Editor’s Note: This is the second in our series of chats with our top mentees from the 2015 Mentor Program.
Top 10 Books I’ve Learned from as a Writer
The red warning light came on five miles back in the middle of a rush hour crawl down the New Jersey Parkway. Now every gauge in the car was telling me to stop driving. After returning a few less-than-friendly Jersey salutes, I managed to pull over to the shoulder to call for help.
That’s when I checked messages and saw that mystery author and MWA-NY Mentor Program Coordinator Erica Obey had asked if I’d put together a list of “the top ten books I’ve learned from as a writer” for an upcoming MWA-NY newsletter.
I was a little distracted just then. I answered, “Sure. Sounds great.”
Big mistake.
First, I’m a new writer. Any lesson you can think of, I’m still learning.
Second, I’m kind of a floozy when it comes to reading. My favorite book is usually the one I took to bed last night. Asking me to name only ten favorites is . . . difficult.
But with those disclaimers in place, here are some of the lessons I’m learning and the books that continue to teach me about the craft of writing mysteries.
Make readers question everything, even the history they “know” to be true. Flat on his back in a hospital and bored to tears, Scotland Yard Detective Alan Grant solves one of the most famous “cold cases” of all time, the mystery of whether Richard III killed his two nephews in 1483 to secure the Throne of England. In The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey made me ask “who benefits” from our collective beliefs about history just as detectives probe who benefits from a victim’s murder.
Adapt traditional narratives to create something new. Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye and The Outsmarting of Criminals by Steven Rigolosi tip their metaphorical hats to Jane Eyre and Agatha Christie and create something very 21st century. Faye and Rigolosi prove that mysteries can be explosively creative when they mix classic stories with modern, sly humor.
Relationships illuminate character. Louise Penny’s Chief Detective Armand Gamache and her ensemble cast come to life by challenging and building friendships with each other. (Still Life is the first book in this wonderful series.) Her novels remind me that it’s not enough to concoct back stories and physical and emotional quirks for my characters. They’re not going to “breathe” for the reader unless their characters are illuminated through action, reaction and relationship.
Kill Your Darlings. If Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest doesn’t remind you to delete those lovely phrases that do nothing for your story, nothing will. Hammett’s language detonates on each page of this 1929 detective story, which features the Continental Op, a man whom Hammett declines to name. The Glass Key or Maltese Falcon may be better books. But I recently read this story for the first time. It’s stayed with me.
Badass women have a place in the canon. Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski series, Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon series, Anne Perry’s Hester Latterly in the William Monk series, and Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo are among the authors who show me that female protagonists can be tough, fearless (mostly), flawed and still sympathetic. I’m still working on this lesson (as well as all the others) and fine-tuning my protagonist to balance these traits.
“Do not overwrite … Do not explain too much … Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity.” If you’ve forgotten that Elements of Style contains more than rules of usage, find your dog-eared copy and turn to Chapter Five, “An Approach to Style,” from which the quotes listed above are taken. If you can’t find the copy of Strunk & White you purchased in high school or college, pick up the Penguin edition with illustrations by Maira Kalman. You can thank me later.
On Writing by Stephen King and Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott are also worth rereading. Each author’s voice is so strong that it feels as if they’re speaking directly to me, generously sharing insights about the craft of writing and their own lives.
— Mally Becker
Ed. Well, Mally’s already convinced me to borrow The Outsmarting of Criminals from my local library. And then there’s her follow-up comment, “The hardest part was limiting the word count. I wanted to finish by saying: “Wait! I forgot about setting and C.J. Box’s Wyoming stories … I didn’t mention Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, which I loved … or Ellis Peters, Patricia Highsmith or John LeCarr or ….”
You get the picture. So please, join in. What books would you add to, or enthusiastically second, from Mally’s list?
Mally Becker participated in last year’s MWA-NY Mentor Program and received a critique of her draft historical suspense novel from Lyndsay Faye, one of her favorite authors. Becker’s partial manuscript was chosen as one of the two best Mentor Program submissions this year. She’s in the process of revising her Revolutionary War-era mystery and plans to submit it to agents for representation in the near future. She practiced law in New York City and New Jersey for more than 20 years and now works for The Writers Circle Workshops in New Jersey where she lives with her husband and prides herself on not panicking when her car breaks down, not even that time in the Lincoln Tunnel when flames shot out of the MGB.