What makes a Mystery Story a Mystery Story?

This is a companion piece to last week’s blog post about Agatha Christie. And, in a way, to the piece three weeks ago about how I miss the good, old-fashioned mystery stories. I fell in love with mystery stories early in life, sneaking into the adult section of my local library to check out Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Luckily, the librarian judged me adult enough to read them and never made a fuss about it - bless her soul.

It is easy to equate mystery story with crime story, because all crime stories are mystery stories. Not all mystery stories are crime stories, though. There’s a very good YouTube video about how the Harry Potter stories are mysteries. Yet, what I am mostly writing about here are crime stories and what makes them different from thrillers. Because there are definite differences there.

“A murder is committed for gain, for fear, or for love.” I already quoted this from the Agatha Christie novel “Hallowe’en Party” as a preface to my last blog post. I did so, because these are the three motives which play into a regular murder mystery - as opposed to the thriller, where things are rarely that personal and clear.

In a murder mystery, just as in most real-life murder cases, most murders are happening because the murderer stands to gain something from the victim’s death. Most of the time, it’s money in some form, often as an inheritance, sometimes it’s also no longer having to pay a debt or gaining money directly during the murder by taking it off the victim or out of the victim’s home.

Another reason to kill is fear - usually the fear of being found out, but also the fear of an abusive relative or superior. At some point, the murderer doesn’t see another way out than to kill the person who threatens them in a way - their freedom, their health, or their life.

Finally, there is what Poirot dubs love in the novel, but I would rather call it emotions, strong emotions. Love, hate, wrath, they all can lead to a final solution. People kill as easily (or even more easily) what they love than what they hate. A crime of passion is usually committed on someone the murderer knows very closely or has another close connection to (even if it’s one-sided).

Everything else, the complicated psychology, the horrible childhood that leads to the murder of total strangers, is for thrillers, where more than just one life is at stake, where the perpetrator has a higher goal than just the removal of one or two people. Sometimes a regular murder looks like it serves a higher goal, sometimes a murder that serves a higher goal looks like a regular one, but in most cases, the murder mystery has murders with a personal motive and no high-flying plans. They also usually have a much lower body-count, making do with one, two, or three murders instead of ten, twenty, or thirty.

One important thing about a mystery story, especially if it’s a murder mystery story, is that it has to be fair. That means the author has to sprinkle in information which will allow for the reader to solve the mystery as well. Nobody says it has to be easy or obvious. Quite often, the important clue is put in while emphasis is put on something which will turn out to be a red herring (are they at least tasty?). The audience needs to get the same information as the detective - whether they do as well with it is another question, of course.

In this aspect, “Murder by Death” is a comedy, but not a murder mystery, because there’s no solution and no way the audience can guess the culprit ahead of or at the same time as the detectives (all six of them fail, which is a major plot point of the story). “Clue,” on the other hand, is both a great comedy and a murder mystery which makes all three endings (a gimmick created for the release, the modern DVD/TV version has all three endings) work and look probable from what we’ve seen before.

It’s easiest to write a murder mystery or any kind of mystery story, if you know the solution to the mystery in advance. J.K. Rowling, of course, knew whether or not Harry would in the end defeat the villain of each book and Voldemort himself. The author of a murder mystery knows who did the deed and how it all happened. Answer the seven questions for yourself and you can construct the mystery story, put in the false leads, and create a very enjoyable book - like Agatha Christie did again and again.

The seven questions can be summarized thus: know why who does what to whom when and where and how. This gives you the motive (why), culprit (who), crime (what), victim (whom), time of the crime (when), scene of the crime (where), and method of the crime (how). Once you know all seven, you can get to work and write your mystery story. In a murder mystery, of course, you will always have a murder or several (and you need to resolve the seven questions for every murder, but some answers, like method or motive, can be the same). For a murder mystery, unlike the thriller, the motive should be something personal (see gain, fear, and love).

There are many ways to play around with those seven questions. The identity of the victim can be tampered with (“The Body in the Library” does that). The time of death can be cheated (“Evil under the Sun” is based on that). The expectations for the murderer can be off (‘all did it’ in “Murder on the Orient Express” and one ending of “Clue” does that). The method can be very complex and hard to put together (as with several murders in “The Greene Murder Case”). It’s important to give the reader all information, but not to make it easy for them to identify what is important and what is not. Hiding a clue in plain sight is an often-used technique. Giving the reader a lot of information at once and putting more importance on a red herring is also common. Building up an obvious suspect, but then making clear they can’t have done it (whether that’s true or not) also happens a lot.

A mystery story needs to have a mystery. It also needs to give the reader the chance to solve that mystery, so no hiding clues or introducing surprise culprits. The mystery must also be engaging - which is pretty much guaranteed with a murder mystery. Mind your seven questions as well and you can write an enjoyable mystery every time.

Agatha Christie - Queen of the Slow Burn

“Murder is committed for gain, for fear, or for love,” says Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party.” It’s a perfect description of the mystery novel (not of the thriller, which follows other rules). But then, there’s a lot Agatha Christie does perfectly in her novels.

Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle were the first authors of crime and mystery stories I’ve read and I soon realized the difference between them. Doyle does bests with his short stories (even though he always thought his historical novels were the best he did - they weren’t), which is where Sherlock Holmes is at his best, too - the same goes for his stories of unease. Christie, on the other hand, is a master of the slow burn, of setting up a novel slowly, steadily, increasing the tension, making us understand and like the characters, only to surprise us in the end with the solution to the crime.

Slow burn stories are something you need to like, of course. First, the stage is set and the most important people are introduced. You can usually be sure that the murderer will appear around that time, though not always. The reason for the murder is set up in some way - either by hinting that a character is in danger or by showing that they do have a lot of enemies. The murder happens afterwards and the detective (Hercule Poirot, Miss Maple, or someone else) comes in. We get a good look not only at the suspects (for some cases may be low on suspects), but also at the victim. Which aspect of the victim was the reason for the murder? Who liked and disliked them and why? Slowly, suspects fall to the wayside, they have alibis or had no means for committing the murder. At some point, it often seems as if nobody can have done it - but it was done, so what happened? The mysterious stranger is usually out from very early on, because that is not what you do in a proper mystery novel. That’s not fair towards the reader. Then comes the realisation that the murder was committed in a different way (that’s why I love “Evil under the Sun” and “The Body in the Library” so much, both play with the time of death). With it, it becomes clear who the murderer was, but there’s still the need of proving it. Once that is done, there’s the big reveal at the end with the detective telling us who did it and how they came to realize who the culprit was. That’s what I love about Agatha Christie’s books.

Recently, I went on a little e-book shopping spree and got myself six novels I’d either read before and loved or wanted to read from Agatha Christie: “The Body in the Library” and “Murder at the Vicarage,” are both Miss Maple stories; “The ABC Murders,” “Death on the Nile,” “The Labours of Hercules,” and “Hallowe’en Party” are all Hercule Poirot stories. I already own “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Evil under the Sun,” so I’m all set for many hours of good mystery stories for the stormy autumn days and cold winter nights to be expected soon.

“Hallowe’en Party” was the only story I was fully unaware of and the much lower price led me to believe it was a short, like “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas” which I’ve read a while ago. It’s a full novel, though (perhaps it was a special offer or something, not sure).

It’s not the first time Christie kills a young girl in one of her stories (the second victim in “The Body in the Library” is a sixteen-year-old girl scout) and not the first time children play a pivotal role (“Cat among the Pigeons” is set at a boarding school, although all victims are adults) or are even suspects (“Evil under the Sun” puts up Arlena Marshall’s step-daughter as one of the suspects - but then, Arlena was horribly good at making enemies). Still, Joyce, the victim, is merely thirteen and such young girls or boys are rarely killed in mystery stories - that’s more something for thrillers, again. She might have been killed, as Poirot is told when he’s hired, because she said she saw a murder ‘a long time ago.’ This would put up ‘fear’ as the motive, when it comes to Poirot’s words about reasons for murder. The fear of being finally found out, to be more precise. But then, this is a small village with few inhabitants and, naturally, there haven’t been many murders in Joyce’s lifetime (we’re not in Midsomer, after all).

Such settings are perfect for a slow burn and a study of humans - not psychological in the way in which modern thrillers do it, but more down to earth as ‘this is how humans think and act.’ Both Miss Maple and Hercule Poirot have a lot of experience with people and thus are able to understand what makes them tick. Poirot is a professional at solving murders, though, so it’s fitting he has more cases under his belt. There’s always secrets around, especially in small and close-knit societies such as a village or small town. There’s always secrets in the family, among the suspects. The art is to separate the secrets which have something to do with the crime from those which don’t. That’s the fun of the slow burn: to get all those pieces of human nature laid out and sorted, until the important ones are found. To see the detective follow leads which look promising (to them as much as to us), only to find themselves in a dead end and be forced to turn back and follow another lead. Sometimes the leads are plentiful, because the victim was good at making enemies, sometimes they are sparse, because the victim seems to be innocent (Joyce, of course, falls into this category, being a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl).

The fun of an Agatha Christie novel is not action and people shooting each other or the most gruesome murders possible (shooting, stabbing, poisoning, and strangling are quite common). The fun is to follow the twisted path the detective, no matter whether they’re a professional or not, must take in order to find out who did it. The way the case not only unravels the past of the victim, but also the past and the secrets of many other people. Also fun, of course, are her very distinct characters, the main ones as well as the side ones. They easily come alive on the pages and all have their distinct looks and mannerisms which make it easy to tell who is speaking or who is getting watched while doing something.

While the POV is usually with the detective, there are exceptions when Christie jumps to another mind to convey information which the detective doesn’t have yet and may never get, but which deepen our knowledge and give us a further insight.

I do enjoy reading Agatha Christie mystery novels, especially when it’s getting cold and windy and wet outside and I can curl up with my kindle and a cup of tea. But then, I always enjoy reading. If you like the kind of story I’ve described above, you might want to give her novels a try, if you haven’t done so already.

Return Of The Caped Crusaders Review

My very first Batman experience was the 1960s series with Adam West and Burt Ward. I didn’t see it in the 60s and 70s, though, but during a re-run on one of the first privately-owned TV stations in Germany in the late 80s. My first ‘real’ Batman, thus, was Michael Keaton in 1989’s “Batman.” If I’m honest, though, I have a lot of love in my heart for West’s version, which no other has really replaced since (though LEGO Batman came close).

The three seasons of West’s time as Batman also brought us a movie (“Batman: The Movie” - note the most imaginative title…) - and West spent the rest of his career being reminded of that time he donned the tights and the cape. My next meeting with him was as a voice actor in “The Fairly Odd-Parents,” where he was an inhabitant of the town main character Timmy lived in - and also turned up as Catman every now and then. Clearly, he took it all in good humour, otherwise he would hardly have returned, at least vocally, to an animated movie in 2016, shortly before his death: “Batman: The Return of the Caped Crusaders.”

The movie is completely based on the TV series, using the character and costume designs, but also the characters as they were portrayed in the series - three actors also came back for voice acting: Adam West as Batman, Burt Ward as Robin, and (much to my delight) Julie Newmar as Catwoman (Aretha Franklin would have been even more wonderful, but sadly, like Burgess Meredith and Cesar Romero, she’s no longer available).

The series was always geared towards comedy and West’s talent to play his Batman/Bruce Wayne completely straight without betraying that comedic edge is what has made the series so great. In thin tights and shirt, his not-quite-heroic build shown clearly, and with eyebrows painted onto his cowl, he managed to give us a Batman who stands completely behind his position as protector of the law and model citizen, regularly reprimanding his young charge for rash actions. Few actors are that good.

Even fewer actors can take that over to animation, where they are not in control of the body language of their character, and still pull it off. West does, one hundred percent. This is not to meant down-talk all the other voice talents - Burt Ward and Julie Newmar come back to their roles with gusto and (especially hard for the no-longer-adolescent Ward) manage to pretend no time has passed since they last portrayed them. The many other voice talents (especially of the trio Joker-Penguin-Riddler) are equally good at their work.

An equal amount of praise must go to the writers. The script for the 75 minutes of animated movie (and I urge you to watch the credits, if only for Batman and Catwoman dancing) is on point and perfectly paced. Despite the ridiculous premise (as if anything based on the series could ever be serious), the story unfolds well. It’s almost as if they had channelled the original writers to help with the script. As a follow-up to the series, “Return of the Caped Crusaders” is much better than “Batman: The Movie.” It’s much better paced and the animation does, of course, give a lot more freedom with the content than a live-action movie would have. You can hardly have a rocket-powered penguin zeppelin flying through a city for real, but in animation, it’s not a problem at all.

The animators did an excellent job with taking the character designs from the series (with a little help from the fact that those were made to resemble comic designs) and turning them into animation. The Joker looks even slightly better in animated form, because the moustache (Romero didn’t want to shave his off, so they covered it in greasepaint) is no longer visible. When all of the Batman (the series) villains are freed and come back for a battle with the many Batmen (don’t ask, watch!), each of them is easy to recognize, if you’ve watched the TV series at some point, even those who never really were in the comics. The animation makes the movie look like the original series, using similar camera viewpoints and the same colour pallet. Even the ‘boom,’ ‘bang,’ and ‘whack’ sound bubbles are back. And what would an Adam West Batman outing be without those? Or without the Batusi?

The story, which I’m not going to spoil here, is weird, but well-executed. We have the pleasure of seeing an evil Batman - and it turns out, as we should have expected from West’s Batman, he is actually lawful evil, as D&D players would put it. This forces Robin to seek help in unlikely places and opens the way for more shenanigans. Even though in the end everything comes full circle, that is no reason not to enjoy the wackiness which ensues.

As mentioned, the animated movie has a runtime of 75 minutes, which may seem short by today’s standards (thanks to computers taking over in-between animation, even animated movies these days tend to be longer, hitting the one-and-a-half or two-hour mark). However, the relatively short runtime helps a lot with the pacing, keeping action happening without any undue downtime. As a comparison: with 1 hour 45 minutes (according to IMDB), “Batman: The Movie” (1966) is thirty minutes longer, but might have profited from a little cut here and there to better hold the story together. “Return of the Caped Crusaders” is only slightly longer than the full episodes (stories were usually cut in half, so two episodes as screened would be one full episode story-wise) and feels much more like a part of the series than the movie does, even though it was released 50 years after the start of the series (which ran from 1966 to 1969).

It’s strange that the most amusing Batman movies I’ve seen during the last couple of years - which were anything but devoid of Batman movies - were “The LEGO Batman Movie” and “Return of the Caped Crusaders.” None of those is a live-action movie, none of them takes Batman all that seriously, but both have entertained me well. Perhaps it’s because I had my initiation into the world of Batman through the 1960s series, perhaps it’s just that they’re better written and thus more enjoyable. If you have those 75 minutes I’ve just mentioned, I suggest you give the movie a chance.

Revenue Service - Department 13

Jack Smith walked up to the entrance of the old mansion, glaring at the grand structure as he did so. It was the same every year, had been the same long before he’d even gotten a job with IRS’s department 13. He climbed the stairs and put his finger on the old-fashioned button for the doorbell. He didn’t take it off again for a couple of minutes, until there was a sound of unlocking from the other side.

A tall man with black hair and unusually pale skin glared at him. “You again!”

“A year has passed. You have, again, failed to file your taxes, Count Olaf.”

The man folded his long, sinewy arms in front of his chest. “Taxes are for mortals.”

Jack took a deep breath. Dragons were easier than that guy and they despised handing over their gold to someone else. “The laws state that un-dead like you are considered mortal enough to pay taxes.”

“I’m not merely un-dead, I’m the master of the city.”

“That doesn’t exempt you from paying taxes. We’re no longer in the middle ages where rulers didn’t have to pay taxes.”

A red glow came into the man’s black eyes. “You don’t know whom you’re tangling with.”

Jack shrugged. “I do … that’s why I took some garlic essence earlier.”

The glow became stronger. “I can still rip you apart!”

“That would give you a full week before my successor is knocking on your door.”

The sneer forming on the vampire’s lips bared his fangs. “But you would be dead.”

“Yes.” If Jack had gotten a dime for every time he’d been threatened with death during the last four years, ever since his switch to department 13, he could have stopped working right away - on days like this one, a tempting idea.

“Why are you not afraid of dying? Every mortal is afraid of dying!”

“You’ve never worked for the government, have you?”

The vampire growled. “I’ve been the government!”

“That’s not the same. You know how this is going to end, Count Olaf. Why don’t you make it easier on both of us? Show me your recipes, let me do the forms, and in a few weeks, you’ll know what you owe the state. I know you’ve kept all the recipes, you are a vampire, after all.” They were compulsive gatherers, every single one of them. They also were horrible machos, even the women. The count needed that power play, even though he knew how it would end.

The red glow died and the man’s shoulders sagged. Vampires were compulsive gatherers, but they weren’t good with forms. But then, who outside the government agencies was? That was the whole point about forms - making sure government employees had an advantage over everyone else.

“Fine. Come in, if you must.”

Jack followed the count into the study, which was actually pretty cosy with its dark wood, nice carpeting, and old, heavy furniture. He took a seat at the desk - in front, not behind - and pulled out all the forms he would need for this case. The count had investments and a few houses he rented out, so there weren’t that many different incomes to tally. Gnomes and imps were much worse, because they dabbled in everything. The count put a shoebox full of recipes on his desk and went outside. Jack took the first recipe out of the box and smiled a little when the aroma of freshly-brewed coffee wafted in through the study door. Machismo, not real enmity - which was why Jack hadn’t bothered with the garlic essence in the first place.

What Happened To Old-Fashioned Mystery Stories?

When I was a kid, watching the weekly mystery shows on TV in Germany with my parents was a tradition. We’d all be guessing who did it, and as I grew older, I was right more often, of course. So you could say I grew up with those shows, with that kind of storytelling.

These days, however, mystery shows like the ones I grew up with, where it was more about the case, more about investigation, are much more rare than they used to be. The German shows barely have that any longer - I think that, if you’re not having any emotional trouble, you’re not even allowed to become a TV police inspector in Germany any longer. Don’t misunderstand me - a bit of private life can be very interesting and can fit well with the story as a such, but a lot of mystery shows, even the better ones, either lean a lot towards cosy mystery, but with a cop, or towards thriller territory with seriously disturbed individuals. Not that I never like a thriller, but that’s a genre all of its own, I don’t need that in my regular mystery show.

If I want my dose of that, I turn to British mystery series, strange as that might be. Sure, Midsomer and Sainte Marie, the places where some of my favourite series are set, don’t really look like there could be a murder there eight or ten times a year (more like once all eight or ten years), but they are doing it the way I like it - they investigate, they keep personal things to a minimum (so it just spices things up), and they keep the whole ‘psychological profiling’ stuff out of it.

Written mysteries are a slightly different story, but a lot of novels I have found also come with too much private stuff or with the whole psychological edge - I like a thriller as much as the next person, but a lot of crime is committed simply for the money or to remove a witness or because someone really loved or hated someone else. That much psychology isn’t necessary. If I want that, I watch something like “Criminal Minds” and get my fix that way.

I’ve mentioned before that I find it hard to keep up interest in a long-running cosy mystery series, because at some point, I fail to believe that an amateur can stumble over that many crimes by themselves. A professional or semi-professional is another question, of course.

That might be why, sooner or later, I usually turn back to Sherlock Holmes, the old stuff by Doyle himself as well as the new stories written by other authors (I just reviewed two of them). Holmes is a professional, so him stumbling over (or being consulted on) crimes regularly is perfectly fine - it’s how he makes his money.

That might also be why I personally like Christie’s Poirot stories a little more than the Miss Maple ones (but Agatha Christie also has done quite some stories where there’s an amateur detective who only turns up this once). Poirot, too, is a professional, so it stands to reason he’ll come in to solve a lot of crimes.

Lord Darcy is another detective whose stories I’ve read several times (and about whom I wrote a post at some point). I like the way magic is used in the stories and I like it that you are given all necessary clues to solve the mystery for yourself.

Other older crime stories, such as the Philo Vance ones, go in the same direction - they present someone who either has made it their job to solve a crime, is regularly consulted by the police (like Mr. Vance), or they have a detective only turn up once or twice. As a matter of fact, S.S. van Dine, the author of the Philo Vance mysteries, has written about the 20 Rules of the Detective Story, where he claims that there should be no personal stuff like love stories in a detective story. Needless to say that rule is broken regularly these days (but with servants being much rarer, ‘the butler did it’ is in the running again, too).

I like thinking along with the detective and seeing whether I’ll get to the solution first or whether I’ll be surprised at the end (“Clue” really surprised me with its three endings which all work and it’s also a classic mystery story, if one with a good dose of humour). I like it when it’s just your regular, old crime, not something complex and confusing where it plays a role that the perpetrator was once left behind at the gas station as a kid. I want people who, like most perpetrators in real life, commit crimes for the money and because they see a chance to get away with it. Who kill a man because he has broken their hearts or who kill that old geezer down the road because he saw them picking up the money from their last blackmail of the local major. Something which doesn’t force me to go down that psychology rabbit hole, but just to remember that humans have different levels of morals and the tendency to think they’ll get away with doing something wrong. That’s what I like about Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Lord Darcy, and others of their kind. They follow the good old ‘who profits from it?’ through all iterations until they find that one person who profits from it and has no alibi of any sorts and had the means and, you know, surprise!, that person is the perpetrator. What’s wrong about that kind of crime story? Nothing, that’s what.

Sometimes, I get horribly nostalgic for a time when you could expect the murderer in a mystery story to be someone who had a simple, regular reason for their deed. When you didn’t need to study psychology to be able to investigate alongside the detective. That’s why, recently, I decided to branch out a little into mystery territory and, perhaps, do a few stories of that kind myself.