Shady Characters in a Colorful World

By Mark W. Danielson

Without light, color cannot exist, but its absence can create stunning suspense. Mysteries like Dracula, Batman, Frankenstein, and The Shadow use darkness to raise tension and fear. However, real-life criminals don’t always operate in the dark. In fact, our world has become so packed with psychos, beasts, and murderers, it’s enough to make Dracula scream. While these people unknowingly inspire fictional murder mysteries, their characters can only be effective if they are portrayed in living color. After all, in darkness, red blood on a white carpet means nothing until a character steps on something soggy and then turns on a light. In that moment, their discovery changes their world forever.

I’m not saying that darkness doesn’t create spectacular settings. After all, the majority of Batman, the Dark Knight was filmed using dark sets. But to make Batman’s character relatable, he had to be portrayed as someone with the same emotions as the rest of us, except on a grander scale. Without this emotional bond, the audience cannot relate to his character. The same holds true for the empathy given to Heath Ledger’s Joker character in the same movie. Soulless characters add nothing to novels or films.

In comparing these fictional characters to Susan Smith who in 1994 intentionally drowned her children in her car demonstrates how anyone can be evil. Imagine this daylight scene: bubbles breaking the surface over her submerged car, then the tow truck’s chain grinding as it pulls the vehicle from its murky grave. Observers wearing tees and jeans and perhaps a few in summer dresses shed tears as the two infants who were trapped inside are removed. Emergency lights flash while police officers stretch yellow perimeter tape. Divers’ footprints emerge from the water under an overcast sky. No one notices the barking dog or the rattling leaves, yet they are both part of the scene. And so murder goes in our colorful world.

The above example proves that we don’t need bloodshed to create anxiety, fear, sorrow, empathy, or even hatred. All we need is a believable scene, and to do that, we must include the dust-covered light bulbs, the helicopters that stir the air, and the diesel fumes that choke us. Add our lack of trust and lost faith in God from a world perceived to be nearing its end and anything is possible. Whether writing about fictional Gotham City or Southside Chicago, believable shady characters will always generate fear.

Authors must present their characters in sufficient detail to make readers care. Readers want to know what drove a character to murder a fellow human being, or as in the example, why a mother drowned her own children. At the same time, scenes must be vivid enough so our readers can delve into them. In this sense, the background setting becomes as important as a character’s dialogue or actions. To accomplish this, writers must learn to observe the tiniest details and then infuse them into a scene.

Observation is a leaned skill, but anyone is capable. Many MWA chapters sponsor “rabbit” activities where you can learn to ditch or track someone. I encourage everyone to engage in these opportunities, but most of all, have fun writing.

Meriwether Lewis, Suicide or Murder

By Chester Campbell

One facet of my new mystery, The Surest Poison, is hot in the news these days. The opening paragraph of Chapter 2 tells about PI Sid Chance’s former job as police chief in the small town of Lewisville, TN, “named after explorer Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame. Lewis died nearby on the Natchez Trace. Some say he was murdered there.”

The town of Lewisville is fictional, but it sits about where the real Lewis County seat of Hohenwald is located. The front page of last Thursday’s newspaper carried a story about Lewis’ modern-day relatives pushing the federal government to exhume the famed explorer’s body and answer the question did he commit suicide or was he murdered? He is buried in a tiny cemetery at the Meriwether Lewis National Monument along the Natchez Trace Parkway.

A bachelor, Lewis died at the tender age of 35. He had no siblings, but there is no shortage of nieces and nephews with lots of great-great-greats before their names. They have banded together to petition the National Park Service to find out how he died. You can check out their new website at Solve the Mystery.Org.

Educated at what would become Washington & Lee University, Lewis joined the Army and rose to the rank of captain. He was appointed an aide to President Thomas Jefferson in 1801 and resided in the presidential mansion. After the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson planned an expedition to explore a route across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. He chose Lewis to lead the venture. Between 1803 and 1806, Lewis’ pioneering party explored thousands of miles along the Missouri and Columbia rivers and their tributaries.

When they returned in 1806, the Lewis and Clark Expedition had made the two men national heroes. Jefferson was particularly fond of Lewis and named him governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. It appears the bureaucracy and politics in St. Louis proved a bit too much for him. In the fall of 1809 Lewis set off for Washington and a meeting with the president. He planned to travel down the Mississippi to New Orleans, then around Florida and up the East Coast. After becoming ill around Memphis, he decided to take the land route across to the Natchez Trace and on up to Nashville.

Sick and beset with problems, he drafted a last will and testament during the trip. On the night of Oct. 10, 1809, Lewis and two servants stopped at Grinder’s Stand, a two-room log inn on the Trace near my fictional town of Lewisville. Two shots were heard during the night, and the next morning Lewis was found mortally wounded. He died within a few hours. A traveling companion buried his body near the stable. Covered with chestnut fence rails, it remained unmarked until 1848.

The mystery began immediately, though Jefferson and fellow-explorer William Clark accepted the suicide story. His family contended it was murder. Robberies and killings were not uncommon along the isolated route, and rumors said Lewis was murdered to keep secrets of political corruption. Now nearly 200 distant nieces, nephews and cousins have signed a petition asking that the body be exhumed and examined for forensic evidence.

“What we want is the truth,” 73-year-old Howell Lewis Bowen, a great-great-great nephew, said. “We’ve had one roadblock after another. It’s very frustrating–every time we take a step forward, we have to take two steps back.”

Some historians have criticized the effort, but several archeologists have signed on to help. They include a professor of law and forensic sciences at George Washington University and anthropologists at Middle Tennessee State University. One archeologist says there’s a chance the real cause of Lewis’ death may be etched on his bones, but the chances are pretty low there will be evidence to prove one way or the other.

Interestingly, the explorer’s death was responsible for the creation of Lewis County. In 1843, the Tennessee General Assembly carved it out of neighboring counties and named it as a memorial to Meriwether Lewis.

According to a local official of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, the young explorer had written friends about things he wanted to accomplish after the Washington trip. She believes he was murdered. The Heritage Foundation plans to mark the 200th anniversary of his death on Oct. 7 by dedicating a bronze bust of Lewis for a planned visitor center.

According to Wikipedia, “Lewis observed, collected, and described hundreds of plants and animal species previously unknown to science. The expedition was the first point of Euro-American contact for several Native American tribes; through translators and sign language, Lewis conducted rudimentary ethnographic studies of the peoples he encountered, even as he laid the groundwork for a trade economy to ensure American hegemony over its vast new interior territory.”

It makes an interesting footnote to The Surest Poison.

A Bailout for Hitmen?

By Chester Campbell

I wonder if President Obama will come up with a bailout plan for hitmen? Don't you suppose they're getting laid off as well as everybody else? The way the Dow Jones is falling off a cliff, there's probably a shortage of funds for paying hired killers.

Any day now I expect to see one standing on the corner at a busy intersection with a crudely lettered cardboard sign:

"Will Kill for Food." Or maybe, "Will Knock Off Your Old Lady for a Six-Pack."

The times are getting desperate. With all the travel cutbacks we've been hearing about, it might even be iffy for a Harvard symbologist to travel to Paris. Think what that would mean for Dan Brown. Might jeopardize any reprise of Leonardo's decoder ring. Or am I thinking about something I got out of a cereal box years ago.

With the cost of guns and ammunition going up as people rush to the dealers before the Democrats can gum up the Second Amendment, murderers may have to turn to cheaper methods for disposing of those who stand in their way. Knives are probably less expensive, but they leave all that bloody mess and DNA lying around.

Poisoning might be more tidy and cheaper, if the bad guys could pick up a little cyanide at a jeweler's. Or maybe pilfer some strychnine from a pest control outfit.

Even cheaper would be strangulation (known as "throttling" in the UK). The classic method involves a ligature or garrote. It could be a chain or rope or wire. All materials that won't break a slayer's budget. And if he's really strapped for cash, he can use his hands.

Let's face it, with the economy heading downhill like a Utah avalanche, the murder business may be falling on hard times. But mystery writers are a hardy lot. I'm sure we'll find the wherewithal to keep assassins plying their trade as usual, even if they might be forced to resort to doing it on the cheap.

But don't rule out a bailout. I saw where the auto parts industry is talking about asking for one. No telling who might be next.

If you'd like to find out how the bad guy does it in The Surest Poison, the book is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. And the guy is no piker.

Sword of Damocles

Having failed to murder my neighbor, for the moment at least ― I gotta give this effort some time, since my wife’s now visiting him on a regular basis and I think he suspects I’ve been trying to kill him ― I’m fixing my sights on others who need to go. I’ll be the Sword of Damocles, hanging with my blade ― or a Glock if it suits me better ― by a horsehair over useless people of power. Power To The People, huh? How about reversing that a bit.

Heh, heh, heh. A role I’ll relish.

Targets. Gotta find targets if my blade is gonna swing.

Politicians are too easy. Everybody wants to kill them. I’d have to stand in line. And no lawyers. I’m a lawyer. Put your guns down.

How about realtors? Nobody likes them. And I’ve got a couple in my sights now.

What is it about realtors? They tell you what you want to hear when they’re looking for a listing. “What? You think that trailer with the leaky roof sitting on a fire ant mound is worth three million dollars? Sounds good to me.” Then, as soon as you sign the listing agreement, they start tearing your place down. “Well, you did live in that house, you know, and it only has seven bedrooms. And your marble bathroom floors are slippery. That’s a safety defect. We can’t let anyone walk in there. The market is telling you three dollars is the right price. You should accept that offer.”

And what about the offer/counteroffer scenario? You know these realtors go back and forth on their iPhones and then sit around sipping wine, playing Tetris, and cracking jokes with the office staff until enough time passes that they can call their client and say they had a long, heated negotiation with the other side and their panel of experts.

Negotiation? Hah! Pricing was decided in about three seconds. “Well, increase our offer by a dollar.” The rest of the "negotiation" focused on dreaming up new criticisms to pass on to the seller. “Oh, and your Venetian Plaster looks old. The stuccoing might flake sometime in the next ten years.” Or “the buyers think your chimney may fall on the children next door during the next hundred year storm.” Or “the buyers want you to warrant that no chemicals have ever been used on the lawn.” Or “your view of the lake isn’t the best. You can’t see any fish from any of the third story windows.” Or "the fish look smaller here than elsewhere on the lake." Or "your boathouse is near the water. It may be damp inside." Or "you're on the windy side. A breeze might blow out the buyers' candles."

The realtor's license exam must have a section on creative criticisms, plus one on the art of the smile during a client's disembowelment.

Recently, we had a real kicker. Seems the buyers’ realtor snuck somebody in to look over a house we’re selling. A structural engineer, they told us later. No permission sought. Then the “structural engineer” claimed our deck was unsafe. No report, no reason why. Our realtor called us in a panic, said she’d have to put safety tape across the deck so nobody would walk on it. We should accept the buyer’s low ball offer. “Who is this guy?” we asked. Our realtor hadn’t bothered to inquire, and hadn’t raised any objection to the buyers’ bringing in a “home inspector” without our knowledge or presence. So we did a little research ourselves. Turns out, this guy’s not a structural engineer at all, not even an engineer. Heck, he’s not even a licensed home inspector. He’s some schmo who bought a house just south of ours and then remodeled it. No experience or savvy on what changes pay off, and his place became the proverbial Money Pit. Now he can't sell it; it's been on the market for three years. So not only is Schmo-boy no expert or possess any license as one, he's a competitor. Our neighbor, who knows Schmo-boy and talked to him while he was at our place, says the guy was promoting his place and bad mouthing ours. But do you think our realtor looked into any of this, or even whether there was any safety defect at all?

Hah! It doesn’t work that way. Seems claiming a safety defect where there is none is just another tool in a realtor’s box of tricks.

So why not have a few less realtors? Heck, nothing’s moving in this real estate market anyway. Maybe nobody will miss ‘em.

Arranging this murder should be easy. I’ll just call a realtor and say I want to look at some houses. Give a fake name. But I’ll have to whisper. If I’m overheard, I might be trampled in the rush. Not many buyers these days.

The next step is even easier. We’ll just look at some houses. I won’t touch anything, and I’ll stuff a plastic rain poncho in my back pocket. And then when we get to a really nice house, I’ll unscabbard my sword and go medieval. Slice and dice. Sausage for the doggies.

And the best thing is, other realtors will applaud me. The buyers' and sellers' representatives will get together and register a new complaint about the property: “Well, you know, somebody was murdered on those floors.”