In Search of a Murder

By Chester Campbell

I'm in the market for a plot. Not a plot of ground, but a plot for murder. I'm gearing up for my second Sid Chance mystery, and I need an exciting case to challenge his talents. It would be nice if I could look out my office window and find an inspiration for a good plot. But let's face it, I live in a boring neighborhood.

How nice it would be to live like my colleague Ben Small, out there in rattlesnake country, where deadly critters lie in wait for somebody to invite them in. Or maybe have a neighbor like the guy Beth Terrell wrote about who kept for pets such things as Komodo Dragons (or was it Kimono Dragons, no, that wold be Japanese).

I guess the worst I've seen out my writer's perch is young guys going down among the trees toward a creek that flows out of sight. I learned they had a nice setup with folding lawn chairs where they smoked pot. Some of the neighbors took offense and invited the cops to join the festivities. Unfortunately, I wasn't here to enjoy the proceedings. Needless to say, the party room was shut down.


Of course, Nashville has its share of homicides. It seems there's some sort of altercation on the news most every evening. I suppose I should be happy they don't take place  in my neighborhood, but it would be so convenient to stand by my window, or venture outside if necessary, and watch the cops do their thing. They'd have to import a body from elsewhere, since I wouldn't want any neighbor to be the guy decorated with a garland of yellow crime scene tape.

In today's paper we have a couple of interesting court cases to consider. One involves a woman charged with strangling her husband. He had filed for divorce and gotten an order of protection to keep her away from his house, where he lived with their three kids. That's a bit of a switch from the usual wife getting an order to keep an abusive husband at bay. She admitted going to the house and taking the kids away but claimed she didn't see her husband. A housekeeper saw him, dead in the bedroom closet.

I could go with the serial killer angle. We have one of those back in the news. He's a long-haul truck driver who's accused of murdering several women at truck stops around the country. While awaiting trial on one that occurred at a truck stop near downtown Nashville, the prosecutors say he arranged with a fellow jail mate to kill a few witnesses. He recently got thirty years for that, but his lawyers are asking for a new trial on the basis of court errors. They didn't mention the errors he made in setting up the proposed killings.

So many murders to consider, so little time before I have to get to work on the book. Ah, the perils of a mystery writer. I may just have to flip a coin. Heads he goes after a serial killer, tails he tracks down a husband choker. I'm not too thrilled by either of those, however. The excitement in the neighborhood will just have to pick up and lead to a totally new concept. Now that would be intriguing.

An interview with Sarah Cafferty

by Jean Henry Mead

I began my career as an investigative reporter and have interviewed hundreds of people over the years, but never my novel characters. So, taking my cue from Chester, who interviewed his protagonist Greg McKenzie not long ago, I gave in to the pleadings of Sarah Cafferty, one of the protagonists in my recently released senior sleuth novel, A Village Shattered.

You're not the viewpoint character, Sarah, so why am I interviewing you instead of your friend, Dana Logan?

Because nearly the entire plot is seen through Dana's eyes and I rarely get a chance to speak my piece. Don't you think my private investigator's widowhood trumps Dana's claim to mystery novel buffdom? Which do you think takes precedence?

I'm sure you're both equally qualified to solve the murders of your friends and club members. The two of you work quite well together, so why are you upset?

Dana gets to have all the fun while I have to hang around with Micki, whose cooking puts weight on everyone within smelling range. The sheriff paired all us widows in the retirement village when he realized a serial killer was on the loose. Micki's partners keep getting killed or put in jail, so I'm her partner now. I'd rather stay with Dana but her daughter Kerrie showed up unexpectantly and is occupying the guest room.

I would hardly call being locked in a closet by the killer having fun. Dana and her daughter were in danger while you and Micki were doing an unauthorized stakeout, which was also dangerous and could have gotten you killed.

It was boring and we ate a couple of pounds of Micki's world famous brownies before the sheriff found us and ordered us home. He's not very good at his job, you know. The sheriff was elected recently and doesn't know his job very well. In fact, he's bungling the investigation. That's why Dana and I decided to put our crime solving skills to work before we're murdered too. The killer stole our club roster and is killing our club members alphabetically. A for Alice, B for Betty, C for Candice and D for Dana...


If my name were next on the killer's list, I'd barricade myself in my house and not come out until he's caught.

Not my friend, Dana. She's got to be there in the middle of things.

Now, Sarah, we both know that it was you who talked Dana into investigating the murders.

Well, it just made sense. My late husband's investigative tools were just sitting there rusting, and I typed all his reports so I know how to go about learning the killer's identity.

And didn't your great ideas almost get your neighbor killed?

Well, Harold was the logical suspect and how was I to know he would disappear. There are other suspects living here in the retirement village. There's Pat Wilson, an alcoholic womanizer who was married to Betty before she was murdered. He may have killed the other women to cover up his own wife's murder. Then there's John Merino who's married to the psychic and Nola Champion who has her cap set for Pat Wilson. And . . .

Don't give away the entire plot, Sarah. You didn't mention the pea soup San Joaquin Valley fog.

Oh, that. Well, if you've lived in the valley as long as I have, you take that awful tule fog for granted. At least we did until the killer started hiding in it and picking off his victims.

I think we'd better let the readers discover the rest of the story for themselves, don't you?

But, I was just gettting started.

Thank you, Sarah. By the way, folks, I'm currently in the middle of a two-week blog book tour to promote A Village Shattered. I'll be giving away three signed copies of my novel to those who leave comments at the various blog sites. My Blog Tour Schedule lists links to the various host sites.

The Villain! Who, Me?

By Beth Terrell

I've been thinking about villains today, and one thing that really stands out to me is this: hardly anyone thinks he is one. Take Darth Vader. He's not out there thinking, "This is me, being the villain." He's thinking, "This is me, helping build an empire while getting even with all those jerks who didn't appreciate me back when I was a Jedi."

Or take Voldemort, the over-arching villain in J.K. Rowling's best-selling series about Harry Potter. Voldemort doesn't believe he's evil. Heck, he doesn't even believe in evil. He believes he's entitled, superior, and above all, wronged. He's just taking what's rightfully his. The Harry Potter books are chock full of villains who don't believe they're villains. Lucius Malfoy thinks he's preserving the purity of the pure-blood mages from the coarse Mud-Bloods. Toad-faced Dolores Umbridge (in my opinion, one of the most horrifying villains ever written) doesn't see herself in the black-hat role. She's standing up for order and tradition, defending the Ministry of Magic against the forces of anarchy. And you can bet that Harry Potter is not the hero of their stories. In Voldemort's mind, he's the hero. In Dolores Umbridge's mind, she is.

Of course, technically, the main character is the protagonist, who may or may not really be a hero. And the antagonist is anyone who stands between the protagonist and his or her goal, regardless of his morality. He may be a perfectly nice guy who wants to drain the marshland for perfectly good reasons. But in a mystery, the villain is usually a true villain, meaning his or her motive is generally a selfish one. I don't mean he or she has no redeeming qualities, only that the murderer in a mystery very rarely acts for altruistic or noble purposes - except maybe in his or her own mind.

So how do you make an effective villain? It's no good to make a Snidely Whiplash-style villain who twirls his curly moustache and thinks of wicked ways to kidnap the girl and foil the hero. This type of two-dimensional (or even one-dimensional) evil is rarely effective. Nor does it help much to show Snidely patting a stray dog on the head on his way to foreclose on a house he doesn't even need. Such tacked-on "good qualities" are rarely convincing, because they don't seem like part of the character.

On the other hand, Thomas Harris did a magnificent job of making the serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde, both terrifying and sympathetic. We feel for the child he was and are horrified by the monster he became, and Harris made us believe that one could easily have become the other. How? By showing us how the boy was tormented by his schoolmates because of his cleft palate, and later, how he was physically and emotionally abused by his grandmother. Harris made these scenes real, and later, when we see Francis's tenderness toward a blind woman, we understand why he takes comfort in her company, why he needs what she has to offer, and why he inevitably misunderstands her motives. None of this excuses Francis's actions. He's a villain, but he doesn't see himself that way. There are perfectly logical reasons (to him) for everything he does, even though any sane person could clearly see that his actions are evil. But because his actions grow out of his own perceptions, he is a believable villain.

That, I think, is the key. No matter how evil your villain, no matter how horrific his acts, he believes in what he is doing, and that makes us perceive him as rounded and real.