The Stiletto Gang is delighted to welcome Julia Spencer-Fleming! We are huge fans so this guest appearance has us all a-twitter…if you haven’t checked out Julia’s books featuring minister Clare Fergusson and police chief Russ Van Alstyne, now’s the time. Through the Evil Days, the seventh in this fantastic series, is on sale this November.
Dos and Don’ts of blending Mystery and Romance
I clearly remember the moment when I realized that the
romance subplot/second story of
my mysteries had
become the plot/primary story: I had just given a talk to an enthusiastic group
at a bookstore,
detailing how I work out
the twists and turns of the murder, how I use the harsh weather and rural
landscape to echo conflicts within the book, how the crimes highlights social
issues I feel strongly about. The it was time for questions. A well-dressed
woman’s hand shot up. “What I want to know is,” she stood up for emphasis,
“when are they going to Do It?”
Well, then.
The tradition of including a romance within a mystery goes
way back – who among us hasn’t swooned when Peter Whimsey finally got his
proposal to Harriet Vane right: “
Placetne, magistra?” “Placet.” Or when
Deborah Knott
finally realizes Dwight Bryant has been waiting for her
for years. Or when art thief John Smythe, battered and bruised, admits his love
for art historian Vicky Bliss? Can you recall the crimes in
Gaudy Night,
Rituals
of the Season and
Trojan
Gold? I can’t. But, boy, I remember those scenes.
So what have I learned in seven –
soon
to be eight – books about the tortured, tempestuous relationship between
Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and chief of police Russ Van Alstyne? Glad you
asked. Let me share with you my dos and don’ts of blending the genres:
DO take advantage of the long story arc. In a straight-up
romance, the hero and heroine need to find their “Happy Ever After” by the end
of the book (in the same way that the mystery has to be solved at the end in
crime fiction.) But in a series, readers get to follow the couple, sometimes
for years, as they get to know and love each other. When Russ and Clare meet in
In
the Bleak Midwinter, he’s contentedly married and she’s a brand-new cleric
in a brand-new parish. How they struggle and resist and succumb to their
feelings becomes a story that spreads out over seven books (and counting!)
DON’T play it safe. There’s a lot of crime fiction where the
amateur sleuth meets the detective in book one, dates him in books two through
four, is engaged in book five and married by book six. Their big conflict is
usually that she’s nosy and he’s overprotective. Nice enough, but it doesn’t
tend to make the heart race. A good romance has complications and obstacles and
hurdles galore for the lovers. In Hank Phillippi Ryan’s
Jane
Ryland books, her eponymous heroine and Detective Jake Brogan are
passionately in love right from the start. But if he’s dating a reporter, he’ll
be suspected by the department anytime anyone leaks a story to the press. And
if she’s dating a cop, her hard-won career as a crime reporter becomes tainted
be perceptions of favoritism. They literally can’t be seen together. But they
yearn to be together! What to do? Obviously, you have to keep reading to find
out.
DO use danger as an aphrodisiac. In
Out of the Deep I Cry,
Russ and Clare are locked in the pitch-black
cellar of a derelict building. They have no weapons, no phone and the
place is flooding with freezing cold water. (It sounds a little bit like the
Perils
of Pauline as I describe the scene, but trust me, it works.) Isolation and
the fear of imminent death break down their barriers and they kiss. Who
wouldn’t? If the hero and heroine are going to be rubbing shoulders with bad
guys and putting themselves in harm’s way, take advantage of it!
DON’T mess with reader expectations. When someone picks up a
mystery, she has a reasonable expectation that there’s going to be a crime
(usually a murder) a series of clues, and a solution. When someone reads a
romance, she has a reasonable expectation that there will be a couple, they
will change and be changed by each other, and they will reach a Happily Ever
After (or at least a Happy-For-Now, with an option to upgrade.) There’s not
much more disappointing than getting to the end of a mystery and not learning
Whodunnit. Or how. It’s equally infuriating to root and cheer for a couple only
to have one of them die or leave town at the end. Elizabeth George, I’m looking
at you, here.
DO It. When readers have anguished and yearned and hoped
along with a couple for two, four, six books, they want to experience the
payoff. You don’t have to have a play-by-play book with diagrams, but let’s see
a few fireworks! Readers want to experience the big emotions in the other parts
of the characters’ lives – anger, frustration, triumph – so it’s natural to
want to be there for one of the biggest emotional events of all. And, after
all, unlike killing someone, it’s something most of us have actual experience
with…
