“The Electrician’s Helper” was based on a true incident, though we didn’t find a dead body. But having worked in the building trades for decades, I’ve rubbed shoulders with some interesting characters and odd situations. This one was ripe for a murder mystery, though my background as a writer is more science fiction and fantasy.
But I’ve read everything by Raymond Chandler I could get my hands on, and a lot of Elmore Leonard and Robert B. Parker. In my younger days, I’d always watch Alfred Hitchcock Presents . . . and Perry Mason. And Sherlock Holmes was always lurking in the background.
One story in my collection, “The Iron Apples of the Stars,” is a grisly double murder mystery, with horror and alternate history elements, and another is a mock Chandler story set in LA with an SF twist. But there’s something about a pure mystery that appeals to one’s logical sense. In college I majored in math, and a mathematical proof is a lot like a mystery, only presented backwards.
Let me explain: a mathematical proof states what is to be proved, then takes one step at a time, each step easily seen to be true, until one gets there. A mystery, however, starts with an unexplained situation, then takes one back through clues until one arrives at the end with the true explanation. The clues must all be consistent with the conclusion, the explanation, the whodunit, but the art is in making it not obvious until the very end, when the reader goes, “Oh yeah! That’s right, why didn’t I think of that?’
You didn’t think of that because the writer was careful to serve up the truth one tantalizing morsel at a time, working behind the scenes like the Wizard of Oz, until the very end when the curtain is swept aside, the witness breaks down under Perry Mason’s cross-examination, and Sherlock says, “Elementary, my dear Watson . . .”
Trace Evidence 