There Must Be A Body

 This is my first blog post written in Scrivener.

I didn’t appreciate S. S. van Dine’s claim that ‘there must be a body, the deader the better’ from the twenty rules. While most crime stories do include at least one body, I thought that other crimes might do as well, provided they were important enough. To a degree, I still hold on to the belief that every capital crime might do. Yet, “Welcome to Spicetown” showed me that there definitely needs to be a serious crime (and murder is the most serious of them all, of course).

I bought “Welcome to Spicetown”, the first book in a cosy mystery series, at the same time as “The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels” (which I’ve already reviewed) and actually started to read it first. Yet, the deeper into the book I got, the more I felt that it was missing something. I put it aside and started reading about the Wisteria Society, which I happily finished, and then still had to almost force myself to finish this book.
The problem wasn’t the writing, which is very good. The problem weren’t the characters, who are interesting. The problem wasn’t the setting, as Spicetown seemed a nice place to be at with enough potential for a series. As a matter of fact, having the town’s mayor as the amateur sleuth might save it from one of the biggest problems of cosy mystery series: justifying why an amateur would be drawn back to crime investigation several times. With the mayor as the amateur sleuth, it would be easier to justify, as it’s her town and she wants to protect its name (especially as Spicetown is a tourist destination).
What was the problem, then? To make it short: the missing body. To make it longer: that it didn’t really give the characters any stakes to work with. The biggest crime in the story is the theft of a fireworks display. It’s not even the town’s fireworks display! The display is from the next town over and has been organized and, presumably, paid for by the Sheriff there.

When the book started, there was this elderly guy who came in on New Year’s Eve, right before closing time, and demanded the replacement of a stolen traffic sign, elongating the mayor’s work day. I assumed that he would probably be the victim of the story. He was clearly a busybody and thus could easily have annoyed someone or seen something he shouldn’t have seen. Yet, he lived (as did everyone else — no body in this story). I waited until well after midpoint for a body to turn up, but was bitterly disappointed.
It’s not just that, though. The theft itself is not really investigated (although the crime should be at least fifty-one percent of the story). Much more energy and space is put into a romantic sub-plot between two side characters (the mayor’s assistant and a guy who owns a tree farm) and into a sub-plot about a store selling impure essential oils as pure — two things which are even less interesting than a theft to a mystery fan. The romance sub-plot is told well and sweet to watch, but I bought a cosy mystery novel, not a romance novel. I expected a major crime. I got theft and impure oils.

What’s even worse than the fact that there’s no murder, is how the theft is dealt with.
First of all, none of the main characters has any personal investment in this. The fireworks display, as mentioned, is from Paxton, the next town over. The Sheriff wants to solve this himself (although he won’t), so Spicetown’s police chief is only asked to look out for a car with which the fireworks were probably transported. He finds the trailer in a nearby lake and that would be the end of his official involvement. The mayor has even less involvement than that. She has none, as the fireworks display has nothing to do with her town, didn’t come out of her budget, and she didn’t even attend it and was disappointed when it didn’t happen.
There is a suspicious individual which is seen in town and, especially, in the store with the impure oils, but that’s not really something people would wonder about in a tourist town. There is, as mentioned, that sub-plot about the impure oils from the store, but that is an even minor misdemeanour than stealing something. There is mention that there have been more thefts lately, too. Yet, none of this amounts to a real crime investigation with personal stakes for those involved.
In addition, why steal a fireworks display? It wasn’t done to spite the Sheriff, but, presumably, to make money with it. Yet, as far as I know, there’s two days in the American calendar when fireworks are commonly used — New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July. New Year’s Eve is the day on which the story starts, so they could hardly hope to sell the fireworks right away. Were they going to play musical chairs with the display for six months until they could sell it for the Fourth of July? It just makes no sense.
Finally, the book sets up a ‘mastermind’ behind the thefts. When they were first mentioned, I thought it would be the owner of the store with the essential oils — she did have contact with the thief, she was in financial strains (hence the diluted oils to make more money with them), and she could have kept the loot in the back of her store. Yet, it was not to be her, she was just a team member. The ‘mastermind’ (who had someone steal loot that couldn’t be sold for another six months — what a mastermind) turned out to be a person who was in three short scenes over the entire book, only mentioned in the first half and only introduced personally in the second. The mastermind was pulled out of a hat, nothing more, nothing less.

My overall impression of the story was that the author got carried away with the romantic sub-plot, which is by far the most detailed part of the book, and then remembered she was going to write a cosy mystery, so she put the parts of that mysterious theft around it. Obviously, that didn’t work very well and weaned me off the series. Even if it should get better later, how am I ever going to trust her again?

“Welcome to Spicetown” has taught me that there must indeed be a body — or at least a capital crime — in a crime story. The crime must also take precedent, even in a cosy mystery. Personal stuff can be almost as strong, but it must be fifty-one to forty-nine at least, not the other way around. The main characters also must be invested in the case, otherwise especially a cosy mystery with an amateur sleuth makes no sense.