The Ignorance Factor

by Barry Knister, @barryknister

When I first decided to write a mystery series, the initial problem I faced didn’t have to do with writing. It had to do with the crime business.

I’m not talking about the myriad ways in which crime is the business of criminals; I mean the crime-fighting experts who zigzag their way through a landscape littered with clues, in search of answers. We all know who the usual suspects are: police and CSI technicians, private investigators, FBI and CIA agents, medical examiners, lawyers, computer whizzes, etc.

But what if the writer is none of these things, and has no connections with such people? 

In short, my challenge as a college English teacher was to find a way to write engaging mystery novels, but without having to act as though I knew what I definitely didn’t—methods of crime detection, the law and law enforcement, medicine, etc.

The author of the first-rate website you are reading, Elizabeth Spann Craig has come up with clever answers to the problem: the crime detectors in her cozy mysteries are amateur sleuths. They are barbeque cooks, bridge players, beauticians and quilters—small-town southern women whose skills are unrelated to the crime business, but whose wit and curiosity are equal to the task of tracking down criminals.

My own solution in The Anything Goes Girl was to create a central character who’s failed at most everything in her life.  But almost by chance, Brenda Contay finds herself on TV–and she turns out to be good at shoot-from-the-lip broadcasting. When the story opens, she’s become a Detroit TV station’s  popular Lightning Rod reporter.

The trouble is, Brenda is ashamed of what she does. Being successful can’t keep her from feeling tacky and humiliated about reporting on the sleazy underbelly of society. Yes, she was the “anything goes girl” in college, but she has standards.

But Brenda’s on-air stories aren’t what my novel series is about. Like Elizabeth Spann Craig’s amateur sleuths, Brenda Contay becomes involved  in crimes committed against people she knows. This personal element, not professional training, is what motivates her to pursue answers.

Stories have to take place somewhere, so in The Anything Goes Girl, Brenda’s wish to escape from tabloid TV causes her to focus on the death of an old lover. All-state swimmer Vince Soublik drowned somewhere she’s never heard of–Micronesia. It makes no sense that he drowned, so Brenda is off and running.  Her journey to the Pacific reveals what happened, and drops The Lightning Rod into more trouble than she ever dreamed possible.

Why Micronesia? That’s where I served in the Peace Corps. I may not have any first-hand knowledge about cadavers or interrogating suspects, but I do know a thing or two about the Eastern Caroline Islands.

In the second mystery (soon to be released), tentatively titled Love and Death at Kettle Falls,readers learn that Brenda has reaped success by writing a book about her experiences in Micronesia. Now freed from TV, she goes fishing with three other women to Minnesota’s Voyageur’s National Park, otherwise own as the Boundary Waters.

Here again, my ignorance poses a problem: am I a Hemingway type who can speak with authority about hunting and fishing? Ask my wife that questions, then step back and watch her topple over, holding her sides.  But I have been to the beautiful Boundary Waters. By making the women in my story amateurs like me in the great out-of-doors, I free myself from needing to be Mark Trail.

In other words, among the many challenges I face in writing crime novels is the ignorance factor. I don’t want to compete with skillful authors who know more than I can hope to learn. But like me, my readers aren’t likely to be experts. Maybe they will be interested in tagging along with a central character who is more like themselves than, say, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, or Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch.

Until retiring in 2008, Barry Knister taught English at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. He is the past secretary of Detroit Working Writers, and a past director of the Cranbrook Writers Conference. His first novel, a thriller titled The Dating Service was published by Berkley. In addition toThe Anything Goes Girl, he has also published Just Bill, a short novel about dogs and owners living on a golf course in Florida. His website is www.bwknister.com. He welcomes your messages.