When Marabella Vinegar finds her psychotherapist's bloody corpse, she becomes the NYPD's perp of choice. Her recently deceased mother - the bane of her existence in life - comes back to help get her out of trouble and find the real killer. Things get even worse when, thanks to Marabella and her mother's sleuthing, someone tries to kill her. Then another body is found and Marabella is thrown in jail, awaiting trial for two murders. Can she and her mother-the-ghost-detective find the killer before Marabella becomes corpse number three?
WHY DO WE LOVE A MYSTERY?
By Sandra Gardner
Author of” MOTHER, MURDER AND ME,”
winner of Swyers Publishing’s First New Author (fiction) Contest 2011,
published by Swyers in 2012. Available
on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and from the publisher.
Who doesn’t love a mystery? Whether
it’s a James Bond, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse, Stephanie Plum, Rizzoli and
Isles -- we’ll gladly join the chase and follow along to find out
whodunit.
Why? Besides the fact that we’re curious and like
answers to puzzles, a big reason is vicarious excitement. We can drop in and
out of a mystery novel without putting our lives on hold. But most of us can’t
drop our daily lives and follow a trail, sniff out clues, interview suspects,
trap them in their own words and deeds. And would most of us want to put their
life and maybe that of their loved ones -- in danger? Carry a lethal weapon or
hone a deadly skill? Maybe be at odds
with the cops even to being pursued by them as well as a killer?
Then there’s our satisfaction at seeing good
triumph over evil. Would we find the ending of a mystery as gratifying if the
villain got to kill off the investigator and get away? We want our hero, our
investigator, our main character, to fight the good fight and be rewarded in
the end.
This is
where characterization comes in. If Stephanie Plum weren’t loveably comic,
Hercule weren’t eccentrically brilliant, Rizzoli and Isles intrepid, Inspector
Morse dogged, or James Bond suave, would we want to tag along in their latest
adventure?
We want our
investigator to be charismatic, intelligent, relentless, resourceful, wily and
powerful, in his or her own way. We expect the same for the villain our
investigator is pursuing -- along with being menacing.
We want the
chase to be fast-paced, to run into twists and turns along the road, to drop a
red herring or two, and even though it’s fiction, to feel real enough for us to
suspend belief and hang on for the ride. Above all, we want to be surprised – by a
discovery of an identity, the outcome of the chase, the unraveling of the
mystery. In many cases, the surprise is whodunit. In some cases, for example, TV’s
Lt. Columbo mysteries, we know who did it from the start. It’s the lieutenant’s solving of the puzzle
that provides the excitement and suspense.
We want the
suspense to start to build from the beginning and keep building. It might work this way: there’s a murder,
someone’s missing, something – such as money or jewels – is missing, there’s a
plot against the government.
There’s another murder (or two or
more). The missing person is found alive, dead, or not found till the end. Or another person (or two or more) goes
missing. The plot against the government
has a timeline, an assassination is planned, a bomb is set to go off, -- think “The
Man Who Knew Too Much” or “The Manchurian Candidate.”
Whether
it’s a courtroom, small gossipy village, CIA, MI5, big-city police department,
coroner’s office, or Hercule Poirot summoning up his little gray cells, we get
to be part of the action, enjoy the thrill of the chase, and find the solution.
Where else, other than in the pages of a well-written mystery, could we
experience all that – and more?
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