NO CSI I
I know that forensics are fashionable, but I’m not that kind of girl. I like a nice clean killing, where it’s pretty clear how it’s done. The how, for me, is not the story – it’s why and who.
In “Revenge of the Lobster Lover,” I killed off my very first victim by electrocution. It was meant to be a simple “offing”. Chef meets lobster stunner, a faulty one which he grips in his hand as he goes flying back into a pond. There’s a concrete floor. Questionable wiring. I threw it all in, because it’s not easy to electrocute someone. No less than Louise Penny discovered for her book, “Dead Cold,” that it’s almost impossible to kill someone by electrocution. I found, like Louise, that I had to create the right circumstances.
That took research. Even so, I think most people would not have questioned an electrocution – not with all those warnings we get on toasters and lamps.
I did back and forth emails with a scientist for a geographical event in that first book. He said it couldn’t happen in the way I wanted it to in the place where the book is set. In science. But in fiction, he said: “It’s your story. You can do what you want.” So I did. No one’s called me on it.
I’m more interested in the scene of death than in the means. “Revenge of the Lobster Lover” begins with a lobster climbing up a corpse’s chest looking for food – and finding it in the dead man’s mouth.
I“Mind Over Mussels” starts with a body on the beach, dressed like Jimi Hendrix, his head split open by an axe, gulls and crows feasting on the contents of the wound.
That’s the detail I like to pay attention to: the ugly aftermath of death – and before it, the moment of death itself. This, I hope, will give readers – if not gulls and lobsters – something to chew on that’s as meaty as a forensics feast.
The truth may be that I’m lazy, but I’m also not really interested in the intricacies of autopsies or plots that involve highly technical means of dispatching the victim.
Poisoning, stabbing, bashing to death are time-honoured and effective ways of getting rid of someone. Once that’s dealt with, as swiftly, as believably and with as little fuss as possible, I can get on with the story. How many suspects can I manufacture? How close can I come to giving away the identity of the killer, while keeping the reader in the dark until the very last?
I like to play it close to the line. I like to very nearly give it away, so that after they finish, readers go back through the book to check where the giveaways were. And to check up on me. To see that I didn’t cheat them of a clue, a way of knowing whodunit. It always satisfies me to hear a reader say: “I didn’t guess. I didn’t know until the end.”
That’s one task we must all accomplish, whether we do it forensically or otherwise.
And we have to satisfy the why. Hate. Revenge. Lust. Thwarted Love. Greed. Desire. Most of our nastier traits. Murder is a crime of passion, so I can’t get with plots that involve highly technical means of killing.
The police procedural is not my game either. It seems like work. It’s one of the reasons why I chose an isolated location for the setting of The Shores series. An isolated backwater on an isolated island. Police presence is spotty, and when it appears, maverick, so I don’t have to worry about procedure too much. I’ll worry about it even less in the future, as my Mountie of choice begins to “turn” and become more like the villagers than her colleagues far off on the other side of the island.
I said I was lazy. And old-fashioned. If you’re looking for forensics, you’ll have to knock on someone else’s door. Mine is open to story and character and, now that I’ve thought of it, to the image of a victim being pushed off a cliff. Or blown off by a wind turbine?
Possible? If it isn’t, I’ll do my best to make it so.
Hilary wore a lobster fascinator to Word on the Street and drew in so many readers and writers that we could hardly keep up! Hopefully, the same will happen with her books. You go, girl!
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