publishers, and readers alike. It doesn’t matter so much if a character is not likeable or behaves badly. That’s par for the course in a crime story. Readers can still care about the character’s fate. The enduring appeal of Patricia Highsmith’s amoral Tom Ripley illustrates the point; he’s not so much a series detective as a series sociopath. But if readers aren’t bothered about what Fate may have in store for a character, the wise writer will rethink.
Mark Billingham has explained on his website how he always envisaged that his most famous character, DI Tom Thorne, would develop book by book, and would never become predictable. He took the deliberate decision not to describe Thorne physically, and made sure that his detective carried with him the events that had shaped his life; he ‘is someone who deals with violent death, with terrible grief, and it would be ludicrous, inhuman, if he remained untouched by such things’.
I have been asked many times over the years – at events or during creative writing workshops – how a crime writer goes about creating suspense. There was a period when, in answer to this question, I would talk about what I considered to be the tricks of the crime writing trade. I would bang on about the importance of the cliffhanger, the twist and the ‘reveal’. Such devices remain hugely important, but I have come to realize that the answer actually lies in something far more basic, something that should be central to the writing of any piece of fiction: the creation of character.
All the techniques mentioned above are, of course, vital weapons in the mystery writer’s armoury and, as such, components of the genre that readers of crime novels have come to expect. They are part of the package; the buttons that a writer has to push every so often. When a crime writer thinks up a delicious twist, it is certainly a good day at the office, even if the ‘office’ at that particular moment happens to be the shower, the car or the park in which you’re walking the dog. Time to relax and take the rest of the day off.
I do think that it can be overdone, however.
There is a particular strain of crime and thriller writer who believes it is his or her duty to throw as many curveballs at the reader as possible. To twist and twist again. These are what I think of as the ‘Chubby Checkers’ of crime fiction and, while I admire the craft, I have come to believe that a superfluity of such tricks and tics can actually work against the creation of genuine suspense. Put simply, I find it hard to engage with any book that is no more than a demonstration of technique. I am not invested. A character dies, but why should I give a hoot when I know this particular writer’s stock in trade means that the character in question is almost certainly not dead at all? The cop or private detective or amateur sleuth has caught the killer, but is that the end of it? No, you can bet your boots it isn’t, because there are still three chapters left and I don’t have to be Hercule Poirot to work out that they have got the wrong man.
Make no mistake, this kind of intricate plotting can be hugely important and the success of writers who perennially give their readers a corkscrew ride is testament to its enduring popularity. But I don’t believe that in terms of creating suspense, it is necessarily the only way to go.
The ‘reveal’ remains a very effective technique, and one with which I am very familiar from my time as a stand-up comedian. It may sound surprising, but, having made the move from stand-up comedy to crime writing, I quickly discovered that a joke and a crime novel work in very much the same way. The comedian leads their audience along the garden path. The audience allow themselves to be led, because they know what’s coming, or at least they think they do, until they get hit from a direction they were not expecting.
My grandfather died recently. He just slipped away … sitting in his chair. He went very peacefully … unlike the passengers on his bus.
Or:
My wife and I have a very spontaneous love life. The other day we just took our clothes off and did it on top of a freezer! I don’t think they’ll let us back into Sainsbury’s again.
Old gags such as these show exactly how comics reveal their punchlines. The readers of crime novels are an equally willing audience, who can just as easily be blind-sided.
The best example I can think of from the world of crime fiction is in the wonderful Thomas Harris novel, The Silence of the Lambs, the second outing for the iconic Hannibal Lecter. Towards the end of the book, a SWAT team have the killer cornered and are approaching his house. At the same time, Clarice Starling has been dispatched to a small town many miles away to tie up a few loose ends. A member of the SWAT teams ring the killer’s doorbell. We ‘cut’ to the killer’s ghastly cellar from where he hears the doorbell ring. This is the moment when the ‘dummy’ is sold and the reader buys it completely. The reader stays with the killer as he slowly climbs the stairs, butterflies flitting ominously around him in the semi-darkness. We know he has a gun … we know what he is capable of … He opens the door, and …
It’s Clarice Starling! Boom-tish! The SWAT team are at the wrong house, she is at the right house and she doesn’t know it. It’s the perfect reveal and it is sublimely timed because it happens at the precise moment that the reader turns the page. The best crime fiction is full of heart-stopping moments such as this. They, too are punchlines, pure and simple, albeit rather darker than the ones you might hear trotted out at the Comedy Store.
But the reason that Harris’s reveal works so wonderfully is not just because of its exquisite timing. It works, above all, because of the character of Clarice Starling: a young woman the reader has come to know well over the course of the novel; to care about and to empathize with.
Ultimately, this is where I believe that the key to genuine suspense is to be found.
This revelation happened a good many years ago when I was reading a novel called The Turnaround by the American writer George Pelecanos. Pelecanos is happy enough to call himself a ‘crime writer’, or ‘mystery writer’ as they are more commonly known in the US, but he is not one of those writers overly concerned with the sort of tricks already described. There is usually an episode of shocking violence and there is often an element of investigation in its aftermath, but his books are not traditional mysteries by any means. What he does do, however, as well as any writer I know, is create characters who live and breathe on the page. As I read his novel, I realized I had come to know some of these people so well that the idea something terrible was going to happen to them – and I knew it most certainly would – had become almost unbearable. I was turning each page with a sense of dread and it dawned on me that here was the best and most satisfying way to create suspense. That it had been staring me in the face all along.
These are crime novels, after all. The reader has seen the jacket, read the blurb and knows very well what they are in for. Yes, there may be redemption and resolution of a sort, but there will also be suffering and pain, grief and dreadful loss. You know it’s coming, but not when or to whom.
The tension is real and terrible, because you care.
So, by all means throw in a thrilling twist every now and again, but not so often that they lose their power to shock. Time those ‘reveals’ to perfection to give your reader a punchline they will remember for a long time.
But above all, give your readers characters they can genuinely
