traditional mystery – Ladies of Mystery

Knife Edge is a traditional murder mystery. The entire story is told from the point of view of the amateur sleuth protagonist, Zee Morani. I knew very little about Zee when I wrote the first draft of Knife Edge about ten years ago. Basically, I knew I wanted her to be a writer, but she needed to have more freedom than a reporter with regular hours or an assigned beat. And because I also wanted her to comment current events, I ruled out making her a book author. So, Zee became a successful columnist.

As I worked my way through early drafts, I learned a lot about Zee. In her job, she was free to pursue whatever interested her, as long as she could turn it into a column on deadline. I decided Zee should use satire in her column, which allowed me to indulge my own penchant for pointing out social, cultural, and bureaucratic idiocy, incompetency, and callousness.

It was fun to sprinkle column topics throughout the story. They provided a bit of comic relief from the escalating tension of the mystery, and I enjoyed researching topics that piqued my interest or aroused my ire. Showing Zee at work also helped me clarify how she could use her particular skills to solve the murder: her skepticism, her attention to detail, and her ability to put information together in different ways—what she called seeing the world sideways.

Also, giving Zee a human-interest focus for her column meant she would not be at home in the world of crime and criminals. I certainly was not. Drawing on my own naivete (as in what might I do next?), I put her into dangerous, and sometimes humorous, situations.

I entered a new stage of relationship with Zee after Knife Edge was accepted by Camel Press. One of the early tasks my editor gave me was to write a history of Zee’s parents. Using Zee’s age at the time of the story, I backtracked to discover that her parents came of age in the 1960s.

That decade exerted a great influence on my own maturation. Coupled with research into that tumultuous time, my experience helped shape Zee’s moral compass. She is driven by a deep need to see justice done. This drive impels her to use her column to defend the ordinary human being who struggles against the mindless workings of a machine-like organization. It also gets her involved in the murder.

Perhaps the biggest surprise in Zee’s character tuned out to be the extent to which her persona was influenced by my two previous careers. I didn’t realize this until after the book was completed.

I spent twelve years in public relations before I quit, unable to continue to spin facts to create a misleading picture. I actually looked in the mirror one day and realized that if I didn’t leave, I would get to the point where I no longer recognized the truth. Though I did not see it at the time, I made Zee a satirist specifically so she could point out the ways in which people use language to distort and misdirect, to adhere to the letter of the law while violating the spirit.

My PR experience also provided the seed for Zee’s dream to write what she considers serious journalism, which she viewed as using her talent for greater good. After my PR disillusionment, I switched careers and became a university professor. I spent 18 years teaching students how to use language ethically and responsibly and showing them how unscrupulous writers and speakers deceive their audiences.

Writers are always encouraged to write what they know. My experience with Zee would seem to indicate that I’m not always aware of what I know, at least not consciously. But then, discovering what lies beneath the surface is a big part of the fun of writing—and life—for me.

KNIFE EDGE

An unwitting columnist. A shocking murder. A devious killer.

Is Zee Morani tracking clues or playing a role orchestrated by a murderer?

When Zee Morani discovers the bloodied corpse of a disgraced medical researcher, the accused killer begs her for help. But Zee is not a cop. She’s not even a PI. She’s a regionally syndicated satirical columnist who dreams of breaking into serious journalism.

Zee believes the suspect is guilty. After all, he staggered into her as he fled the scene of the crime. But she’s made a career of challenging bureaucracy. The drive to defend the underdog, or at least give him a fair chance, pulses in her veins. Unfortunately, everything she learns only strengthens the police case.

Even as the facts pile up against him, Zee’s instincts argue for his innocence. Her friend Fontina’s finely tuned intuition concurs. But while Fontina supports Zee’s investigation, Rico, a seasoned crime reporter, balks at her interference in the case. Despite their recent breakup, he wants to protect Zee from the world of violence he knows all too well. He also wants to win back her heart. Tempting as that is, Zee resists him, her heart shackled by the pain of past betrayals. They agree to work together as professional colleagues and friends, but it’s an uneasy alliance.

As Zee digs deeper into the researcher’s murder, her involvement makes her a target. Her inexperience tempts her to back away from investigating, but her commitment to truth won’t let her quit. When Rico suffers a vicious attack, her fury burns the last vestiges of hesitation. Gritting her teeth, she tackles a nasty thug, a suspicious police lieutenant, and in the end, the barrel of a gun—all to unmask a stone-hearted killer.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Knife-Edge-Terri-Maue/dp/1684922003

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/knife-edge-terri-maue/1143420718?ean=9781684922000

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=Terri+Maue

Target: https://www.target.com/p/knife-edge-by-terri-maue-paperback/-/A-89152528#lnk=sametab

Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Knife-Edge-Paperback-9781684922000/2756992774?from=/search

Terri Maue is a retired professor emeritus from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. After she retired, she decided to pursue a life-long dream to write a mystery novel. The result is Knife Edge: A Zee & Rico Mystery. In addition to offering a challenging puzzle, it reflects several of Terri’s interests:

martial arts—she holds a first-degree black belt in TaeKwon Do;
spirituality—she has studied many forms of religion, including Christianity, Wicca, Buddhism, and Native American and African practices;
the intuitive arts—she reads Tarot cards and has taught dream interpretation.

Terri is a member of Henderson Writers Group, Sin City Writers, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. She is working on the second book in the Zee & Rico series. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with Eddie, her personal photographer and husband of 55 years.

You can visit Terri’s website at https://www.terrimaue.com, find her on Facebook at Terri Maue Author, find her on Instagram @terrimaueauthor, and write to her at terri@terrimaue.com

by Janis Patterson

We talk a lot about writing mysteries, reading mysteries, enjoying mysteries, but it’s seldom discussed what a mystery is. Leaving out the religious definitions, Dictionary.com says

any affair, thing or person that presents features or qualities so obscure as to arouse curiosity or speculation
a novel, short story, play, or film whose plot involves a crime or other event that remains puzzlingly unsettled until the very end
obscure, puzzling, or mysterious quality or character

So at heart a mystery seems to be an obfuscation, either deliberate or accidental. I can deal with that. It isn’t easy, but I can deal with it. It comes down to making the unknown known, and the writer has the unenviable task of revealing it piece (clue) by piece. That is after he created the story and then covered it up! It is a delicate balance.

Taking a ‘mystery’ and making it into an enjoyable and reasonably coherent novel is a daunting process, whether it’s the question of who took Aunt Ida’s coconut cake to finding a vicious and seemingly omnipotent serial killer. The process is – or should be – the same. Even if it isn’t the first scene in the book, when you’re plotting you need to start with an action by an unknown – i.e., the crime, be it coconut cake or murder. Then you must follow the carefully laid clues but seemingly random clues found by the sleuth, be he amateur or professional detective, and by examining these clues eventually uncover the truth. Don’t forget to complicate the process with a fair amount of believable red herrings and some conflicts/problems caused by the people involved.

The trick to doing this is not to be too obscure or too obvious. And I’m a firm believer that your sleuth has to work at finding these clues and therefore find the solution to the mystery in a logical and sort of organized form. You should also put in enough clues that the reader, if so inclined, has a decent chance of solving the mystery. Now I’m perfectly aware there are mysteries which are widely read and even some celebrated writers who break these rules. The most famous example is Raymond Chandler, who admitted that sometimes even he didn’t know how his sleuth solved the mystery – it just happened. Raymond Chandlers are few and far in between, though; the quality of his writing was so good that neither readers nor critics seem to care. Don’t try to duplicate this. Odds are you can’t.

Another rule-breaker is often the currently popular ‘fluffy’ cozy mystery. The sleuth is usually a woman and she usually has a ‘cute’ job – owning a bakery or specialty coffee cafe or floral shop or something similar. She has or wants a boyfriend, who often turns out to be a policeman of some sort, and a bunch of ‘zany’ or ‘quirky’ friends. All too often in this kind of story the mystery is of secondary importance to personal relationships and the personal life of the sleuth. It’s an overdone trope, but some sleuths still express a passion for shoes which takes up a lot of the story space. Which is fine, as long as that is the sort of story is what the reader wants.

What is not acceptable, however, is when in whatever kind of mystery the sleuth does little to no sleuthing. Clues seem to appear with no effort on the sleuth’s part. The solution is highly reminiscent of the deus ex machina so beloved of Greek and Roman playwrights. I call that a cheat. A mystery shouldn’t need a god to step down from Olympus to unravel a story so complex it is beyond the ken of mere humans.

It is good that there are so many variations of mysteries – puzzles, non-lethal crimes, capers, murders, serial killers, fluffy cozies, traditional cozies, hard-boileds… there is a style of mystery for every reader. I only hope they follow the rules that make a mystery a good story.