Maine Crime Writers

A year ago last November I had cataract surgery for both eyes. I stopped driving a couple of months before that—I couldn’t read street signs. Really, I couldn’t read books and magazines even with my progressive lenses, and watching television was impossible no matter where I sat or angled my head. And all lights had a huge halo around them.

Cataract surgery is the one of the safest, most commonly performed procedures, but that didn’t make me want to go through it, LOL. I’ve been wearing glasses since the fourth grade, with a brief contact lens era in my thirties. I used to be known for my big brown eyes, and in my heyday I wore eyeshadow, eyeliner, and mascara to emphasize them. Even though I’ve abandoned such gilding of the aging lily, the thought of someone, even a qualified eye surgeon, messing with my eyes was scary.

I’m a very visual person, a lover of art museums and a dabbler in art myself, not to mention I spend all day in front of a computer screen trying to kill people. I don’t mind being a bit hard of hearing; a lot of life can be aurally ignored with no harmful effects, and in fact can be a blessing. But sight is my most precious sense.

I’m happy to report all went well. I can see things in the distance for the first time in decades, but I do have trouble with close vision, even with new progressives. (At the time of the surgery, I could have opted for additional artificial lenses to be inserted at additional expense, but I didn’t.) So I now have an arsenal for the fine print. Both my desktop and my Kindle’s fonts are magically enlarged by the press of a button. My lit magnifying glass makes me feel like a 21^st century Lady Sherlock, and I own a necklace that’s as useful as it is pretty. Two mirrors are on call in case I ever want to swipe on some mascara again. As I have an aversion to resembling Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, that is unlikely.

However, magazines remain a problem. I’ve let a couple of subscriptions lapse, because I simply can’t read the articles comfortably. Country Life is still great for my research—I’ve gone full circle from childhood picture books to adult pictorial magazines.

And books? The old librarian in me is appalled, but I totally depend on my reading device since I can jack up the font. Heresy. A student once told me “Books are obsolete.” I wanted to jump over the circulation desk and strangle him, but now I almost see his point. See. Get it?

Don’t worry—I still own a zillion physical books, and even more are in my Kindle Library. What’s your preferred method of reading? Can you part with books once you’ve finished them, or are you a re-reader? Do you have a To-Be-Read pile that could topple over and crush you?

The recent popularity of domestic thrillers in crime fiction begs the question: what exactly is a domestic thriller? More often than not it involves a crime that in some way touches upon a fragile relationship, usually a troubled marriage. The setting is typically the home or possibly the office, and the main character feels somehow trapped in a situation where there seems to be no escape. Oh yes, and a crime is always involved.

Once I discovered the joys of reading a good domestic thriller I was hooked on the genre. When reading one I feel like I’m a fly on the wall watching from behind the scenes, understanding the true dynamics of a couple’s relationship. In fact I liked reading domestic thrillers so much that I decided to write one. This after five horror novels, a book of short stories, a kidnapping mystery and a hardbitten crime novel set in Portland.

My first exposure to a real life domestic thriller happened almost twenty-eight years ago. On October 23rd, 1989, an unusual crime happened in Boston. Reports came in that a black man had forced his way into a couple’s car, robbed them, and then shot the two of them before fleeing on foot. This brutal, senseless crime caused racial tensions to escalate in the city, especially since Charles Stuart’s wife and unborn child ended up dying in the attack. As he lay in the hospital with a gunshot wound to his abdomen, Charles recounted to the police his version of events.

But as police began to dig deeper, Stuart’s lies began to unravel. His brother, Matthew, went to the police and admitted his role in helping Charles pull of this despicable crime. Matthew admitted that the two of them conspired to use the race card in order to hide the true motive for killing Carol Stuart: money!

I remember obsessively following the case in the news, each day learning new information about the murder. It was as if I was reading a riveting mystery or watching a great suspense movie. I wasn’t the only one mesmerized. The entire region seemed eager to find out who had attacked this seemingly happy couple as they returned home from child birthing classes. They made a handsome pair, too. Charles was tall and good looking, and a successful manager of a fur shop on Newbury Street. Carol was a tax attorney who had graduated from BC and was expecting her first child. This couple seemed to have everything going for them. I remember thinking: why do bad things happen to good people.

Back to Charles’ brother. After Matthews admitted his role in the commission of the crime, confirming the police’s suspicions, Charles’s story began to unravel. Of course, like in any good mystery, it was discovered that he had a whole other side to his personality. He’d tried to convince his wife to abort the child so she could keep earning her high salary. But she refused to give up the child. Because of her pregnancy, she’d gotten the upper hand in their marriage, which shifted the balance of power in her favor. Charles was planning to open his own restaurant after he killed her, using the life insurance money as a downpayment. Oh, and like most cases of domestic intrigue, he had a girlfriend on the side.

Unfortunately, Charles Stuart never got the justice he deserved. As soon as he found out his brother had confessed to the police, he drove to the Tobin Bridge, parked his car alongside the rail, and jumped to his death.

The Stuart case has always fascinated me as both a husband, father and a crime writer. I’d recently graduated from Northeastern when the crime happened, majoring in Criminology and Political Science. The idea that a successful husband would even think to kill his beautiful wife and unborn child seemed completely senseless to me. I wanted to understand the warped psychology of an individual who could commit such a heinous crime. I was intrigued by both the crime itself and the use of racial profiling to deceive the police. The crime itself was deeply flawed in execution, and far from complete, and yet it was brilliantly devious in the most psychopathic way. By playing on white Bostonians racial fears, Stuart sought to create the perfect murder.

The Stuart case was my first real introduction to marital bliss gone wrong, and I often still think about it. What is it about marriage that causes spouses to want to kill each, even in jest? Do you ever wonder how certain couples act in the privacy of their home, away from family and friends? Often, but not always, marital disagreements are about money. Or a secret affair. Almost everyone in a relationship experiences these problems at some time in their life. But only a few twisted individuals resort to criminal behavior to resolve the issue in their favor.

Charles Stuart happened to be one of them.

GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn was the first domestic thriller that truly captured my imagination. Flynn is a brilliant writer with amazing insights on marriage and the roles husbands and wives play in their relationships. Her character, Amy, is a wonderful literary creation and one of the most cunning and despicable villains in the genre. I couldn’t read the book fast enough. And I loved her alternating husband/wife first person POVs. GONE GIRL went on to reinvent the domestic thriller and bring it to the forefront as a new kind of mystery. The clever twists and turns astounded me, and made me realize how ripe this genre was to be explored. 

Since GONE GIRL, I’ve gone on to read dozens of books in the domestic thriller genre. Many of them good, others not so. None of them, in my opinion, matched Flynn’s cleverness, razor sharp insight and plot machinations. But they’ve all piqued my interest in one way or another, and got me thinking about the institution of marriage and the complex dynamics that define it.

So I sat down one day to write my own domestic thriller. Oh, I had wild ideas and intriguing plot points kicking around in my head. The words came our fast and furious. Many plot points changed in the editing process. The result? My agent loved it. He told me it was the kind of book he’d been looking for for quite some time. And the best part is that he sold it in a two book deal to an editor who was equally enthusiastic about the manuscript—and the genre.

Not only are domestic thrillers growing in popularity, but many agents on Twitter (#MSWL-more about this in another blog posts for those seeking agents) are actively seeking manuscripts in this genre. It seems that the reading public has an insatiable need for such fiction, and will for the foreseeable future. It’s why I took a career risk and wrote a domestic thriller, and in the process reinvented myself yet again as a writer.

I’ve been happily married for over twenty years and have two kids. The only domestic thrills I encounter these days are mundane at best, such as who will take out the trash, do the laundry or dishes. They say the best advice is write what you know, but I’ll leave that to my imagination.

 Kate Flora: I had the privilege, earlier this week, of doing a zoom panel for the Concord Festival of Authors on the topic of how we choose and develop characters for our books. The discussion included two Maine Crime Writer bloggers, Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson and Charlene D’Avanzo, along with another writer, Edwin Hill.

It’s always fascinating to take part in a discussion where the involved authors write different sorts of mysteries and so have different challenges in creating the protagonists for their books. Things may be far different for a cozy than for a gritty police procedural. To staff the books, authors must ask themselves what are the attributes which my character will need in order to be a credible performer of the job they’ve been assigned—whether it’s a burned out detective or a baker of gourmet dog biscuits—and to solve the mysteries that come their way.

Sometimes, as in the case of Kaitlyn’s protagonist, Mikki Lincoln, for her Deadly Edits series, the character is an older woman emerging from retirement to supplement her income. Mikki is given Kaitlyn’s childhood home to renovate, but the rest of her character, and the editing challenges she faces, are things that her author must learn.

In the case of Charlene’s Mara Tusconi, a marine biologist, she draws on her own experiences as a marine ecologist, but must also give her much younger character the skills and strengths to cope with a job that throws her up against the many challenges working as a woman scientist in a man’s field presents.

I began my writing career with what I often call a “Help Wanted” ad. My character had to be brave and strong enough to handle entanglements with bad guys. Smart enough to solve mysteries. She had to have a profession that would allow her to avoid “Cabot Cove Syndrome,” where everyone in the character’s orbit eventually gets killed. Thea answered the ad. I had to learn my tall consultant’s challenges both in finding clothes that fit, and what her world as a consultant to private schools was like. When Andre entered her life, I had to imagine what he’d be like, both personally and professionally, and send the two of them off on a journey where he was sometimes lover, sometimes sidekick, and sometimes antagonist when his protective nature clashed with Thea’s independence.

A bigger challenge presented itself when I decided to develop my interest in the police and the work they do into my Joe Burgess series with three male protagonists. I often tell my writing students that part of the challenge of imagining characters is to understand how they are like you and how they are not. Burgess, Kyle, and Perry were far different from me and it took a lot of interviewing, and time spent around police officers, to bring them to life.

I’ve written enough books now that when I embark on a new character, as I did in the book I wrote last year, The Darker the Night, a large part of the pleasure and challenge is to get to know the new characters. What will their attributes be? What are their secrets? Where are their strengths and weaknesses. What are the narratives in their heads as they learn about the crime and try to solve it. What drew them to their field? What’s their history? Where are their blind spots?

Of course, it is not only protagonists who need our attention. There are also antagonists, a part of our cast that includes not only the bad guy, but other characters who play a role in thwarting our protagonists as they try to solve the crime. It is very important to make bad guys as dimensioned as our protagonists. Bad guys usually believe that they were driven to commit their bad acts. That they were justified. They had to do it. As we like to say in the crime writing biz, the bad guy or gal doesn’t look in the mirror while brushing their teeth and think, “Oh, I am so bad.”

Those other antagonists? The boss. Jealous colleague. Someone  higher up the food chain. A spouse. A parent. Anyone whose actions thwart the investigation? They all have to be developed in a way that makes their behavior credible.

Then there are the peripheral characters—friends, family, lovers, witnesses, etc. Our challenge is often how to use them without spending too much time on them or creating reader’s expectations or getting readers too attached to them. 

I learned this the hard way. When I wrote the initial draft of my first Joe Burgess mystery, Playing God, I opened the story with a rookie cop, Remy Aucoin, finding a body in a car on a wintery Portland street. Remy was nervous and didn’t quite know what to do, drawing the wrath of my protagonist. Beta readers, though, immediately bonded with Remy, assumed the book was about him, and were disappointed when he disappeared from the story. I had to rewrite the opening to give the scene to Burgess.

Sometimes, despite our best efforts, they worm their way into our hearts and become regulars. That’s what Remy did even though I wouldn’t let him steal that scene.

A few things I’ve learned along the way? Don’t give your series character a spouse who will say, “Where are you going? It’s three a.m.” when your character needs to go investigate. And if you’re going to let your character have kids? Be sure you have good childcare lined up. This last is something Thea and Andre will have to deal with soon.