Planting Clues in Mystery  

By Mary Rosenblum

 

            A mystery needs clues.  It’s not enough to have your Inspector stand up on the last page and grandly tell us how the murderer did it.  Yes, Sherlock Holmes did that, but you’re going to have to do it better than Conan Doyle if you want to get away with it.

            You’re in a race with the reader.  The readers are trying to guess what will happen.  You’re trying to spring that ‘whodunnit’ on the readers before they guess.  Who will win?  Those readers really don’t want to guess…they want to be surprised.  But they want that sporting chance to beat you and get there ahead of you.  Ideally, you have planted just enough clues, you have sneaked in just enough hints, that when you unveil that ‘whodunnit’, your readers sigh Oh, I should have guessed!  That gives you a satisfied reader!

 

Walk The Fine Line

          A clue too many tips off your readers.  Seasoned mystery readers are very savvy about clues.  They keep an eye out for details that stand out, a character’s suspicious interest in something…they know all the tricks.  It’s up to you to outfox them.  If your Main Character keeps noticing that old wall that sort of looks like maybe someone boarded up a door…your readers will be way ahead of you when your MC grabs that sledge hammer and pounds open the hidden door.  Ho hum, we’ve known that stupid room was back there for pages now!   But if your MC suddenly, in the final chapter, gets a sledge hammer and smashes open the door and nobody has even looked at that wall or supposed that the house is just a little too big for the number of rooms….those same readers will grumble, Oh yeah, like the idea just sprang into his head.  Planted by aliens, perhaps…

 

Hide it In Plain Sight

            So how do you plant the clues that the reader will need and still hide it from those zealous mystery-reader eyes?  Ever watched a good  magician work?  Those flowers really didn’t sprout from his sleeve, the doves weren’t in his hat.  They were right there in front of you all the time, but he made you not see them.   You’re going to do the same tricks with your readers.  So we have to let our readers know that a secret door exists in the wall.  When it is broken open, the explanation for the murder will be evident.  If one of your characters peers at the wall and mentions that it seems to be new construction…uh oh.  Those sharp mystery readers will think false wall in a heartbeat. 

            There are a couple of ways to hide those clues in plain sight.  One is to offer a plausible explanation for the clue.  Oh, yes, the wife of the manor owner says negligently.  The old wall was crumbling and full of mold.  Archibald – such a marvelous and talented decorator – suggested we simply build a faux wall over it.  We did it upstairs, too.”  She grabbed him by the sleeve.  “Have you looked into the small study?  Let me show you.  The bamboo grass wall cover is so lovely.  It cost a fortune of course…”  The comment about the new construction was casual, you bury it in the wife’s gushing about the various things her beloved decorator had them do (your readers are snickering about how he has taken them for tons of money) and while they are snickering, they forget about that ‘faux wall’ in the parlor.

            Another method is to distract the readers with a strong dramatic element.  Our amateur sleuth, visiting a friend at a nursing home where several people have died suspiciously, waits outside for a friend to meet her.  She begins to chat casually with an aide.  They talk casually about their childhood fantasy worlds.  She pretended to be a female Tarzan, he tells her about a magic well that helped him.  Then the friend arrives and is upset and the scene climaxes with a dramatic revelation by the friend.  But later, when the aide turns out to be the murderer, our amateur sleuth will remember his fervent tone when he talked about that well and how it helped him, and she’ll look there to save the home resident he has kidnapped.

            The arrival of the friend and the subsequent climax with that revelation took reader attention away from the aide’s talk about the well.  It slips past reader awareness only to surface alter when the POV thinks of the well as a place to look for the missing resident.   We have successfully distracted the reader with an event that had more dramatic power than the revelation of the aide.  If nothing more had occurred in that scene, readers would have noticed the interchange.  Hmm, they would have thought, why is this guy talking about a well?  Could it be important?  Could it be a clue?  But because something else more dramatic happened, reader attention was drawn to that event.  The mention of the well was forgotten.  Nothing important….

 

Be Sneaky

            So sneak those clues in there.  Create reasonable explanations (at the time) that your readers will see through later.  Or slips them in while your readers are distracted by more dramatic events.  But be sure to plant a few so that readers don’t feel that you ‘cheated’ and didn’t let them play the ‘guess the end’ game at all!

            The best way to find out if you succeeded with your sleight of hand is to give your mystery to a mystery reader to read.  Ask them to tell you honestly when they figured out who did it.  If they figure it out early on…that’s bad.  If they don’t figure it out until the end…you’ve done great! 

            So practice that sleight of hand…and make yourself a bunch of adoring fans.