Reading for the Winter Blahs

 It's a grey day in New York today, one of the many you can expect in the northeast this time of year. Even if winter has been warmer than usual, it's still chilly and damp and it still gets dark too early. I've not been exactly motivated to do much writing or reading for fun. 

So when I get mopey, I turn to some of my favorite comfort reads. Here are three great mystery series that deserve a much wider audience. All are available on kindle and other ebook formats. 

1) Hammerhead Jed Mysteries by A.J. Devlin

The newest series of the bunch, this follows the exploits of Hammerhead Jed Ounstead, former pro wrestler in Vancouver, BC. He's content to now spend his semi-retirement working at his family bar and helping out as an errand boy for his Dad's detective agency. But then one of his old wrestling buddies asks him to help find his kidnapped boa constrictor and he gets drawn back into the shady world of the squared circle. Each book looks at a new sport - book 2 is roller derby, book 3 is mixed martial arts. Great fun, with an engaging lead as a reluctant detective. Go buy them to encourage him to write more. 

2) Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith

If you like mysteries, you undoubtedly like Sherlock Holmes and some of the many imitators and incarnations. This series is the only one I'm aware of that takes place in the old west. Meet Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer. After finding an old copy of a Strand Magazine, Big Red reads the Red-Headed League to his older and smarter (though illiterate) brother. After reading the exploits of the world's greatest sleuth, Old Red is inspired to use Sherlock's techniques to solve a murder on the ranch they're working on. The mysteries always play fair, so you're free to puzzle along with Old Red and try and figure things out. The interplay between the brothers along with the clever mysteries make this a rootin'-tootin' good read. 

3) John Ceepak Mysteries by Chris Grabenstein

Stop me if you've heard this one:  There's a rookie cop partnered with a straight-laced veteran. I know, I know. But what makes this series so much fun is the location. The series is set in the fictional Jersey shore town of Sea Haven. Jersey Shore aficionados will recognize that this is a portmanteau of Beach Haven and Sea Bright, and it really is a stand in for any number of shore towns along the east coast. There are the restaurants and hotels with terrible beach puns in the name, run-down amusement parks, clueless tourists, a terrible town slogan ("Have a sunny, funderful day!") oh, and lots of murder. The characters are a lot of fun, too, in spite of the cliched set up. John Ceepak is a great lead - ex-army, come back to his home town to work on the force. He takes young, seasonal recruit Danny Boyle under his wing and turns him into a good investigator. It's a fun, breezy series, and quite literally the perfect thing to read at the shore. 

I hope you enjoy these as much as I have! If you have a personal favorite mystery series, let me know in the comments!

Victor Catano lives in New York City with his wonderful wife, Kim, and his adorable pughuaua, Danerys. When not writing, he works in live theater as a stage manager, production manager, and chaos coordinator. His hobbies include coffee, Broadway musicals, and complaining about the NY Mets and Philadelphia Eagles. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @vgcatano and find his books on Amazon

Plotting the perfect crime: the 4-act structure

Hello, troops. It is not even officially winter yet and I am so over it. Northeastern PA got hammered with a winter storm that kept us inside for a few days. Our school district has also already used up one snow day. I guarantee we will use up all eleven (that's right! We get eleven!) and then some. Blech.

So what's a girl to do to defeat winter doldrums? Concoct the perfect murder? For my book, of course.

Truth is, I don't believe there is such a thing as a perfect murder. Not in books and not in real life. Killers evade capture--not because they're sticklers for details and thought of everything--but because of timing, chance, lack of evidence, lack of witnesses, lack of reasoning. But that doesn't bode well for a mystery novel. I don't need to create the perfect crime. I wouldn't even know how. I just need to fuss with variables such as timing, chance, and evidence, so that it seems near perfect. So it seems damn near unsolvable.

And how do I do that?

Well, I work backwards. I start with the victim. Who is she? Or he. What got them to this place? Then I wonder who would kill them and why? None of my books, so far, have focused on serial killers or random violence. Every crime has a reason, and every criminal, a motive. A puzzle to solve.

I then focus on the murderer. What are they afraid of? What is their motive? What is behind their rage? And then I write two scenes: one from the victim's POV, and the other from the killer's POV. These scenes don't always make it in the book, but they provide me with something for my protagonist to figure out. Also, if you know your crime scenes (ha! pun), then you can figure how realistic it is to die that way. *Looking at you wonky poisons.

Once I have the murder(s) down, I break up my Scrivener file into four acts. Why four? Well, it's because a few books ago I read this great blog post by John P. Murphy in which he elaborated on how the talented P.D. James would plot her novels using, what he calls the two-body plot, and what I just call Kim's New Outlining Method. Either way, it works. I can also break down my word count this way to keep the pacing on point.

In Act 1, I introduce my protagonist (detective, amateur sleuth, whatevs), a cast of characters, and the crime. This might be a murder or it could be a missing person or kidnapping. In School Lies, I introduced readers to a missing person. In Dead and Breakfast, I introduced a ghost who had been murdered in the 1960s. In other words: shady stuff has happened.

In Act 2, my protagonist is on the case. Either metaphorically or literally. In my current work-in-progress, my detective is trying to solve a murder. She unravels the clues in a linear fashion. She learns A so she investigates, which leads her to B, so she investigates. She's picking up those breadcrumbs and seeing where they lead. BUT, she's also making judgements. Preconceived biases get in the way. So do unknown villains. And then, ANOTHER BODY!

This is where I took Murphy's/James's second body advice and put it in practice. I killed another person. I feel like murder mysteries are most fun when there's more than one victim. It revs up the intrigue.

In Act 3, my protagonist is done with everyone's bullsh*t and she starts to take all those little clues and shove them together into a more cohesive bunch. She knows who is lying to her, but not necessarily why. Anyway, no more screw-ups here. She's out for blood. Whereas before, she was collecting the right info with the wrong intent, now she's on the right track. And so is the antagonist. Danger lurks everywhere.

In Act 4, she's got 'em. She knows the identity of the killer(s) and she's out to expose them. Here is where I make it life-or-death for my protagonist. How will she get out of this alive? There's a showdown and the aftermath. My protagonist is a changed woman. And safe. Until the next book.

So there ya have it. My mystery writing outlining as succinctly as I could put it. If you write crime fiction and are struggling with plotting, take a look at John Murphy's blog post. Read a P.D. James book.

Do you write murder mysteries? How do you plot the 'perfect crime'?