Hobbies and Homicide

by Janis Patterson

Hobbies (and crafts, though for brevity’s sake I will use ‘hobbies’ to cover both) serve several but very disparate purposes in cozy fiction, all in a kind of situational shorthand.

Although a surface read of the cozy genre seems to indicate that the protagonist/sleuth’s hobby is solving murders, there is more to the inclusion of a sleuth’s avocation. Often having a hobby gives the sleuth a sort of ‘leg-up’ on the modus operandi and eventual solution of the crime that the police do not necessarily have.

For example, a hobbyist needleworker might notice that the knots tying the victim are unique to a certain form of embroidery… or the same could be said of a model ship builder who sees the esoteric knots as being nautical.

A baker or cook or even a nurse or pharmacist might notice certain ingredients laid out that have no place in the recipe the decedent was baking at the time of death… or notice the distinctive scent of an obscure ingredient in a finished product that, combined with another ingredient, could cause an allergic reaction in some people, which of course the victim is one.

A hobbyist jeweler might notice that the garotte was made of a rare form of tiger tail (a coated wire often used in stringing heavy necklaces) instead of the common guitar string the police mistakenly believe it to be.

The use of this special, hobby-related know-how is a quick and believable way of giving the amateur sleuth a depth and breadth of knowledge that would be cumbersome and difficult to explain otherwise. However, this is a trope which can be easily overused. I mean, wouldn’t you quickly tire of mysteries where the same sleuth is always an expert regarding the widely varying ways and means of the way a murder was committed? Or that multiple murders by multiple murderers are serendipitously committed using the same unusual means?

To continue the above examples, it is unacceptable that bakers/cooks can solve only baking/cooking related mysteries or needleworkers needlework mysteries or… you get the idea. To say the least such narrow specialization would be pretty much unbelievable for an amateur sleuth cozy mystery, as well as totally destroying the idea of a series featuring the same sleuth. How many people can you believably expect to be murdered using needlework techniques? Excepting, of course, an obsessed serial killer, which is a totally different genre and therefore is another topic of discussion altogether.

Back to specialization. If there is a series where the sleuth has a useful and universal-ish hobby, as the more general the hobby the more believable multiple solutions become. For example, if the sleuth is an expert in 15^th century Swabian poetry, how many mysteries can logically (or even semi-logically) be created to fit in such a narrow framework? On the other hand, a sleuth whose hobby is making ship’s models, the world of potentially solvable crimes expands. There can be mysteries about full size ships, doll house miniatures, history of both (and more)… all of which are basically related and could be easily lumped into one general hobby-related knowledge base.

Aside from the story uses of hobbies, avocational pastimes are wonderful as character revealers. When creating a character writers have to be careful to make each one an individual, a person you should be able to recognize if you met them on the street. Nothing can kill a book (no pun intended) faster than a cast of characters with all the depth and believability of paper dolls.

Real people are not so easy to pigeonhole. That sweet gentle man down the street whose garden is a dream was also a bad-ass Army Ranger in his youth. The doting mama who makes glorious ceramics in her garage kiln used to sing grand opera in Europe. That cherubic young man who builds model airplanes and helps elderly neighbors carry their groceries inside also sets fires for amusement. Humans are not single-note creatures, and neither should our characters be. Hobbies – even those which do not help solve the mystery – are a useful tool in creating believable characters.

And not just sleuths/protagonists/sympathetic characters. Remember, villains need to be well-rounded people too, perhaps even more than heroes. The mustache-twirling villain who does evil for the pure sake of doing evil belongs in bad cartoons, not in cozy mystery fiction. Sleuth, victim or villain, everyone is the hero of their own story. Although it might make no sense to us that the villain cultivates a lovely garden of poisonous plants so he can wipe out those who want to make a parking lot where a field of wildflowers bloom, we have to be able to see why he believes his actions are necessary. Even though we don’t believe in what he is doing we have to be able to see why he is doing it in order for our sleuth to obtain enough proof to solve the case.

Just remember that the hobby-related clues – like all clues – should not be obvious from the first. If a victim is killed by a salad containing some of the nightshade grown by the grumpy old woman down the street and she is the actual poisoner, that is not much of a mystery. On the other hand, if the killer is the sweet grandmotherly lady at the other end of the block who is always baking treats for her neighbors is using the grumpy one’s nightshade to get rid of those whom she doesn’t think are worthy of living in her neighborhood while trying to cast suspicion on her grumpy arch-enemy, that is a mystery. Or perhaps there is a third player, the man who amuses himself by drawing pictures of plants and hopes to get rid of both old ladies so he can buy their houses and….

You see? The possibilities are endless. Just make sure that when you create your characters – both sleuths and villains – that their reasons are valid to them even if not to us, that they are believable and (this is important!) accurate. If your character has a hobby, it doesn’t have to be yours – you just have to know enough about it to get it right. Otherwise those who do know about it will descend on you with righteous criticism and both your book and your sales will suffer for it.

(P.S. – for those of you who are following my republishing blitz, I am happy to report that it is going perfectly according to schedule – a book, freshly edited, freshly edited and as often as not with a new cover – released every other Wednesday since the middle of January! TIMELESS INNOCENTS (#14) released the 5^th of July, and THE EARL AND THE BLUESTOCKING (#15) will go live on 19 July. Plus – drum roll here – my second audio book A KILLING AT EL KAB and my third CURSE OF THE EXILE are now available at Amazon and Audible!)