What’s inside the mind of a mystery author? Murder most
foul. Why murder, you ask? Are there not many crimes a writer can hang a plot
on? There are many nefarious schemes out there, but most crimes seem worst when
murder or the threat of murder accompanies them. In the case of robbery, for
instance, your money or your life. Or
kidnapping—your money or your wife!
For my money, murder, the unlawful killing of another
person, is the best crime for a mystery, be it a police procedural, an amateur
sleuth, or a private eye story. Robbery, for instance, might be mitigated by
the need to eat—stealing a loaf of bread—or by the Robin Hood syndrome—rob the
rich. And robbery is only a crime against property. Murder, the taking of a
human life, is unequivocal and final. It has the most potential to arouse
emotions in the reader. Always on the lookout for plot material, I made a list
of reasons to commit murder:
1.)
In the commission of a robbery—Bonnie and Clyde
were robbers. They preferred rural stores and gas stations, but robbed banks
too. When confronted or cornered, they were more than just robbers. Bonnie and
Clyde were killers. (Nine lawmen.)
2.)
Jealousy—Seduction, betrayal, love triangle,
murder. Consider the tragic hero, Othello. Or consider a crime of
passion—Pierre returns home from a hard day of drinking wine and finds
Jean-Paul, his motorcycle mechanic, in bed with his wife, Marie. Enraged with
jealousy, Pierre kills Jean-Paul. (Or perhaps Pierre kills Marie. Good
motorcycle mechanics can be hard to find.)
3.)
Revenge/vengeance—a perennial favorite. From Hamlet to Death Wish, revenge or vengeance is a great motive for a killing.
Revenge could be considered the motive for most gang killings.
The Harvard Crimson
reports that these first three, robbery, jealousy, or revenge are behind most
murders. But as the detective pursues the truth in the original murder, the
writer may introduce a second killing. If you kill once, you may kill again . .
.
4.)
To cover up a crime/to prevent the discovery of
a crime—Subsequent murders may be necessary to eliminate witnesses. Do the
crime yourself, or in secrecy. If a criminal involves another person in his
crime, he may eventually have to kill again to keep the accomplice or witness from
going to the police.
Throughout history, there have been many other reasons to
commit murder that the inventive writer may use in his plots. For example:
5.)
To gain power—think Shakespeare’s Richard III
a.
Ambition—see
Macbeth
6.)
For pay—the hit man, something of a modern
invention?
7.)
Political assassination—Shakespeare again—Julius Caesar
8.)
Greed or avarice—this brings to mind the
classic, Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
9.)
Insanity—from the days of Jack the Ripper to
Hannibal the Cannibal or Buffalo Bill, insanity covers the popular modern
sub-genre of serial killer novels.
10.) Hatred, anger—I like this.
To me it suggests a murder done in the heat of the moment. I tend to use this
sort of crime in my stories because I believe a murder of opportunity is harder
to solve than a meticulously planned murder, in which so much can go wrong, or
in which the killer can leave many clues. A murder committed out of hatred or
anger is similar to a “crime of passion.” But it’s not that kind of passion.
11.) Land, Gold, Women—Somewhere
I read, “There are three things to kill over--land, gold, and women.” For some
reason, I associate this with B. Traven, but I can’t find it.
12.)Sport—The idea for this
comes from “The Most Dangerous Game,” a short story by Richard Connell, in
which a big game hunter hunts and kills human game, for sport.
13.) Initiation to a gang—Is
this real? Or is the idea an urban legend? Random killings invite a massive
deployment of police resources to solve, and it seems unlikely that gangs with
profitable illegal businesses would want to draw that attention to themselves.
Yet recent killings of teenage women in Houston and Baltimore may have been
part of gang initiations.
I would end with an unlucky thirteen reasons to commit
murder on which you or I or any writer could hang the plot of a mystery novel.
But I can’t leave you until I mention just one more, kind of a favorite, for
which I’m indebted to Alan Orloff [http://alanorloff.com/],author and friend,
and to the Man in Black:
14.)In Reno, just to watch him
die
Harley Mazuk [http://www.harleymazuk.com/] is a mystery writer living in Maryland.
His first novel, White with
Fish, Red with Murder [http://www.drivenpress.net/white-with-fish-red-with-murder] is out now, from Driven Press. [http://www.drivenpress.net/]
To understand Dying to Tell’s backstory, I should explain the series’ genesis. First, Dying to Know, the first novel, began with Tuck’s murder. He returns to solve his own case. The “dead detective” theme is based on my 20-year recurring nightmare after the first Gulf War—I was killed by terrorists and returned to hunt them. After telling my adult daughter about it, she urged me to write a similar murder mystery—voila, Oliver Tucker. Each of Tuck’s cases intertwine a traditional murder and a historical subplot. Together, they surround Tuck’s long-lost family secrets—which involve gangsters, spies, G-men, and rogue adventurers—and yes, these ancestors are all dead and back amongst the living, too!
