Crime Fiction: Private Dicks, Armchair Detectives, and Cops on the Job

For our next writer roundtable, let’s talk about crime fiction and mystery fiction. 

Which “slice” of this genre do you prefer to write, detectives solving mysteries (or cops solving a procedural) or a more general telling of the crime and folks involved? Why?

Danielle Procter Piper: I prefer to tell the story of the investigator. It’s tricky, though, because sometimes it’s difficult to stay one step ahead of a very intelligent character. You have to keep tossing obstacles at him or her just to keep the story going. It’s also fun to pair him or her with a partner who keeps veering things off course, just to add to the struggle and fun. 

Paul Storrie: Hard-boiled detective fiction. As Chandler put it, “Down these mean streets a man must go who is himself not mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” (Okay, these days I don’t object to a bit of tarnish and, of course, the “man” might be a woman or nonbinary. ) Though I have enjoyed some procedurals, I prefer the private investigator. The underdog. Not part of the system, but striving for some kind of justice nonetheless.

Van Allen Plexico: “Get caught”?! Dude–spoilers, but my criminals get away with it! 😅 I mean, things never go the way they expect, but they at least get away with something!

And so far, I’ve come up with the objective first, after a lot of historical research, and then puzzled out what they’re trying to do and how they go about doing it. Then, once I’m telling the tale, I allow it to grow in whatever useful and interesting directions it wants to go.

Aaron Rosenberg: I definitely write “someone solving a mystery”, I’m not entirely sure how you’d do a mystery otherwise. 🙂

Sean Taylor: I vastly prefer to write a mystery. For me, I dig a good P.I. tale, and often the more hard-boiled or at least hard-boiled inspired the better. That’s my preference when writing AND reading. I don’t think I could ever want to write a cozy or an armchair type of detective. I want grit and action and disillusionment. I also enjoy writing something with a more noir approach, where an everyperson ends up in the middle of some mess and must figure their way out of it, and often that mess involves crime and criminals. 

Bobby Nash: I like following characters as they solve a mystery or chase down a bad guy. For me, the characters are where it starts. The mystery, procedural elements, or even the chase all work in service to the characters. Not every character handles a situation the same way. How Snow approaches a problem is different than how Sheriff Myers approaches it. These character traits inform how the story unfolds. My stories tend to involve solving a case or mystery, but I try to spend time with both the protagonists and antagonists. Still, it all starts with the characters.

Snow is much more of an action/thriller. There are mysteries in the Snow stories, but not all Snow stories are mysteries. As with everything I do, I try to make sure it starts with the characters. Everything that happens in a Snow book does so through Snow-covered glasses. How do the things in the story impact Abraham Snow? How does he react to events? From there, the crime builds around Snow.

The same is true of my other characters as well. At least I hope so. As you mentioned, they have vastly different approaches. I could drop Abraham Snow, Tom Myers, Harold Palmer, Catherine Jackson, and John Bartlett, all investigators and law enforcement in their own right, into the same plot and I would come away with five different stories because of how these characters handle the plot would be different and therefore take the story in a different direction. Tom Myers investigates differently than John Bartlett or Catherine Jackson. Their personalities are different. They have different skill sets. Those attributes help define how these characters solve their mysteries/cases.

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https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2023/11/crime-fiction-private-dicks-armchair.html