by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethspanncraig.com

I’ve written a lot of murder victims over the years, and most of them weren’t particularly nice people. In a cozy mystery, an unlikeable victim means plenty of suspects, which gives the amateur sleuth a full pool to work with. The tricky part is keeping readers invested in solving the crime when they didn’t much like the person who died.

Humanize Through Complexity

Even difficult people are rarely difficult all the time. A glimpse of another side helps: the town bully who anonymously funded the local animal shelter, or the ruthless business tycoon who quietly mentored troubled teens. These moments don’t excuse anything, but they create enough complexity to make readers curious about the full picture.

Connect Through Others’ Grief

Not everyone experiences the same person the same way. The universally despised victim might have been someone’s beloved sibling or loyal friend. When a character readers already like genuinely mourns the victim, it creates investment by proxy. Readers care because someone they care about cares.

Let the Investigation Reveal Layers

The mystery itself is a natural place to complicate the initial impression. A private journal revealing childhood trauma, a home full of evidence of loneliness, a secret the victim was carrying: these discoveries shift how readers think about who this person actually was. The investigation becomes about more than catching a killer.

Justice Doesn’t Require Likability

A sleuth’s internal thought or a line of dialogue can do quiet work here. Something as simple as “even irritating people deserve justice” helps readers invest in the principle rather than the person. It also fits naturally with the cozy sensibility that order should be restored, regardless of who was disrupted.

Make the Difficult Personality Part of the Puzzle

Some of the most useful victims were unlikeable for reasons that turn out to matter. Did the hostility emerge after witnessing something they shouldn’t have? Were they pulling away from people because they’d discovered something dangerous? Tying the difficult traits directly to the mystery makes readers see the victim differently in retrospect.

What’s your approach to writing victims readers can care about, even when they weren’t easy to like?