Since 2018, I’ve spent every day with my teen detective Rae Riley. She’s had a cameo in one short story and been featured in another as well as three novels. My latest novel, A Riddle in the Lonesome October, released October 1. After working with her for so long, here are four tips for creating an engaging teen detective.
Read my whole post on the essentials of a teen sleuth here. And here is my previous guest blog, researching cozy mysteries.
My latest Rae Riley mystery, A Riddle in the Lonesome October, takes place, surprisingly, during the month of October with the finale on Halloween. The holiday offers unique features for the mystery writer, and I wanted to share what I learned about how to write a Halloween mystery.
Defining Halloween Mystery
Before I get started, I should define what I mean by Halloween mystery. This is a story that fits squarely in the mystery genre. No matter how spooky the incidents appear throughout the story, by the end, the detective will have proved that everything has a rational explanation.
Sherlock Holmes summed it up best in the short story, “The Sussex Vampire”. A former client asks Holmes to see a man who needs information on vampires. Holmes does some quick research and finds the topic beneath contempt. He tells Watson, “This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.”
I know there are paranormal cozy mysteries, but if a book belongs to that subgenre, that should be clear from the cover and back cover blurb. Mystery fans hate to puzzle their way through a story only for the detective to reveal that it wasn’t the butler who did it, but a ghost.
So I’m giving tips on how to write a mystery set at Halloween without any supernatural trimmings.
Take Advantage of the Halloween Traditions
If I’m going to set a mystery during Halloween, then the traditions associated with the holiday have to be critical to the mystery. Otherwise I could set the story at any time of the year.
In Riddle, an outdoor Halloween attraction, The Haunting in the Hollow, is a setting essential to the plot for a number of reasons:
The attraction is set up on a piece of property rumored to hold a lost inheritance.
Because it’s a public attraction, characters can come and go on the property as I need them to.
The abandoned house and the notorious reputation of the man who built it and hid the inheritance add atmosphere as well as critical clues to the mystery of inheritance’s location.
Since it’s October, people have spooks and ghouls on the mind. When Rae’s Uncle Hank is seriously injured in a riding accident, his daughter, who riding with him at the time, says a monster spooked his horse. That statement attracts bigfoot hunters to the county. And people call Rae’s dad, the sheriff, at home, reporting sightings of either a bigfoot or a black bear. And since it’s October, it could also be someone in a costume.
Trick or treating at a nursing home becomes a way to get kids and adults in the same space who don’t usually mix and wrap up several story lines.
Other Halloween traditions that work for a mystery:
Trick or treating, any location. It’s a great way for people to be in places they don’t normally visit. A kid could observe a crime undetected. A mom waiting on her kids at a house could see something suspicious. Or the bad guys could try to escape through streets clogged with kids in costumes.
Jack O’Lanterns: Carving pumpkins as a group can be a way to bring characters together who don’t usually associate with each other. A clue could be hidden in one. Or the particular way a pumpkin is carved could provide a clue.
Halloween parties: Lots of mysteries involving costume parties. See if you can give this old setting a fresh twist. I’ve hosted a family Halloween party for years for my kids and nieces and nephews at our house in the country. Kids running around in the dark can provide all kinds of trouble, clues, and red herrings for a mystery. Actually, adults taking part in a Halloween scavenger hunt would work the same way.
Some areas have very localized Halloween traditions. See if there are some you can use for inspiration in your mystery.
What mystery used Halloween as a setting with no supernatural aspects?
Last week, I asked you to pick the victim for a cozy mystery, and each of the four photos got at least one vote. More readers were interested in picking the victim than the detective … does that mean anything? Anyway, we had a tie between photo #1 and photo #4. So I had to make an editorial decision and chose … photo #1. Below are all the elements of our cozy mystery.
Our Amateur Detective
Her job: radiologist
Her setting: a small town in Ohio
The victim: a crabby, elderly woman
Please leave in the comments how you think this cozy mystery would start. Does our amateur sleuth have her first meeting with the victim? Or has she known her her whole life? Are they friends, acquaintances, or enemies? Do the sleuth and victim interact in the first scene or does the sleuth notice something “off” about the victim? I’d love to read your inspiration! Here’s mine.
I hurried through the back door of the clinic and glanced at my phone. Three minutes to spare. I stashed my purse in the break room and walked quickly down the hall to the x-ray room. Didn’t want people waiting on me because everyone in town seemed to want to eat at Sarah’s Subs today.
I looked into the waiting room. Hannah, the receptionist, was in a deep conversation with Ms. Greer.
I stopped with my hand on the knob for the room to the x-ray.
Hannah wasn’t a friend of Ms. Greer’s. In fact, despite living her whole life in Draysville, Ms. Greer didn’t seem to have any friends. She was the most dreaded teacher in the high school. When she retired, any effort at volunteer work ended with either her taking over the work and running off the other volunteers or getting run off herself before she could take over.
Ms. Greer shuffled out the front door of the waiting room, and Hannah turned back to her desk, tears glistening in her dark eyes.
Last week, I asked readers to pick a setting for a cozy mystery and the votes were for a small town in Ohio because that’s where I’m from. Thank you for voting! Now you need to choose a victim for a cozy mystery. Usually a victim is the most obnoxious or nasty character introduced in the first chapters, a character who irritates, hurts, and bullies so many of the other characters that there’s no shortage of suspects when the murder takes place. Of course, to put a spin on the stereotype, we could choose a very mild character, the last person anyone would think would be a target for murder.
So choose a victim from the photos below and tell me whether the character is mean or nice. That description will help form the plot.
Author and editor Michelle L. Levigne has come back for a return engagement. Michelle writes in many genres and has recently added cozy mysteries to her long list. Glad to have you back, Michelle, telling us how invisible details can be the most important ones!
In the movie, Ready Player One, the hero, Wade, plays a very early video game. He knows enough about James Halliday, who created his virtual reality world, to know the goal isn’t to win the game, but to “wander around in the dark” and find a tiny, invisible dot.
At some time in my process of writing cozies, I need to trip over those invisible dots or puzzle pieces. Well, they don’t stay invisible, of course, but I didn’t see them, didn’t know they were necessary, when I started writing the book. If I don’t find them, tiny gaps threaten the cohesion of the story. The invisible pieces slap me with those incredible “Oh, yeah!” moments between finishing the first draft and revising. During the “back burner” time, when I’m not actively thinking about the story, something I see or hear or am thinking about suddenly flips a switch and “Ah hah!”
For example, in my upcoming Book & Mug mystery, Skeletons in the Cellar (April 2025, Mt. Zion Ridge Press), I realized I needed to introduce the dead body, in this case a history student named Lyndsy, as a living person. What better way than to have her walk into Book & Mug and ask Kai about the tunnels the cousins found during their renovation of the building? This is important to the story and ultimately the motivation of the killer. Lyndsy is investigating stories about Underground Railroad safe houses with tunnels leading to Cadburn Creek.
Those invisible dots, those tiny details don’t seem so important on their own, but their absence could lead to logic holes big enough to fly the Enterprise through. (For instance, where did the watch come from in the movie Somewhere in Time? Old Elise gives it to college student Richard, and adult Richard leaves it with young Elise when he goes back in time. The book has a logical explanation, but not the movie! But I digress…)
When I sit down to write a cozy, I create a calendar. Sometimes it’s a pretty bare calendar. But you have to start somewhere, right?
First I put in the dates, and line it up with the previous book in the series, so I can have stories overlap by a few days. I like this for a sense of continuity. (My editor hates this – she’s afraid I’ll give away too much and readers won’t read the previous story. I hope I tantalize readers to read the other books, y’know?) Then I pick the day when the big inciting incident occurs. In the case of Skeletons, finding a skeleton in the cellar of a house.
Then I need to figure out the events leading up to that important plot moment. In this case, what brings my main POV character into the cellar and what reveals a fake wall?
By then, my brain is dealing with other story events that need to happen to give clues as to who put the body there. I plot out the progression of clues, and incidents where the different POV characters run into the various possible guilty parties and notice little details that they eventually share with each other. At some crucial point in the story, these details connect like a handful of magnets and lead to a satisfying ending, carefully poised between “I did not see that coming” and “Of course, the killer could only be him!”
Funny thing: in Skeletons I knew the guilty party, but as I created more characters and events/clues, I suspected my original villain was being framed. Maybe…
That calendar is important, because during the resting time between first draft and first revisions, when those invisible dots show up, I need to know what sequence of events have to be rearranged or removed, and where to insert those new details. Carefully balanced between being invisible and jumping up and down, shrieking, “Notice me! I’m important!”
Obvious is never good. The goal is for readers to slap their foreheads and groan, “Of course! How did I miss that? It was right there.” Or maybe it was invisible until readers needed to remember it was there …
Writing a cozy can be just as entertaining for the writer as we hope it is for our readers, so they keep coming back for more, and we can say like James Halliday, “Thanks for playing my game.”
When the Tweed cousins, Melba and Cilla, set out to open their candle shop, Brighten Your Corner, obstacles pop out of the woodwork. And from out of the walls and under the floor. Starting with an overbearing cousin who wants to take over, insisting the shop was her idea, a nasty former tenant with shady business associates, who insists the shop they now lease still belongs to him, and a family mystery tangled with rumors of a treasure hunt.
The cousins at Book & Mug consider the Tweeds family. Eden, Kai and Troy, with the help of Saundra and Rufus are determined to help them through the threats and contradictions and increasingly odd and frightening incidents that just don’t make sense. The situation gets serious enough that even the help of mysterious, cynical Nick West, with his powerful connections, is more than welcome.
*****
On the road to publication, Michelle fell into fandom in college and has 40+ stories in various SF and fantasy universes. She has a bunch of useless degrees in theater, English, film/communication, and writing. Even worse, she has over 100 books and novellas with multiple small presses, in science fiction and fantasy, YA, suspense, women’s fiction, and sub-genres of romance.
Her training includes the Institute for Children’s Literature; proofreading at an advertising agency; and working at a community newspaper. She is a tea snob and freelance edits for a living (MichelleLevigne@gmail.com for info/rates), but only enough to give her time to write. Want to learn about upcoming books, book launch parties, inside information, and cover reveals? Go to Michelle’s website or blog to sign up. You can also find her at www.YeOldeDragonBooks.com, www.MtZionRidgePress.com, Facebook, and Instagram.
