What makes an outstanding mystery series? At a minimum, each book in the series must meet professional standards with respect to plot (especially important for mysteries), characters, setting and so on. There is much more to a top-notch series, however, than just a collection of well-crafted stories. The key lies in the ‘glue’ that binds individual offerings into a coherent whole.
To tease out what makes a series work, I focus on the best series published in the last twenty years and categorize them under five headings: protagonist, location, period, genre, and theme. These are the most common literary devices for creating that sense of continuity so critical to a successful series. I select my favorite under each heading.
PROTAGONIST: This is by far the most popular. Think of Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Morse. Each book about these titans was built around a cunningly crafted plot, but it was the sleuths themselves who turned clever mysteries into much loved series. The tradition has continued and my pick in the protagonist category from more recent times is Ann Cleeves’s eleven stories about Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police Force. No matter how compelling each story might be, it is Vera that you remember. She may look rather dowdy but she is as sharp as the north wind. She may speak like a kindly aunt but she can be as persistent as King Bruce’s spider. She may do everything she can to get the killer but she can also be compassionate and caring. A remarkable character. All the books in this series are superb, but for me, the best is The Darkest Evening, the ninth book, in which Vera uncovers more of her own past as she investigates the death of a young mother.
LOCATION: Imagine you are strolling through the most charming village ever, enjoying the crisp Canadian air and admiring the patterns made by pine needles on the scatter of overnight snow. Then imagine you catch the aroma of straight-from-the oven baguettes and freshly brewed coffee. Where are you? Every reader of first-class mysteries knows instantly that you are approaching Olivier and Gabri’s Bistro in Three Pines. Readers of mysteries do not ask if you have read Louise Penny’s latest book; they ask if you have read the new Three Pines story. That is the measure of how deeply the location of her series has embedded itself in the public’s mind. Location is the second most frequently used ‘glue’ and Louise Penny’s eighteen-book series is the perfect example. Her first novel, Still Life, about a dead woman found in the woods, is both an enthralling mystery and an excellent introduction to Three Pines.
PERIOD: Nev March’s stories travel around the world, but they are all set in the waning years of the nineteenth century. When you open one of her books you may not know where the story will be set, but you know the time frame. So far, she has set her mysteries in Bombay (book one), Chicago (book two) and even on a transatlantic liner (book three). Even so, each captures that period when Britain still ruled large parts of the globe and the whiff of colonialism was in the air. Whether the setting is India, North America, or the middle of the ocean, her immaculate descriptions of dress and behavior, of furnishings and architecture, of the cruise ship and its passengers, place the story firmly in the 1890s. Period and location are often intertwined, but Nev March’s books make clear that the period ‘glue’ can be highly effective without the location ‘glue’. The books can be read independently, so you do not have to start with book one; my recommendation, especially if you like stories set at sea, is to begin with her third book, The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret.
GENRE: When I use the word genre in this context, I am referring to a mystery novel’s literary vehicle or style, such as thriller, cozy, historical, noir, police procedural and so on. My favorite in this category is the police procedurals by Cara Hunter. Her six-book series could easily fit in the protagonist category (her DS Fawley) or the place category (Oxford), but what makes her books stand out for me is the realism she brings to the ups and downs of police investigation. The efforts of the police to peel back layers of deceit and deception in complex cases are told convincingly and with assurance. In my estimation, Hope to Die, the sixth book in the series, ranks as one of the finest police procedurals in recent years, and the series itself as the perfect example of stellar individual mysteries bound by their genre.
THEME: Theme is the least used ‘glue’ of all but can be highly effective. Allow me to illustrate this by drawing on my own series (The Dunston Burnett Trilogy). Dunston Burnett, a diffident, middle-aged, retired bookkeeper (think of a latter-day Mr Pickwick), is not cut out to be a detective yet circumstances invariably conspire to place him at the center of singularly complex mysteries. Therein lies the theme that binds the three books in the series – the tension between his limitations as a detective and the apparently unsolvable mysteries confronting him. Thus, in Fatally Inferior, the second book, he figures out the motive behind a woman’s apparently inexplicable disappearance from a locked-tight country house, but fails to prevent a second, related crime of vengeance. He eventually runs down the murderer, but this ‘will-he, won’t he’ uncertainty runs through the trilogy and transforms the stories into a single history.
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