6 Rules of Writing a Clearing-Your-Own-Name Cozy Mystery
Cozy mysteries often feature amateur sleuths solving a crime. Readers new to the genre may question why. Why would someone with no law enforcement training and zero knowledge of police procedures jeopardize their safety? This isn’t their job and they aren’t getting paid to put their lives in danger and track down criminals. So, why do it?
(5 Tips on Writing a Cozy but Cunning Mystery Novel.)
Amateur sleuths don’t put their lives on the line because they have a death wish or because they’re just plain crazy. The primary reason for an amateur to get involved is because they have reason to believe the police will not find or even look for the guilty party. At first glance, that may not seem important. After all, lots of crimes go unsolved.
What makes this different is that the police believe the amateur sleuth—librarian, baker, or bookstore owner, is the guilty party. The only way they can clear their name is by finding the guilty party themselves. That is the starting point for most cozy mysteries.
But finding a killer and “clearing your name” is not easy. Here are six rules for writing a Clear Your Own Name cozy mystery.
1. Give your sleuth high stakes
Make the stakes high enough that readers will suspend disbelief and believe a children’s book author would step outside of her comfort zone to “clear her name.” Few readers will follow a story for 300 pages while a person clears her name for speeding, trespassing, tax evasion, petty theft, or a few hundred or even thousand dollars worth of unpaid parking tickets.
Crimes? Yes. Serious enough to jeopardize your life to clear your name? No. Hire a good lawyer. However, if clearing your name is necessary to save you or someone you love from prison or death row, then a reader will believe that even your most reluctant sleuth will go to any lengths necessary to prove their innocence.
In Sniffing Out Murder, the first book in the Bailey the Bloodhound Mystery, children’s book author, Priscilla Cummings needs to clear her name of murder. Everything else, including writing her book, takes a backseat while she proves that she isn’t a killer, even though she has a motive, the means, and the opportunity.
Check out Kallie E. Benjamin’s Sniffing Out Murder here:
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2. Give your sleuth a sidekick
Everyone needs help, especially when trying to clear their own name. That’s where a sidekick comes into play. Nobody can be everywhere at once. Investigating a serious crime will involve talking to people, looking for clues, and tracking down potential suspects. Dividing the work will help.
Your sleuth needs someone to help find clues, sort the clues from the red herrings, and get to the truth. They also need someone to bounce ideas off. Sir Arthur Conan Dyle made Sherlock Holmes a genius when it came to scientific facts about the details of crime. Holmes could identify over 140 different types of tobacco based entirely on the ash. However, his people skills were severely lacking.
That’s where Dr. Watson came into play. Watson softened Holmes’ social skills. People were willing to talk to Holmes, not because he was brilliant, but because of Watson. Plus, it’s Watson who turned Holmes’ cases into interesting stories that the public was willing to read versus scientific treatises about things like tobacco ash.
3. Make friends with law enforcement
This may seem impossible. After all, the police are the ones who believe the amateur is guilty. But, to clear their name, the amateur sleuth is going to need access to information. Forensic data, background reports on potential suspects, and witness statements are all important evidence that the police have, but the amateur sleuth will not.
Often, in cozy mysteries, the amateur sleuth will develop a relationship with one of the police officers which will give the sleuth a certain amount of access. In the Mystery Bookshop Mystery series that I write as V. M. Burns, amateur sleuth, mystery bookshop owner, and aspiring British historical cozy mystery author, Samantha Washington, develops a mutually beneficial relationship over the course of the series with Detective Bradley Pitt.
In the first book, The Plot is Murder, Sam had to “clear her name.” However, in subsequent books, Detective Pitt acknowledges that people will talk to Sam and her sidekicks (Nana Jo and ‘The Girls’), regular people. Talking to the police is an entirely different matter.
4. Create curious sleuths
Create a character who isn’t just nosy, although a certain amount of nosiness is useful. But rather the sleuth should have a healthy amount of curiosity. A curious sleuth won’t ignore strange or unusual situations. They question WHY someone lied to the police about where they were, then follow up on the clues which often become red herrings (false clues).
Curiosity drives them to always dig deeper. Jessica Fletcher’s curiosity in Murder, She Wrote led her to extensive lengths to uncover the truth, even when it wasn’t her own neck on the line, or her name that needed to be cleared.
5. Highlight your sleuth’s unique skills
Like Bryan Mills, Liam Neeson’s character in Taken, your amateur sleuth should have “a particular set of skills” that she can draw on to help clear her name. These don’t have to be unusual or super-specialized skills.
Readers don’t expect librarians to be martial arts experts. A librarian with a passion for true crime like Aurora Teagarden in The Real Murder Club Mysteries by Charlaine Harris is a perfect example.
An amateur sleuth could have above-average intelligence, like Nero Wolfe in the mysteries by Rex Stout, be a master gardener (adept at identifying toxic plants), or might be a wiz at solving crossword puzzles. Every sleuth needs a skill that they can tap into which will help them to clear their name.
6. Ignore the rules
Once you know the rules for writing a Clear-Your-Own-Name cozy mystery, ignore them. There is no One Size Fits All for writing. Find what works for your character and go for it.