Joan Donaldson-Yarmey-Truth is Stranger

Committing A Believable Murder

I believe in that old adage “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction.”

In 1976, a partially decomposed body was found in a septic tank near Edmonton, Alberta. The person has never been identified nor has the murderer ever been found. For my first book, Illegally Dead, I decided to write a conclusion to that mystery. However, I never looked up any information about it, just made up my story. When my manuscript was finished, I then checked the Internet and discovered that one of my characters had the same name as one of the detectives who investigated the crime. I immediately changed my character’s name. Then I searched some more on the Internet and found many real life episodes where killers have used, or tried to use, septic tanks as hiding places for their victims
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For my second novel, The Only Shadow In The House, I made up the stories about the lives of the characters, as well as the murder. Of course, ‘made up’ really means taking some of the little tidbits that we writers have learned during our lifetime and fashioning them into fiction. When a friend finished reading the book she phoned me and said that she had read it in a day not being able to put it down until the last page. Then she asked me where I got the idea for story. I told her that I had made it up and asked her why. She said because it was the story of her older sister’s life, except for the murder, of course.

In my third novel, Whistler’s Murder, I used another news item. This one was about an old rumour of a body being hidden in a house in a resort town in the Alberta Rockies. The house was torn down and no body found. I took it step further and had a body being found in my story.
These novels are the first three of my Travelling Detective Series.

Joan Donaldson-Yarmey began her writing career by having seven travel books published but has now turned her talents to mystery writing with her Travelling Detective Series. Joan loves change and has worked as a bartender, hotel maid, cashier, bank teller, bookkeeper, printing press operator, meat wrapper, gold prospector, warehouse shipper, house renovator and nursing attendant. She has moved over thirty times in her life settling on an acreage on Vancouver Island for now.

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