by Vicki Delany
I am delighted to welcome back my friend and neighbour Janet Kellough to Type M. She's got a fascinating new venture to tell us about.
A MYSTERIOUS MASH-UP
I became a crime writer by accident - I had
a story that just begged to be told as a mystery. I had never written a mystery
novel before, so it was with a great deal of trepidation that I first began to
write. The result was On the Head of a
Pin, the first book in The Thaddeus
Lewis Mystery Series. I wasn’t too alarmed when I was asked to take a crack
at a second book, because I had discovered a very interesting thing – the basic
structure of a mystery plot is a wonderful skeleton to hang almost anything on.
(Yes, puns intended.)
The Thaddeus
Lewis books are full of mid-19th century Canadian history. I
know, it’s a topic that makes most people roll their eyes. But hey – throw in a
murder or two, have your sympathetic hero solve the puzzle, bring the story to
an end in a satisfying manner, and presto chango you can actually get people to
read history! I’m not the only one who has realized this. There are whole
series built around things like cooking, Christmas, bird-watching, archaeology
- subjects that obviously fascinate the writer and that she wants to tell you
something about. It’s frequently fascinating stuff, but it’s the need to find
out whodunit that keeps you reading.
My latest book The Bathwater Conspiracy is different from anything I’ve written
before. It’s speculative fiction, the story set in an imagined “what if” place
where it would have been all too easy to just make stuff up. I could have invented
alien races, given my protagonist super-powers, created technology that would
solve everything in the flash of a computer chip. But I didn’t want to write
that. I wanted a story that had its feet planted firmly in a credible scenario.
And in the same way that the Thaddeus
Lewis books draw their fictional plots from real, documented history, real
scientific principles are woven into the plot of The Bathwater Conspiracy.
I figure the best science fiction holds a
mirror to present day society, and I had some things I wanted to talk about – things
like bioethics, gender, religion - so
for me, it was a no-brainer. I turned again to that wonderful mystery structure
that lays out the premise and then invites the reader to consider all plausible
explanations within the framework of the setting.
Right up front, there’s a dead body and a puzzle
and a cop who wants to know what’s going on. Because the story is set in a
mythical future, I can present possibilities that don’t exist in our own world
– unusual suspects, unfamiliar settings, unique plot twists. But because it’s a
mystery, familiar motives like ambition, lust and jealousy find a very
comfortable place in the story. And as long as I keep the plot consistent with
the world I’ve created, the mystery structure will spin merrily away, driving
the plot forward and offering the astute reader an opportunity to solve the
puzzle before the protagonist does.
So should you file The Bathwater Conspiracy under Science Fiction or under Mystery? As
much as I dislike the North American habit of labeling books by genre, I have
to admit that it’s a complete mash-up – a speculative fiction/mystery/police
procedural/post-apocalyptic thriller. But at the very core of it that lovely
mystery skeleton holds everything together and keeps you reading until you find
out “whodunit”.
Janet
Kellough is the author of The Thaddeus Lewis
Mystery Series and the stand-alone novels
The Palace of the Moon and The
Pear Shaped Woman. Her newest novel The
Bathwater Conspiracy was released this
month by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.
