines cozies, and I thought my historical mysteries fit with her description (amateur sleuth, no graphic violence or sex, mild language etc). Since then, however, I’ve been regularly assured me that my books are not cozies, mainly because there are no puns in my titles or pets on my covers, which are apparently default traits of the genre. So my books are traditional, in that they are whodunnits, and there is some sort of justice at the end for the killer. Hmmm… My new series—The Speakeasy Murders—is a bit lighter in tone and a bit more briskly-paced. And the title is a little more snappy—Murder Knocks Twice—so maybe it’s a historical cozy. But you might rather curl up with a gin rickey than a cup of tea, so I guess ultimately I don’t really know!
Hank Phillippi Ryan (Nominated for Best Contemporary Novel – Trust Me): I will take a risk here—I don’t think all traditional mysteries are cozy.
(And it may not be that all cozy mysteries are traditional, you know? I may have to think about that.)
A traditional mystery includes a murder or other bad thing that happened, the person who does the bad thing, the person who was the victim of the bad thing, and a good guy who uncovers it all and solves the book’s puzzle, using the sleuth’s own intelligence and cleverness and wit. How to make that cozy? Make the sleuth be an amateur, put it in a closed or close-knit setting, include something domestic or familial, add a love interest, a pet or two, and possibly humor. What a cozy or traditional mystery doesn’t have? Zombies, spies, (unless they are very polite spies), global warfare, intergalactic warfare, highly contagious and widespread diseases, big picture politics, or terrorism. In a traditional mystery, there’s a sense of justice and closure and a clear and satisfying ending: the good guys win and the bad guys get what’s coming to them, and order is restored.
“In a traditional mystery, there’s a sense of justice and closure and a clear and satisfying ending: the good guys win and the bad guys get what’s coming to them, and order is restored.”–Hank Phillippi Ryan
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WHICH MYSTERY FIRST MADE YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH THE GENRE?
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Victoria Thompson (Nominated for Best Historical Novel – Murder on Union Square): When I was in elementary school, I chose a book at the bookfair, Silver Wings for Vicki, the first in the Vicki Barr Mystery Series. I was attracted because Vicki and I have the same name (and she even spells it the same!) and because she was a stewardess, which was the most exciting career a girl could imagine in those days. It was a hardcover, so I didn’t really expect my parents to get it for me, but they bought it and the second one too, Vicki Finds the Answer, and gave them to me for Christmas. This was the gateway drug to a lifetime addiction to mysteries.
Tara Laskowski (Nominated for Best Short Story – “The Case of the Vanishing Professor” – Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine): I fell in love with mysteries as a kid. There was Nancy Drew, of course, but I also loved Encyclopedia Brown and The Hardy Boys. Most of all, I was obsessed with The Three Investigators series. I still am, to be honest.
Hank Phillipi Ryan: Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden were the gateways, but it was Sherlock Holmes who enticed me through the door. I vanished for an entire month, in my family‘s eyes at least, as I read every single Sherlock Holmes short story and novella. I fell in love with the music of those stories, the architecture, and the clever planting of clues, and the wonderful relationships and characters. Arthur Conan Doyle taught me about motivation, and how to wrap up every loose end. I also learned that what an author led me to believe was true was not necessarily true—that there was another way of looking at the same evidence. That shifting perspective has stayed with me forever. I was maybe twelve or so when I discovered the Golden Age mysteries—Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham and Josephine Tey and Dorothy Sayers. I was hooked by the intelligence and wit and cleverness of the stories and the characters—and the brilliance of the story-telling. (Plus, I had a huge crush on Lord Peter Wimsey, and Inspector Alleyn.) And then: I read Murder on the Orient Express. And I clearly remember, as a kid, reading that ending and gasping with surprise. And I wondered—how did Agatha Christie do that? I have wondered very day since then.
Edwin Hill (Nominated for Best First Novel – Little Comfort): When I was a kid, my parents used to pack us into a yellow Bronco and take us on month-long family camping trips across the U.S. and Canada. They were tons of fun, and there was also a lot of time to read while we drove from location to location. When I was ten or eleven and making the transition into more adult books, I remember that we stopped at a gas station (this was back when you could still buy paperback books off those wire racks in gas stations) and my parents bought a copy of Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery. This is one of her earlier novels: it’s set in the twenties and takes place at a manor house and features a character named “Bundle,” and I loved everything about it—the language and the setting and the period details. What I loved most of all, though, was the intricate plotting—the ending pretty much floored me. As soon as I finished that book, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And it only took me thirty-five years to teach myself how to do it!
Edith Maxwell (Nominated for Best Historical Novel – Turning the Tide): I read Nancy Drew as a child, of course, along with Sherlock Holmes and Poe’s works (giving myself nightmares in the process), and then my mother’s Agatha Christie novels. But twenty five years ago when I first dabbled in writing a mystery, I was reading Katherine Hall Page, Susan Wittig Albert, and Diane Mott Davidson: all traditional/cozy stories with strong female protagonists. A light went off and I realized THAT was the kind of book I wanted to write because it was what I loved to read.
Shari Randall (Nominated for Best First Novel – Curses Boiled Again): I don’t remember exactly which Nancy Drew title was my first, but I know it was the gateway drug to my life long addiction to/love of mysteries. In addition to Nancy, I tore through Encyclopedia Brown, Sherlock Holmes, into Agatha Christie and then the wonderful Vicky Bliss novels by Elizabeth Peters. Now I want to go reread them!
Susanna Calkins: Like most of us, I certainly loved Agatha Christie novels growing up. Later I discovered the fantastic historical mysteries of Anne Perry, Charles Todd and other similar authors and I thought, “Maybe I can try my hand at this.”
Sujata Massey: There was more than one book. In third grade, I started reading some very nostalgic series for children written by a prolific British author named Enid Blyton. Her mystery/suspense lines were The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, and the Adventure series. There were never any murders in these books, as they were written for young children, yet the children ably detected crimes like smuggling and theft. Groups of brothers and sisters and cousins worked out the solutions together, and there was usually an adorable dog or bird along for the journey. These books were a safe way for me to explore stories that had a moderate level of suspense and stress. You could read them in bed, turn out the light, and still get to sleep without nightmares.
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WHAT’S YOUR MESSAGE FOR THOSE WHO DISMISS THE COZY OR TRADITIONAL GENRES?
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Ellen Byron (Nominated for Best Contemporary Novel, Mardi Gras Murder): OMG, I am SO glad you asked this question. I find the dismissive attitude towards these genres infuriating. To be honest, I also find it somewhat sexist, since a majority of cozy and traditional authors happen to be women.
Just because a mystery lacks sex and violence doesn’t mean it’s poorly written. I’ve read thrillers and suspense novels that never should have seen the light of publication, yet still have more cache than a well-plotted cozy that happens to have a cat on the cover. Cozy and traditional authors are passionate about their work and devoted to their readers. My message to those who dismiss us is, knock it off. We write strong characters and engaging plots that won’t give readers nightmares and we are damn proud of it!
Tara Laskowski: I don’t know…it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round. My background is in literary fiction, and while I was in graduate school, ALL genre writing got a bad rap. Then, as I started mingling with genre writers, I realized that “literary” was a synonym for “snooty” for some people. So I think you can get dinged from all sides, no matter what you write. The trick is to keep doing what you love and keep your chin up and don’t let the naysayers get you down.
Cynthia Surrisi (Nominated for Best Young Adult Mystery – A Side of Sabotage): I write classic, fair play cozies for middle graders. I do this not only because I enjoy and have affection for cozies, but because I am trying to expose readers of this age to the genre and instill in them an appreciation for it, so that it becomes one reading choice they may make as they grow up. Something that has emerged as a result of this effort is teacher and librarian recognition that mysteries nurture cognitive thought and assist in teaching kids to discriminate between real clues and red herrings—truth and lies. This skill is acutely valuable today. It should cause us to pause and recognize that the entire mystery genre has much to offer all us in sharpening our skills to sort and sift the deluge of questionable opinion in our info-driven world.
Hank Phillippi Ryan: I have had people tell me they won’t read my book—because they do not read books by women. I would have the same message for people who dismiss the traditional genre: It’s your loss, bub.
But it’s difficult not to love a twisty surprising intelligent compellingly perplexing story, with realistic-enough characters with understandable motives, and full of clues to investigate—what could be more entertaining? And traditional-mystery-deniers are going to miss Anthony Horowitz, and Andrew Wilson, and Ian Rankin, and Denise Mina, and Deborah Crombie and Ann Cleeves and Caroline Todd and Charles Finch and…But actually—whatever. If people are reading whatever kind of crime fiction they enjoy, that’s terrific. No one has to like everything.
Keenan Powell (Nominated for Best First Novel – Deadly Solution): There is a readership for cozies and traditional because they meet needs that other genres don’t satisfy. Write what you want but rather than grousing about how your sales are being diminished by this market, perhaps contemplate what readers want. Cozy readers like an escape to a fun place filled with delightful people who overcome their problems in good humor. Traditional readers love the puzzle. For both genres, there must be a just resolution affirming that good people doing the right thing will prevail.
“The thriller writers point out that real life includes blood, swearing, and NC-17 situations, and that’s true. It also includes bakeries—French, gluten-free, for pets, cupcakes only, summer arts festivals, cats, and librarians.”–Leslie Budewitz
Leslie Budewitz: This dismissal often comes in the form of comments like this from a friend, male, who reads and writes thrillers: “I prefer my fiction darker and more realistic.” Seriously? Lee Childs’ books are more realistic than Laura Childs’? Is Jack Reacher any less a fantasy figure than Jessica Fletcher? The thriller writers point out that real life includes blood, swearing, and NC-17 situations, and that’s true. It also includes bakeries—French, gluten-free, for pets, cupcakes only, summer arts festivals, cats, and librarians. In my opinion, cozies and thrillers simply occupy opposite ends of the wish fulfillment spectrum. And that’s one of the things fiction does for us.
Some say cozies are too light, that they don’t delve deeply enough into character. Again, in my opinion, this could be said of much genre fiction, particularly mystery and crime, where some writers focus on “what happened” to the exclusion of “what did they feel, and what did they do because of how they felt?” This is an area where genre writers can learn from our more literary siblings. I work hard to give each character a clear emotional arc, to use visceral responses and physical action to portray emotion. I think this is important—and it’s what the modern reader wants.
Another criticism is the lack of diversity. This also has some merit. Other subgenres may do a slightly better job, but cozy mystery authors and protagonists remain predominantly straight, white females. The world is more interesting when we know more about the people in it; similarly, books are more interesting when they reflect the broader world. It can be a challenge, but hey, all of writing is a challenge, so why not add one more? It does matter.
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ARE THERE ANY ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS THAT A MYSTERY NOVEL MUST HAVE? OR ARE THERE NO RULES?
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Hank Phillippi Ryan: I do think for a mystery novel, no matter how quirky or avant-garde, there are some essential elements: an important problem that needs to be solved, a person you care about in some way, some sort of logical progression of problem-solving by a determined main character, understandable but often surprising motivations, and a seamlessly compelling solution. I don’t think they necessarily require a murder, although one of the keys of a good mystery is that the stakes are very high—and what could be higher than life or death?
Cynthia Surrisi: I believe readers become committed to a genre because they relish its unique qualities. Further, they return again and again to authors within the genre with the expectation that those qualities will be present. For example, in the classic cozy, murders are generally off screen, the sleuth is an amateur, and there is a kind of charming repertory company of players. Certainly, a mystery writer is free to ignore those elements, but if she does, she runs the risk of not appealing to the genre’s dedicated readers.
“I love the rules. I love playing with them, bending them, taking them apart and putting them back together again in a new way.”–Shari Randall
Edwin Hill: Honestly, when you see all the creative ways people are pushing boundaries, I don’t think there are many rules anymore besides having a character-driven plot. I do think it’s important to have an understanding of the conventions of the genre—but then half the fun in finding ways to break those conventions.
Shari Randall: I love the rules. I love playing with them, bending them, taking them apart and putting them back together again in a new way. The fun of writing in the mystery genre is respecting the conventions but putting your own spin on them.
Susanna Calkins: I don’t know about rules necessarily, but as a reader of mysteries, I certainly expect some sort of closure around the main crime (and that there will be a reasonable tie-up of backstory crimes within a series) as well as some punishment for those who deserve it.
Edwin Hill: Honestly, when you see all the creative ways people are pushing boundaries, I don’t think there are many rules anymore besides having a character-driven plot. I do think it’s important to have an understanding of the conventions of the genre—but then half the fun in finding ways to break those conventions.
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HOW DO YOU KEEP A LONG-RUNNING SERIES FRESH AND INTERESTING?
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Edith Maxwell: I’ve finished book five in the Quaker Midwife series, book seven in the Country Store mysteries, and had five in the Local Foods Mysteries. For me the key is to keep my protagonist growing and changing. She has to learn from her experiences. In our crazy society, there’s never a lack of new—or timeless—themes to address, but for readers to stick around, they have to love the main characters. My fan base has to want to come back for a visit, see what new challenges the protagonist will face, and check out how she’ll deal with them.
Victoria Thompson: Oh my, I must know this, since I have a long running series of my own! But if I really knew the answer, I’d write a book about it and make a fortune! No one really knows, and it’s a little bit skill and a lot of luck and a pinch of kismet. You need to start with a time period and setting that will hold endless appeal and provide an endless supply of murder victims without activating the reader’s disbelief. You need characters who are complex, with interesting back stories you can reveal over time and issues they need to work out through the course of the series. They need to also be appealing, so readers will miss them when the book is over and be anxious to meet up with them again. That said, every writer tries to do all that with every book she writes, so that’s where the kismet comes in. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. And if the series is endlessly fascinating to the writer, that will help a lot.
Ellen Byron: I think the key is creating characters who readers become attached to and whose journeys they’re invested in following, as well as unique storylines for each individual book. My background is primarily writing for television and I view my mystery series the way I view a light drama. You have the “case of the week,” which is the plot of each individual book, and then you have the arcs of your ongoing cast’s lives. Think of the TV series, Castle. Viewers got the satisfaction of seeing a case solved each week, plus there was the draw of Castle’s personal life, which arc-ed out over each season. The show was so successful that my husband used to joke ABC stood for “Always Broadcasting Castle.”
Bruce Robert Coffin (Nominated for Best Contemporary Novel – Beyond the Truth): I think the key lies in writing characters whose lives we care about. While the plot of each novel must stand on its own, the personal lives of our series characters should be populated with the trials and tribulations that we all face. I don’t enjoy reading series characters whose lives are too static and I don’t think most readers do either.
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THERE ARE SO MANY PERMUTATIONS OF COZY AND TRADITIONAL: WHAT’S YOUR CUP OF TEA?
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Hank Phillippi Ryan: Mysteries of the mind. No graphic sex, no graphic violence, no inappropriate language… Too often at least. I love mind games, manipulations and, deceptions, where the deadly weapon is psychological and emotional, with extra measures of gaslighting and double meanings and high stakes secrets.
Art Taylor (Nominated for Best Short Story – “English 398: Fiction Workshop” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine): Lapsang Souchong—a little smoky, a little edgy, and steeped in melancholy (to my mind at least). Pairing a mystery series with that, I’d pick Louise Penny. Her novels understand and respect the long history of the genre, are rich with a sense of place and community, and ponder those bigger questions of humanity and morality with wit and wisdom.
Keenan Powell: I write two series. The first is a legal mystery series, Maeve Malloy, which is developing some psychological thriller aspects. The second is a historical police procedural, the Liam Barrett series. Set in the Berkshires during the Gilded Age, its about a first-generation Irish American cop endeavoring to protect his town in uncertain times.
Edith Maxwell: I like to write unusual protagonists, all strong women, of course. My late 1800s Quaker midwife Rose Carroll is unique, as is Mac Almeida, my contemporary bike mechanic and shop owner on Cape Cod in the Cozy Capers Book Group series. Robbie Jordan in the Country Store Mysteries is a chef and owns a restaurant in a country store, but she’s also a carpenter and did most of the renovations on her building herself. The Local Foods series featured a software engineer turned organic farmer. I still have plans to write a California vintage car mechanic, too!
Tara Laskowski: I love a locked room mystery! Some of my favorites: “The Episode of the Torment IV” by C. Daly King and “All at Once, No Alice” by William Irish. There’s something so fun about those kind of “impossible” mysteries—I’ve always wanted to write one, but I haven’t yet figured out a good enough idea to do so. #goals
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WHAT’S THE BEST PIECE OF WRITING ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED?
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Hank Phillippi Ryan: Every day, as I’m writing—or trying to—it crosses my mind that I have no idea what I am doing. So the best piece of writing advice I ever received may have been from Thomas Edison, who did not know he was telling it to me. He said “When you think you have exhausted all of the possibilities, I remember this: you haven’t.”
I also am a big proponent of allowing myself to write a terrible first draft, just get the story on the page—I am secure and reassured by the knowledge that I can fix it later. I have a yellow sticky on my computer that says “advance the story. “ And when I get to a place where I am baffled, I just say to myself: just keep going.
Art Taylor: It’s not advice I personally received but: Anne Lamott’s chapter on “Shitty First Drafts” hit home and her reminder to go “bird by bird.” (…even if too often, lately, my own birds seem to be flying away from me….)
Susanna Calkins: Hands-down, ‘Murder your Darlings.’ As a writer, you have to be ready to acknowledge that something is not working. It doesn’t matter that your prose is clever or your character is wonderful—if it is slowing down the story or just doesn’t fit, it needs to go. The only trouble with this, of course, is that you may forget you’ve taken out a certain scene or character. For my first series, I was surprised to see reviewers keep writing about “the orphan Lucy Campion,” and I thought ‘that’s so weird, Lucy has a mother.’ But of course I’d forgotten that I cut out the only scene with her mother (and her sister for that matter!).
Edwin Hill: It took a while to sell my first novel, Little Comfort, and I had to go back and do a major rewrite after a first round of submissions resulted in rejections. I relied on a lot of bits advice during that time, but the piece that probably helped push the novel forward the most came from an instructor in my MFA program, the very talented short story writer Pamela Painter, who advised us to try “writing beyond the ending.”
Oftentimes, you can feel that you’ve reached the natural conclusion of a story and that there’s nothing else to say. If a story wasn’t quite working, Pam always encouraged us to try pushing the storyline out to see if there might be a new ending just beyond what had already made it onto the page. My new ending wound up being about thirty pages beyond my original ending, and the new ending really transformed the novel and helped it sell very quickly once we began submitting it again.
Edith Maxwell: Hands down it was, “Butt in the chair, fingers on the keyboard.” You can’t fix what you haven’t written and you can’t sell what isn’t your very best work. Persistence, focus, and showing up every day is what has gotten me to seventeen published books (with five more completed and more after that under contract) and I’m glad it has.
Bruce Robert Coffin: I have been given two gems. The first came prepublication from Kate Flora who cautioned me to be careful what I wished for. The second came from Tess Gerritsen who told me to think of this book writing business as a marathon not a sprint. Hard to argue with such sage advice.
Cynthia Surrisi: I have an MFA, have taught writing at the college level, and I do book coaching. By far, the most important thing that has been imparted to me in my studies, and that I impart to others, is that there are essential elements of story that must be addressed in order for the book to be compelling to the reader. Whether you are a plotter or a pantser, conflict must drive the story, and it must come not only from external sources, but from within the protagonist. Further, the unfolding of the internal conflict and transmutation of the protagonist’s character must develop and be paced throughout the plotline along classic story markers: set up, response, attack, and resolution.
Ellen Byron: No matter what’s going on in your life or how you’re feeling, write for at least fifteen minutes a day. Rochelle Staab, a wonderful mystery author, gave me this advice when I needed to power through a difficult period in my life. The point is, pretty much anyone can find fifteen minutes in a day to write. If that’s all you do that day, no worries. Give yourself credit for hitting a goal. But what I found, and what I think most people would find, is that fifteen minutes becomes thirty and then an hour and then more, and before you know it, you’re back on track.
Tara Laskowski: When I was working on my first novel, Alan Orloff posted something on Facebook to the effect of, “No matter how thin the first draft is, keep pushing forward.” That was my mantra that helped me get through the writing of my book, and I think it’s great advice. Without it, I’d still be obsessively rewriting and perfecting that first chapter and not have anything else.
Keenan Powell: Read. Read as much as you can. Read all the time. The longer I write, the more I appreciate the craft and am fascinated with how other authors accomplish something I’m trying to do, like avoiding overuse of the word “look.” It impresses the sox off of me when I read an entire book with characters who are seeing things and meeting each other’s eyes but not once is the word “look” used. That’s where I’m at now. Eventually I hope to internalize this information and move on to some other aspect. “Said” maybe?
Edith Maxwell: Hands down it was, “Butt in the chair, fingers on the keyboard.” You can’t fix what you haven’t written and you can’t sell what isn’t your very best work. Persistence, focus, and showing up every day is what has gotten me to seventeen published books (with five more completed and more after that under contract) and I’m glad it has.
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WHAT’S THE PLOT TWIST YOU’RE MOST PROUD OF?
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Hank Phillippi Ryan: There’s one smack in the middle of Trust Me. I cannot tell you what it is, of course, but I have had readers write to me and say they actually yelped with shock when they read it. There is one in my new THE MURDER LIST that makes me pleased and secretly proud every time I think about it. And now in the new book I am writing, there is one that is so twisty that I cross my fingers every day that it will work. I know that answer is supremely unhelpful, but that’s the problem with talking about twists.
Bruce Robert Coffin: At the risk of giving too much away, I think I’m most proud of the opening scene of my debut novel, Among the Shadows. Let’s just say things aren’t always what they seem.
Victoria Thompson: Usually, the one I just thought of! In this case, it’s the twist in my upcoming book, Murder on Trinity Place (4/19). One of the rules for writing a mystery is early introduction of the killer. This means you need to introduce all the suspects pretty early in the book. I usually choose my victim and the suspects before I start to write, so I know who all the suspects are before starting to write. This time, however, I couldn’t figure out how to introduce one of them. I kept writing and writing and it kept getting farther and farther into the book but this suspect still hadn’t appeared. Where could this person be hiding? This book isn’t published yet, so not too many people have read it, but the ones who have all commented on how clever this character’s secret is, because, well, this person was hiding in plain sight. I even fooled myself with this plot twist!
Shari Randall: No spoilers! I do love the ending of Curses, Boiled Again because so many reviews said it was unlike anything they’d ever read in a mystery before or called it a bombshell. But to this writer, it was the only climax possible and I wrote the book with that end in sight.
Art Taylor: The ending of my story “Parallel Play,” which won both the Agatha and the Macavity Award a few years back, features what I’d call a character twist instead of a plot twist. A young mother wonders about the lengths she’d go to protect her child and then finds herself in a situation where her convictions are put to the test—but in the final scene, it’s revealed that character motivations can have more than one level.
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WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
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Leslie Budewitz: Ultimately we read to expand our experience of the world—to learn, to identify, to relax while sinking into someone else’s world. That’s what makes diversity so critical, both on the page and in who is published. I love cozy and traditional mysteries that aren’t afraid to touch on social issues, such as domestic violence, homelessness, or immigration. Turns out that historicals can do this beautifully, and that may be one reason they’re increasingly popular—the historical context makes it much easier to explore recurring human flaws without sounding preachy or making people uncomfortable. Some readers read to escape from daily struggles; I respect that, deeply. But I also firmly believe that we can touch on important issues while still engaging and entertaining our audience.
Susanna Calkins: I’d like to see more diverse characters written by more diverse authors, and I’d like to see those books be more welcome to the readers of cozy and traditional mysteries.
Shari Randall: I’m so pleased to see more and more diverse characters in mysteries, especially cozy mysteries. In my past life I was a librarian and I remember the frustration of trying to find books with POC as main characters. I’m thrilled to see the success of programs like We Need Diverse Books. This is way overdue and we have a long way to go, but publishing is starting to go in the right direction.
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WHICH IS HARDER TO WRITE, SEX OR VIOLENCE?
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Ellen Byron: For me, it’s definitely sex. I’ve written fight scenes, but I’m so squeamish about writing sex that my characters consummate their relationship between books! No joke, it’s true. I buy guides on how to write sex scenes and I can’t even read them. I’m like a nine-year-old, going “eww” and “yuck,” LOL. I have to get over this someday, I really do.
Art Taylor: I don’t write either overt sex scenes or explicit violence—in part because I believe that getting either element on the page works better when you leave a fair bit to the reader’s imagination. My story that’s up for an Agatha this year, “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” is about an affair between a professor and his student, and it does feature a couple of racy moments, but those build more on innuendo and small gestures rather than any step-by-step positioning and choreography. I really wouldn’t want to go there!
Shari Randall: I don’t know. I haven’t written a sex scene because my parents are still alive.
Keenan Powell: It’s easy for me to write violence. I studied kung fu for several years as an adult and judo for a few years as a child. I don’t write about the sex act. To me, other people’s sex lives are less interesting than their intestinal issues. However, I do write about how my characters feel about having sex with a particular person and how their sexual relationships impact their own lives and the lives of others.
Bruce Robert Coffin: I find writing sex more difficult. While both of these subjects play a part in our daily lives, hopefully not so much the latter, they can be difficult to describe without crossing over into what might be considered gratuitous. When writing my novels, I believe the setup to sex scenes or scenes of violence is more important than the act itself. I assume most readers have had enough experience to fill-in the blanks themselves.
Edwin Hill: Oh, this is easy: violence. When it comes to sex, I would much rather rely on the fade-to-black, but I put on my big boy pants and get the words on the page when they’re necessary! There is a very violent scene at the center of Little Comfort that’s disturbing—even to me, the author—and I sometimes wonder how I got there on the day I wrote it.
(For readers who gravitate to the cozy end of the genre, I should note that Little Comfort is not a gentle story. Nor is it a cozy or traditional mystery. It’s a psychological thriller with quite a bit of sex and violence, and the story explores disturbing themes. An author’s contract with a reader is important, and I do think that readers should know what they’re getting into before they jump into a novel.)
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Sometimes it’s the sidekicks and cameos that steal the show. Who’s your favorite secondary character (that you created)?
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Sujata Massey: One of my favorite characters in The Widows of Malabar Hill is Mustafa, an ex-army man who is the office manager/major domo of the law firm where Perveen and her father Jamshedji work. Mustafa has courtly behavior, but a tough streak too. He would do anything to protect Perveen, and he also tells her what to do, which is not quite correct for a servant. The other great sidekick in that book is Alice Hobson-Jones, Perveen’s best friend from Oxford who has moved to India. Alice is a mathematician struggling to pursue her gift in conventional 1920s society; she’s also a closeted lesbian who has to keep it from her parents, lest they institutionalize her again. She and Perveen both harbor secrets from the world that they can share with each other, and they have a deeply affectionate and supportive friendship.
Victoria Thompson: Oddly enough, my favorite character in my Gaslight Mysteries is my hero’s mother, Mrs. Malloy. For the first 15 books, she’s a real witch, and readers didn’t like her at all, but I knew she had a secret that made her act like that. She was taking care of her grandson because our hero’s wife had died in childbirth. She loves this child more than life itself, and when Frank meets Sarah—and they eventually fall in love, although they can’t imagine ever being able to marry—Mrs. Malloy is terrified that Sarah will marry Frank and take him and Brian away from her. My favorite scene to write was the one where Frank and Sarah finally tell Mrs. Malloy that they are going to marry and then they ask her to come live with them because they think that will be best for Brian. Suddenly, Mrs. Malloy and Sarah are best friends. Even thinking about that scene still brings a tear to my eye!
Cynthia Surrisi: In my middle grade mystery series, The Quinnie Boyd Mysteries, which includes: The Maypop Kidnapping, Vampires on the Run, and A Side of Sabotage, there are two senior citizen nuns who live in a broken down convent on a lonely point in a remote Maine coastal town. These two women hew to the traditional habits, except in their advancing years they have become local scofflaws: they refuse to recycle, they speed through town, they have forty cats, one of them is a bit of a pinchy pragmatist, the other can’t stop baking goodies . . . and eating them. Sisters Ethel and Rosie not only give me great joy, they mix it up hilariously in all the books.
Bruce Robert Coffin: Diane Joyner is the secondary protagonist in my Detective Byron series. On occasion, I have found Diane easier and more fun to write than John Byron. I can’t really explain why this is so, other than to say that Byron and I share many personal experiences, some of which are emotionally difficult for me to write.
Edwin Hill: Little Comfort was inspired by the Clark Rockefeller case from about ten years ago, where a man pretended to be a member of the Rockefeller clan, married a wealthy woman, and had a child. When his story started to unravel, he went on the run with his daughter, and when he was caught, it turned out he was actually a German national, and was connected the murder of a couple in California. My first drafts of the novel were about that character—a man named Sam Blaine, a Tom Ripley type character who wanted to infiltrate the lives of the rich and famous.
The novel didn’t really take off till I introduced another character named Hester Thursby, a horror-movie loving, Harvard librarian who finds missing people. Hester basically took over the novel and kicked Sam to the curb, and ultimately turned the novel into her own series. So she’s my favorite secondary character, by far!
Keenan Powell: Tom Sinclair, Maeve Malloy’s sidekick, is a driving force but I’m growing rather attached to a new member of their crew, Salvatore O’Brien, a retired cop who opened a pizzeria on the first floor of Maeve’s office building. He first appears in Maeve #2: Hemlock Needle.
Edith Maxwell: 1880s midwife Rose Carroll’s best friend is quirky irreverent postmistress Bertie Winslow. She loves sherry and stylish hats, rides her horse (named Grover after the President) astride, and lives with a woman (and it’s not a platonic relationship). She enjoys talking through cases with Rose and going along on visits to sometimes dangerous people. I also love the cats I have in each of my series, including Christabel, the kitchen cat in the Quaker Midwife Mysteries. She’s our real (now elderly) Orangesicle sweetie. I have to say my favorite pet is Belle, the African gray parrot in the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. She’s quite a talker, a tease, and a great companion for allergic Mac Almeida.
Ellen Byron: That would have to be Maggie’s grandmother, Grand-mère. She’s elegant in an old-timey way but has a sly wit and unexpected hipness. I love going to her for humor and reality checks. She’s got the asperity of Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey without the noblesse oblige. She loves her bourbon and can be a bit naughty, which led to a fun subplot twist in Mardi Gras Murder. Grand-mère is kind of a combination of the Dowager Countess and my mother. Here’s the dedication from Fatal Cajun Festival, my next Cajun Country Mystery: Dedicated to Elizabeth DiVirgilio Seideman, a wonderful mother and nonna who has no idea how much she inspired the humor and warmth of Grand-mère.
