The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit

by Tapply, William G.

  She had sparse white hair, like powdered sugar frosting on her pink scalp, and a round face that must have been cheerful when she smiled. Her skin was crosshatched with fine lines. Deeper ridges creased her forehead and carved channels from her broad nose to her small anxious mouth. Her gray eyes, unsettlingly steady, stared gravely at the peephole.

  The lock gave, and I yanked open the door, apologizing. She didn’t respond like a proselytizer or a fundraiser.

  “Margaret Devens,” she announced hopefully. “Miss,” she added. “Miss Margaret Devens, spinster.”

  In this passage, readers meet Margaret Devens through Carlotta’s eyes, just as they might meet any person in real life. They form impressions based on what Carlotta observes and what Miss Devens chooses to say. Readers know only what Carlotta is thinking and feeling. They cannot enter Miss Devens’ mind. The self-proclaimed spinster may subsequently prove to be a terrorist, or a kidnapper—or an antivivisectionist. But readers won’t know that until Carlotta does.

  Readers must respect the first-person narrator. She must be at least as intelligent and observant as they are if the puzzle-solving quest is to challenge both reader and narrator equally. Mystery readers do not want to solve the problem while the hero or heroine is still muddling around gathering clues and acting confused. First-person narration works best when the narrator is actively engaged in the story’s quest. Give your sleuth reasons to go places, to witness events, and to have a variety of experiences. Her narration, as much as possible, should be firsthand and immediate. A passive sleuth such as Nero Wolfe (who rarely leaves his Manhattan apartment) would make a poor first-person narrator, as author Rex Stout realized. That’s why Stout gave the narrating job to Archie Goodwin, Wolfe’s gofer.

  Suspense develops when narrators find themselves in trouble. They sometimes take risks, miscalculate, underestimate the danger of a situation, and confront a desperate adversary. Readers, identifying with the first-person narrator, accept her danger as their own.

  But don’t ever try to convince your readers that your first-person narrator might be killed. They know she survives. After all, she’s lived to tell about it.

  Third person limited

  Closely related to the first-person point of view is the intimate, or limited, third-person narration. With the substitution of the third-person pronoun “he” or “she” for the first-person “I,” the effect is almost identical. Readers identify only with the single viewpoint character. They know that that character—and only that character—is thinking and feeling and experiencing.

  In her novel The Sculptress, Minette Walters introduces readers to Rosalind Leigh, the third-person narrator, as she awaits her prison interview with a convicted murderess:

  Rosalind Leigh, waiting by the door of the interview room, ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. Her revulsion was immediate as if Olive’s evil had reached out and touched her. My God, she was thinking, and the thought alarmed her, I can’t go through with this. But she had, of course, no choice. The gates of the prison were locked on her, as a visitor, just as securely as they were locked on the inmates. She pressed a shaking hand to her thigh where the muscles were jumping uncontrollably. Behind her, her all but empty briefcase, a testament to her lack of preparation for this meeting, screamed derision at her ill-considered assumption that conversation with Olive could develop like any other. It had never occurred to her, not for one moment, that fear might stifle her inventiveness.

  In this third-person passage, readers share the point-of-view character’s thoughts and feelings just as intimately as if it were a first-person narration. The effect for readers is identical and equally powerful.

  In the limited third-person narration, just as in first person, readers meet secondary characters through the eyes of the point-of-view character. Here’s how Thomas Harris, in The Silence of the Lambs, introduces Jack Crawford to readers through the point of view of Clarice Starling:

  She found Jack Crawford alone in the cluttered suite of offices. He was standing at someone else’s desk talking on the telephone and she had a chance to look him over for the first time in a year. What she saw disturbed her.

  Normally, Crawford looked like a fit, middle-aged engineer who might have paid his way through college playing baseball—a crafty catcher, tough when he blocked the plate. Now he was thin, his shirt collar was too big, and he had dark puffs under his reddened eyes. Everyone who could read the papers knew Behavioral Science section was catching hell. Starling hoped Crawford wasn’t on the juice. That seemed most unlikely here.

  In this passage, Harris manages to tell readers as much about Starling as about Crawford. Sharing her thoughts and feelings, readers learn that she is “disturbed.” By her casual use of an analogy, readers know that she understands baseball. Her familiar reference to “Behavioral Science section” pegs her as an insider. She remembers how Crawford looked a year ago—a hint that they are acquaintances, but probably not close friends.

  Harris scrupulously avoids telling us more about Crawford than Starling knows or observes. He thus does not violate the limitations of the intimate third-person narration.

  When describing another character or an event through the third-person point of view, you might be tempted to step back and offer more information than the viewpoint character can know or observe. Don’t do it. It’s intrusive and confusing, and it destroys your reader’s close identification with your point-of-view character.

  Inattentive writers, for example, might construct a scene this way:

  Michael Blake took a deep breath and pushed open the glass door. He was worried, and a frown creased his handsome face. He saw Sarah Benjamin sitting at the patio table. Her glasses were perched low on her long aristocratic nose. She was reading some old letters from her missing daughter. She wore a bulky sweatshirt for warmth against the autumnal chill and an old pair of baggy blue jeans that had fit her snugly before the chemotherapy. Her ordeal had etched a few more wrinkles in her craggy face, but otherwise Blake thought she looked the same as ever.

  Notice what happens here. The passage begins in Michael Blake’s point of view (he “took a deep breath and pushed open the glass door”). Readers know his feelings (he “was worried”). So far, so good. But abruptly the eager writer intervenes to tell the reader that Blake frowns and that his face is handsome.

  Think about it. When you frown, are you thinking of the expression on your face, or that it’s “handsome”? No. You are thinking about whatever it is that causes you to frown. You would report what you see and how you feel—but not what your own face looks like. By describing Blake’s face, the writer’s own point of view takes over the scene, and the intimate third-person point of view has been destroyed.

  Then readers are told that Sarah Benjamin is reading “old letters from her missing daughter.” Can Blake see what she’s reading from where he stands? Does he know who wrote them? No. The writer has intruded again. And then the writer proceeds to explain why Sarah is wearing a sweatshirt and even a bit of the history of her jeans—details which Blake, the ostensible viewpoint character, could not know.

  Point-of-view violations such as these make readers feel schizophrenic. They become acutely aware of another point of view—that of the writer, who is manipulating these characters. Thus the intimate bond between the reader and the point-of-view character is broken.

  A point-of-view trick

  At the end of the first chapter of your mystery novel, your first-person narrator says: “I should never have answered the phone that night. I should have wrapped a pillow around my ears and let it ring. Little did I know that Chloe’s seemingly innocent request would nearly cost me my life.”

  The transparent “little-did-I-know” foreshadowing trick is commonplace in first-person and limited third-person mystery stories. It seems to create suspense, saying, in effect, “Keep reading. There’s an exciting story awaiting you.”

  Actually, unless the little-did-I-know device is used subtly and
with restraint, readers will recognize it as a cheap trick. It betrays the insecurity of the writer who doesn’t trust his own story to tug his readers forward. When the narrator says “little did I know,” he is also saying, “Now I do know, but I’m not going to tell you yet. You’ve got to read this book to find out.” Thus the narrator is admitting that he does not intend to be entirely candid with the reader, and the strong narrator-reader bond of trust is weakened.

  A variation on the “little-did-I-know” trick occurs when the narrator introduces a piece of evidence and then refuses to describe it to the reader for several pages. For example: “Between the pages of the old family Bible I found an envelope. With shaking hands, I tore it open and slid out a single piece of paper. I read it slowly. Then I sat down, lit a cigarette, and read it again. I felt beads of sweat form on my forehead.”

  At this point, of course, the reader expects to be told what is written on that piece of paper. The narrator knows, and the reader trusts her.

  But instead, the scene continues: “I folded the paper thoughtfully and slipped it into my purse. It answered a lot of questions. I stood up, stubbed out my cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray, and went to the telephone. It was time to talk to Charles.”

  By now, the frustrated reader is asking: When is she going to tell me what’s written on that piece of paper?

  The writer is trying to create suspense, and it’s a valid technique provided it’s done with restraint. For example, readers will not object if the point-of-view character reads the note to Charles over the telephone. But if she has a conversation with Charles in which she still fails to divulge the contents of the paper, and if she then gets into her car, drives to her lawyer’s house, has a discussion with him, and proceeds to confront several other characters, and still does not explain what’s written on that all-important piece of paper, readers will begin to feel betrayed by this point-of-view character whom they’ve trusted. They will resent her coyness. She has key information that she’s not sharing, and readers will correctly feel that she has violated the mystery story’s rule of fair play.

  Multiple point of view

  In the suspense stories of writers such as Barbara Michaels and Ken Follett, the whodunit puzzle, if it exists at all, is usually secondary. The question that propels the plots of suspense novels typically asks: Will the good guy succeed in preventing the bad guy from completing his evil plan?

  Suspense stories, thrillers, and other mystery subgenres derive their tension less from a puzzle than from the uncertainty of the outcome. There’s a contest between good and evil, and readers follow the play of both sides. They turn the pages to find out who wins.

  Sooner or later, readers generally learn who the villain of a suspense story is. As often as not they spend time in his or her point of view. The question is not the villain’s identity or motivation. Rather, the problem that drives the suspense plot is whether this villain will succeed in his plan to assassinate the President, or blow up the chemical factory, or kill more archeology students. Will the heroine stop him in the nick of time? Will she manage to find out where the kidnapped child is being hidden before the bomb explodes? Will the villain kill the heroine’s brother?

  Suspense can be enhanced by alternating the narration among the points of view of several different characters. In The Silence of the Lambs, for example, readers witness most of the scenes from Clarice Starling’s viewpoint. But Harris heightens the suspense of his story by periodically showing scenes from the point of view of other characters, including the victims, the evil Dr. Lector, and Jame Gumb, the story’s villain.

  If you’re writing a mystery story in which the central quest involves solving a puzzle, however, stick with a single point of view. First person or third person. Your choice. Don’t be tempted to tell your reader what your other characters are thinking and feeling by entering their viewpoints. That will divide your readers’ attention and blur their identification with your sleuth.

  There are, of course, exceptions. Tony Hillerman, for example, masterfully alternates between two intimate third-person points of view in his mystery novels. But Hillerman is a master, and his series features two more or less equal protagonists, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. Most successful mystery writers, however, stick to the single point of view. Beginners should do the same.

  Besides blurring your readers’ identification with your sleuth, the multiple viewpoint also creates tactical problems in puzzle-driven mystery fiction. When writers alternate point of view among several characters, readers inevitably know more than the story’s sleuth. They have the advantage over her, which violates the rule of fair play just as surely as if vital information were withheld from readers.

  Here, for example, is a scene as it might be told from a secondary character’s viewpoint (Sarah Benjamin) rather than the story’s sleuth (Michael Blake):

  Sarah peered over the tops of her glasses and watched Michael push open the glass door and step tentatively onto the patio. She saw a frown crease his handsome face. Poor Michael, she thought. He was a nice guy, but he didn’t know any more about how to deal with a dying old woman than anyone else.

  She shivered. Even in her bulky sweatshirt, she was cold. She was always cold. The chemotherapy had sucked all the warmth from her body. In spite of what the doctors told her, she knew she’d never be warm again.

  Or perhaps it was rereading Mary Ann’s old letters that gave her the chills.

  Well, maybe Michael would help. She hoped so. She didn’t know where else to turn.

  He’d resist, she expected. He’d protest that he was a lawyer, not a private eye, that he was overworked as it was. Dear Michael. She knew that he’d rather go golfing. She’d have to handle him carefully.

  Here readers know things about Sarah that Michael, the sleuth, can only surmise. Through Sarah’s point of view readers learn that she intends to “handle him carefully.” They know that she will attempt to manipulate him. Michael, at best, can only deduce this important fact.

  At this point in the story, readers might legitimately consider Sarah a suspect. Once they hear her thoughts and share her feelings, however, they know that she should be deleted from their list of suspects, because if she had committed the murder, it’s reasonable to assume that she would be thinking about it. Readers are disappointed that the complexity of the mystery is thus reduced.

  Suppose Sarah actually is the villain?

  Writers who enter the point of view of the villain either cheat inexcusably or give the puzzle’s solution away. Fair play demands that no point-of-view character can lie to readers, or deceive them, or withhold crucial information from them. Obviously, uppermost in the murderer’s mind are that he did the deed, that he desperately wants to get away with it, and that people are trying to bring him to justice.

  To have him not think these thoughts is cheating your reader. On the other hand, if he does share these thoughts with readers, they will solve the mystery puzzle before your sleuth does.

  Writing in the point of view of all significant characters except the villain will also give away the mystery to observant readers. They will notice whose point of view you are avoiding, and they will figure out why.

  Omniscient point of view

  The omniscient narrator is the author himself, who knows everything and who shares—and withholds—information from the reader as she chooses. This kind of narration, unless handled with great care, feels arbitrary to readers. They tend to feel manipulated by it. They know they are being told only what the writer chooses to tell them. The puzzle feels like a game of hide-and-seek between writer and reader, rather than a problem for the reader to share with a sympathetic sleuth.

  Here is a version of our earlier scene between Michael Blake and Sarah Benjamin, this time told from the point of view of an omniscient narrator:

  An anxious smile creased Michael Blake’s handsome face. The tall, middle-aged lawyer pushed open the glass door. He was wearing a pin-striped suit. A thin leather briefcase da
ngled from his hand. He looked at the old woman sitting at the patio table. Her glasses were perched low on her long aristocratic nose. She was reading old letters from her daughter. Sarah Benjamin hadn’t seen Mary Ann since the death of her husband, Mary Ann’s father. All she had left were these faded old letters.

  Blake was not only Sarah’s lawyer. He was also her friend and confidant. He wasn’t sure why she had summoned him. He knew she was dying of cancer. Probably she wanted to straighten out her will, settle things while she was still able.

  “Sarah,” he said to her, making his voice as gentle and friendly as he could under the circumstances.

  When she heard Michael’s voice, Sarah peered up at him over the tops of her glasses. She shivered. In spite of the bulky sweatshirt—it had once belonged to Mary Ann, a souvenir from their summer trip to Quebec back when Charles was still alive—she was cold. It was the damned chemotherapy.

  With this omniscient narration, the reader wanders more or less randomly into and out of the heads of the two characters. Sometimes they are seen from a distance as they are described by the author. At other times the reader is privy to their thoughts. Readers are given no shoes to stand in except those of the all-knowing writer, and they are being asked to identify with two characters simultaneously.

  Except in highly skilled hands, omniscient narration feels manipulative and impersonal. Even when it manages to sustain a complex puzzle, it discourages readers from caring about it or trying to solve it.

  The neutral or missing point of view