Mystery of the Day: Where did the last five years go?

Wow ... I had forgotten that I had started this blog.  That is really sad, isn't it?  Maybe the first mystery I should be solving is where I put my brain/memory.  I remember creating the blog right after I earned my masters.  My thesis concentrated on mysteries, namely what Agatha Christie had accomplished by using her own formula, and of course I called it the Christie Formula.  I will someday post it here perhaps.  If I remember.

On the subject of formulas, I did have a post nearly ready to go back in 2012, but apparently my brain did a runner right before I could finish and hit the publish button.  I was enjoying a Nancy Drew revival of sorts and started wondering what the blazes is so attractive about Nancy.  Maybe it's her spunk and her ability to remember.  Here is what I was getting up to:


I am reading through the list of Nancy Drew Mysteries and I am currently on novel number four, The Mystery at Lilac Inn.  When I was of the age to enjoy the Nancy Drew Mysteries, I didn't.  I thought she was a little ostentatious with her prissy clothes and her fancy car.  Now, it is a complete joy to read her cases.  She is stubborn and clever and determined--all the things I want to be here in my middle ages.

I've been thinking a lot about the actual ND mysteries and how they are written, so I'm dissecting them as a writer (so if you are reading this as a huge fan of Nancy, please don't be dismayed by my comments.  I'm looking at the stories in a technical way.  Okay? Okay).  I ask the question: What qualities do they possess that have kept them on the library/bookstore shelves for so long?

Though I love the character of Nancy Drew, I don't know that she is the force behind the success of the collection.  Even with all her quirky bull-headedness, when it comes to main characters, I find her a little like a cardboard cut-out.  I know.  I'm not a middle-grade girl reading these stories in the 40s and 50s.  My experience is more mature and varied.  I do know a well-rounded character when I meet one, though, and I don't consider Nancy Drew one of them.

If the main character isn't the mainstay, then one can surmise that the rest of the characters (Carson Drew, Nancy's dad, and Hannah Gruen, Nancy's housekeeper/surrogate mother for example) aren't going to be either.  The characters are static, remaining mostly unchanged throughout the story and the series making me conclude that they can't be what makes the collection a success.

What of dialogue or narrative?  The dialogue is plentiful and moves the story along, helping to unravel the mystery, but not doing much to reveal character.  And narrative, like dialogue, seems only to exist to promote the story.  Granted, moving the story along is not a bad thing, except that the reader doesn't get meaty characters.  

What is it that makes these stories so likable?  The answer is in the formula.

Some genres have traditionally followed a formula.  The mystery genre is guilty of this, as are the romance and western genres.  Following a formula doesn't necessarily mean that the story is presented in steps, but follows a certain set of rules.  The Nancy Drew Mysteries adhere to the first rule of mystery-writing:  The plot is everything.  Characters, setting, sub-plots, dialogue, narrative are all slaves to the plot.

A reader of mysteries demands that this rule be in place in every mystery, whether she knows it or not.  We come for the crime, we come for the challenge of solving the crime, we come for the resolution.  We want to go hand in hand with the detective (professional or amateur) to the solution of the puzzle.  Nancy Drew fulfills this desire.  She gives us a great plot and doesn't get in the way of it ... she just solves it (Okay, I am distracted at times by her fabulous clothes and accessories--I won't lie.  But that is another post.).  This happens in my fav, too, the iconic Scooby-Doo.  Same formula each time, but the mystery is whodunit and why.  We want to see who is hiding behind the mask and why they are committing the crime.

Back to the future now.  But isn't that kind of like life?  The desire to see behind the mask or know the reason why is in all of us.

So, now that I've found this spot again, I'll be coming back to talk about mysteries--books, shows, projects, products--whatever that is a mystery.  That is unless I forget.

Mystery Mixed Bag

The detective story is a kind of intellectual game. It is more — it is a sporting event. And for the writing of detective stories there are very definite laws — unwritten, perhaps, but none the less binding; and every respectable and self-respecting concocter of literary mysteries lives up to them. Herewith, then, is a sort Credo, based partly on the practice of all the great writers of detective stories, and partly on the promptings of the honest author's inner conscience.  S.S. Van Dine in American Magazine, 1928.

So there are rules to this mystery-writing game I'm playing.  Not surprising, as I always knew that mysteries followed a kind of formula, and I have to admit, it's a relief to know that I do have a guide to go by as I pen my first mystery.  If you would like the original list of Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories go to the nifty website Gaslight. 

Flash Fiction Friday's story prompt this week is in honor of August's blue moon.  I have gone so many times to FFF to play along, but I always give up on the story or just forget that I actually started a story on Monday to be posted on Friday, but this time I am going to try my best to get a few words down that might resemble what some would consider a story--a mystery story.  Maybe it won't be so hard if I follow Van Dine's rules.  And the moon can be so mysterious ... especially a blue moon.  Sounds right for a mysteriophile like me.

I might make a game out of it.  Begin a new mystery story starting with this weeks prompt, and every week after, add a bit more to the story using the FFF prompt.  The word count is limited to 1300.  In  twelve weeks I would have over 15000 words.  Am I challenging myself?  Maybe.  The deadline is Wednesday.  Guess I'd better get started. 

What the Dog Taught Me

As a writer and someone who must always have books around her, I would like to say that the first mystery I loved was one that I read such as Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown, but scouring my memory, the first mystery in line for my attention and that I loved with all my mystery-loving heart was Scooby-Doo.  Not glamorous, I know, but true.  

Saturday mornings were the best.  Bowl of Cheerios with way too much sugar, ugly but warm striped afghan my grandmother made, and the trusty Zenith with its clicky channel-changing dial.  Click of the switch brought the picture to life and there in full color was The Gang--Shaggy and Scooby, Velma, Daphne and Freddie, and, of course, The Mystery Machine.  For years I loved that cartoon and spent every Saturday morning in the company of those meddling kids.  

There were books, too.  I still have the boxed set of Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective paperbacks that my mom bought at The Diamond department store on Capitol Street for me when I was in grade school.  When I got a little older, there were the nicely bound Agatha Christie novels that remain on my shelf.  In between I fell for The Westing Game and The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues by Ellen Raskin.

I always came back to Scooby.  Even in my teens, I watched it on the sly.  If it were on now, I'd probably . . . okay, maybe not now.  But I have to ask myself what is it about Scooby-Doo that I love so much?  I could expand the question to ask, what is it about mysteries in general that I adore?  I think it has something to do with the monster under the bed (or in Scooby's case, behind the revolving bookshelf in the spooky library). 

The plot was the same every time.  The kids find out about a mystery, or find themselves embroiled in mysterious circumstances and go investigate.  The characters and situations change very little.  There is usually a spooky house or creepy caretaker, it's almost always nighttime, and inevitably Velma loses her glasses.  Plus, in the older episodes, there was the great musical chase scene in the middle of the show. 

Consistently, Scooby and Shaggy are scared of everything--a bump in the night, a dark hallway, a creepy basement--and they admit it.  They acknowledge the scary.  Then somehow, together, they overcome the fear and prove that the scary has a logical explanation--a man in a mask is trying to scare everyone with parlor tricks to take something that does not belong to him.  

To me, as a child, that explanation meant everything because I could apply it to the monster under the bed.  The monster is the pair of sneakers and dirty socks I kicked under the bed earlier in the day.  The monster is the toy I thought I'd lost.  As an adult, a mystery represents pretty much the same thing: the world is a scary place, full of scary things, but in the end, there is resolution.

Scooby taught me that it's okay to be scared.  Just hang with good friends, eat lots of good snacks and keep going until you find the logical explanation.  The bad guys go to jail and the good guys go to the malt shop.