So Shoot Me

Over on the Crime Writers of Canada National Crime Writing Blog we're writing on the theme of how killing people on paper isn't as easy as it seems. Blame it on CSI, but the average reader is much more savvy about things like blood spatter and gunshot residue. That means if you use these technical terms, you better use them properly.

I ran into a problem when I was using - that is, misusing - prescription drugs. Sure, most people won't know that it's hard to kill someone quickly with drug overdoses. Then a nurse will read your ms and tell you it doesn't work that way. Fortunately the nurse is a friend and she happened to have her outdated copies of her drug bibles. 

Some authors get around the technicalities by letting the cops work it out while their amateur sleuth puzzles out the motives. Others, myself included, do a lot of research. If we're lucky and tenacious, we make friends in the right places. I pick the brains of my friends, my friends' friends and people on the street if I over hear an irresistible tidbit of information. My children pretend they don’t know me, then laugh at me later.

Currently I have an almost pathological need to ask police officers questions. You can always tell when a cop walks into a coffee shop where I'm writing. My eyes light up. I take in visual details and look for an opening to glean a bit more knowledge.

So shoot me.

Just Desserts

The closest my mother would get to science fiction was Star Trek. Most science fiction, in her opinion, was nihilistic and depressing. I tried to persuade her otherwise - with no success. There were no guarantees that she wouldn’t find the book too scary. Yet she surrounded herself with murder, mayhem and deceit - in a word, mysteries.

I grew up surrounded by my mother’s collection of mystery books. Some of the books by Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Ngaio Marsh had come with her from England before I was born. Other authors, like Ruth Rendell and Rex Stout she discovered since emigrating. I fed her addiction by introducing her to Sue Grafton and Charlotte Macleod, but I never really understood it until I had a few more years of life experience under my belt.

Unlike science fiction, you know a solution will be found in a mystery. No other genre of fiction guarantees that. Life sure as hell doesn’t!

Perhaps that is why, as much as I enjoyed reading them, I didn’t have the urge to write mysteries until after my mother died and I was dealing with the slow demise of my sister and poor health of my father.

There had always been an element of mystery in Under A Texas Star, but with my new-found enthusiasm for mystery-writing, I went over the manuscript making sure that it fulfilled the needs of a mystery. Were there enough clues? Enough red herrings? Was the investigation plausible? When the villains got their just desserts, was it satisfying?

That’s the true delight in a mystery - seeing the justice served in what often seems like an unjust world. And who doesn’t enjoy dessert?

Alison Bruce
www.alisonbruce.ca
twitter.com/alisonebruce

What is your favourite example of "just desserts"?