Liz Lawson and Kathleen Glasgow are the authors of TheNew York Times bestselling murder mystery series The Agathas and The Night in Question. The Agathas follows two messy teenage girls in a small seaside town, who team up to solve the disappearance of the richest girl in their high school. The sequel, The Night in Question, releases on May 30, and this time, our detectives are investigating a deadly dance and the death of a Hollywood starlet.
Kathleen: Liz, we’re here today to talk about partners in crime. Specifically, those characters that team up to solve dastardly deeds and leave mayhem in their wake. You and I are doing this on Facetime and I just noticed you’re filing your nails, which is a very Alice Ogilvie thing to do. And for readers who don’t know yet, Alice Ogilvie is one half of our detective duo, The Agathas.
Liz: Yes, Alice would approve of my nail filing, that is for sure. Iris, on the other hand, would probably roll her eyes (just like you did). That’s why they work well together and are one of my personal favorite crime fighting duos. But mystery novels are full of them. Who are some of your favorites, Kathleen?
Kathleen: Okay, here comes one of my old person tangents again, Liz, so you can go back to filing your nails. As we all know, I’m literally one hundred and seventy six years older than you. I grew up watching duos on tv. And by that I mean: Laverne and Shirley, Lenny and Squiggy, The Hardy Boys, Mork and Mindy, those two dudes from Magnum PI (the old one, and that one with the bushy mustache who later dated Monica on Friends, but let’s not go into that). And…the brilliant ladies of Cagney and Lacey. One thing I loved about writing The Agathas series with you was the chance to create two characters just like the ones I grew up with in books and on the screen: good cop, bad cop; lots of banter; opposing personalities. In The Agathas, Alice is privileged, spoiled, smart, funny, sometimes socially clueless on purpose. Iris is introverted, dark, secretive, battling inner demons. They’re perfect for fighting crime together.
Liz: First of all, Kathleen, how DARE you not call Tom Selleck by name???? Axnd to tell me he needs to SHAVE his MUSTACHE?!?!? Sacrilege! Tsk. But back to The Agathas… yes it was so much fun playing around with all sorts of Odd Friendship tropes in the book, and also turning them on their head a bit, showing that while Alice might be the spoiled, rich girl, sometimes Iris is the more judgemental of the two. It was incredibly important to us to have rich, well-rounded characters in the books, because we knew readers might very well solve the central mystery of the book, and we wanted them to love Alice and Iris and the rest of the gang enough that even if they did, they’d enjoy the rest of the ride.
Kathleen: To catch readers of this article up, you wrote the character of Alice; I wrote Iris. One of the fun parts of writing a dual POV mystery is that readers can see the same situation in the book from two different perspectives and sometimes, because of the way we structured the book, they get the added thrill of watching Alice and Iris, in separate situations, figure the same thing out at the same time that’s extremely important, and yet…they have no way of communicating that to each other because they’re in different places. In short, The Agathas (book 1) and The Night in Question (book 2) are both a little bonkers in a very fun, and sometimes edge of your seat way.
Liz: Absolutely. It was great fun coming up with situations that tested our characters and pushed them out of their comfort zones.
Kathleen: We also had to remember that one of the best parts of writing a duo is that readers have a choice: who are they rooting for? Do they love Cagney more, or Lacey? Do they think Alice is right in her investigative methods, or is Iris really the one on the right track? That part was so much fun, especially in The Night In Question, because the action picks up four months after the events of The Agathas. Since solving Brooke’s Donovan’s case, our girls are in downtime. They think they’re done! They’re dressed up and at a dance…but Alice is snooping around, hungry for another case, while Iris is a bit consumed by Cole Fielding and not sure she wants to tackle another mystery. Right from the get go, readers can choose their fighter: Alice and another crime case, or Iris, reluctant and maybe needing some space.
Liz: Iris doesn’t have much of a choice after Alice stumbles into a private room on the second floor of the Castle and finds one of their classmates on the floor, bleeding from a gaping head wound. Alice is, of course, thrilled to have a reason to pull out her handy fanny pack where she keeps her forensics kit (because why would Alice ever leave her house without her forensic kit??) and start investigating. Iris, reluctantly, pulls herself away from Cole and goes to help. One of the things about their friendship is that while they absolutely love each other and would do anything to help the other person, they also have very different ways of looking at the world, which gives us a nice amount of tension to play around with while we’re writing these books.
Kathleen: The evolution of the relationship between investigative partners is key. You have to show them at the beginning (fighting; tension); the middle (grudging respect for the abilities of the other; gradual realization that they’re both incredibly messed up and need each other); and the end (cracking the mystery at hand, together, and realizing they make a great pair, fights and all), and need each other. To quote one of Mona Moody’s movies from The Night in Question, “You can’t bake a cake without butter, Ruth!” You can’t solve a mystery without a good friend!
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