An intriguing 17th century theft

This is the kind of little snippet that really intrigues me as a writer, and as a historian. I came across this interesting 17th century advertisement in the Early English Books. Five valuable books had gone missing--"Lost or Stolen"--and a relatively large reward had been offered for their return.

Early English books tract supplement interim guide ; / E4:2[148]  Date 16--?

Clearly, the books were valuable. Four were bound in rough calves leather and had clasps.  One was in smooth's calves leather and lettered on the back.

But it's the glimpse into the content that intrigues me. Three volumes of Monasticon Anglicanum, also known as The history of the ancient abbies, and other monasteries, hospitals, cathedral and collegiate churches in England and Wales. With divers French, Irish, and Scotch monasteries formerly relating to England (1693) (You can actually read all three volumes here if you like!).  Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire. And Camden's Britannia.

All of them could be viewed as sort of refined travel guides, pointing out the interesting facts and histories of important buildings, ruins, castles, private homes, churches and former monasteries (each was also likely informed by key political and religious tensions of the time, but that's another story.)

This fascinates me: who might have taken these books? (I'm sort of discounting the idea they may actually have been lost...what's the fun of that?)  A petty thief who may have wanted to make a few shillings? Maybe. An armchair traveller, sitting in his oak-panelled chair with spindled arms, sipping some Rhenish wine, dreaming of places he'd never been?  Perhaps.

Or perhaps, and here's the fun part to conjecture, the books were lifted from the bookstall by a master thief. To get the lay of the land throughout Warwickshire. To understand the best ways to travel. To study escape routes. To look for hidden entrances and egresses. 

There's no record as to whether the books found their way back to booksellers Bateman and Brown, but I like to imagine they didn't. Maybe some seventeenth century rogue (or moll) pulled off the heist of the century...and it's up to me to write that tale...

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It's less than seven weeks till the launch of my first mystery, A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (Minotaur Books/St.Martin's Press) on April 23, 2013!   www.susannacalkins.com

When cases were solved by a corpse’s pointing finger….

 
Recently I came across the Detective’s Oath, written by Dorothy Sayers and first administered by G.K. Chesterton, as part of the initiation ceremony for the London Detection Club. The club, convened in 1930, included the likes of Sayers, Agatha Christie, and a slew of other Golden Age mystery writers.

The oath was this: “Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?”

While I think we’ve all seen authors—well-known ones at that—break these principles regularly (after all, why can’t a ghost solve a crime? Or for that matter, a cat?), there was something to these expectations that made sense. A reader should be able to work out whodunit, at least after the fact, to be fair.

But when I first read the oath, I had to laugh.  All three of us—Nancy Bilyeau, Sam Thomas, and myself—have situated our mysteries in early modern England, a time when divine revelation, providence, acts of God (or the Devil, for that matter) often served as the explanation for most mishaps and misfortune.  It would have been so easy—and realistic—to have our sleuths solve crimes in that fashion.

After all, there are many incidences of a community “solving” a murder when a corpse’s finger pointed to its murderer. Or when the corpse’s eyes would open and stare in the direction of the murderer’s house.  There are even examples of corpses bleeding from the nose or ears, indicating that their murderers were in the vicinity.

Sometimes, logic and reason and evidence would prevail and sometimes…they did not. There are many examples of superstitions, hearsay, and feelings making their way into court testimony, especially in ecclesiastical courts.

I can’t speak for Nancy and Sam’s protagonists, of course, but I wanted Lucy Campion, my chambermaid in a A Murder at Rosamund's Gate, to be someone who was resourceful and intelligent, despite having little formal education. But it wasn’t just about creating a character who would use her wits and evidence to solve a crime; I wanted her to question how the community identified murderers in the first place.

I also wanted Lucy to be someone who rejects the notion of providence as a means to explain murder. I wanted her to dismiss the idea that divine revelation could be a reliable way to identify a murderer—even if that meant challenging the expectations of her community.  

I’d like to think that Lucy would approve of the Detective’s Oath, even if everyone around her was convinced that the murderer could be discovered by a corpse's pointing finger.

But what do you think? If you're a writer, do you adhere to this oath? Or gleefully stomp all over it? If you're a reader, do you mind if the detective doesn't use logic or wits to solve a crime?

Deciphering a puzzle or following stepping stones--What kind of mystery do YOU prefer?

A librarian recently posed to me that question I suppose every writer must address at some point: "Plotter or pantser?" Having been exposed to this great debate now, I can say for the record that I wrote A Murder at Rosamund's Gate by the seat of my pants, while for From the Charred Remains, I've taken the more methodical "plotter" approach. 

Is the mystery presented as a puzzle from the outset?

However, I think the more interesting question is how mystery writers approach the central crime and the investigative process from the outset.  

Does the author present the story literally as a puzzle for the crime solver (and by extension, the reader) to decipher, or does the author evoke a puzzle throughout the narrative--asking the investigator (and the reader) to comb through motives and motivations in a systematic way? Does the author have the investigator leap from clue to clue, as one might step logically from stone to stone to cross a stream? In such cases, the reader can try to look two jumps ahead in the investigation and anticipate twists and turns. (Of course, when done well, the reader won't figure out the precise rocks in the path!)

Or does the investigation reveal the puzzle?

You could argue that some mystery genres favor one approach over the other. For example, in a police procedural, a detective might take a more direct approach to finding a criminal, while in a cozy mystery,  an amateur sleuth is likely to have stumbled on an interesting puzzle or been brought into the investigation because he or she possessed peculiar knowledge crucial to solving the puzzle.

Certainly, any combination of these approaches can work when crafting a mystery. Sometimes, however, the reader is left unsatisfied by the great reveal, or worse, insulted by the obviousness of the solution.  

The problem, I think, is when the author has not decided where the element of mystery--the heart of the puzzle--lies.  Simply identifying the criminal or murderer is not enough.  Is the puzzle in the crime itself? For example, consider the locked room mysteries, such as Poe's Murders in Rue Morgue or Christie's And Then There Were None.  Here, the goal is to understand how the killings occurred, as well as to discover the murderer.  Or, is the puzzle found in exploring different characters' motives for murder? (Kellerman's psychologist Alex Delaware, maybe?) Perhaps the puzzle lays in the investigation itself, such as in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, or in Cornwell's investigations featuring Kay Scarpetta.


Pantser or plotter--it doesn't matter to me.  I do believe though, when writing a mystery, that it's necessary to decide on the nature of the puzzle....the story will follow!  But what do you think?