My story, “Fire on the Mountain,” started with a challenge: to write a long short story in the style of Hitchcock’s thrillers.
To begin, I listed all the essential elements of his films: an everyman falsely accused, an absurdist plot, a McGuffin, and of course a mysterious blonde.
I chose North by Northwest as my model because it included wide open spaces, national parks, and a surreal climax.
However, I wanted to update his style to the new century, so I chose a familiar scenario in my home state of California: wildfires.
Since I’m an avid hiker and frequenter of the outdoors, I didn’t have to do much research on the landscape and scenery. I picked Redding, a small mountain town at the base of Mount Shasta, as the setting both for its beauty and its fondness for New Age mysticism.
Next, I drew from my day job at a college. To me, one of the enduring appeals of Hitchcock’s best films is they feature everyday people caught up in heightened scenarios. For my protagonist, I didn’t want some superhero or private eye or courageous cop. I am tired of reading about them. Give me an everyman any day. Instead, I chose a biology professor collecting specimens during a sabbatical.
I also didn’t want a traditional love interest from the 1950s, so I added an independent female forest ranger who is more interested in arson than in a husband. I included a range of suspects, from a family out on a camping trip to a crew of inmate firefighters. And I finished with a climactic chase through the park.
The hardest choice for me was the antagonist. After debating several options, I settled on an arson investigator from the U.S. Forest Service. He knows that the most likely culprit in any fire is the person seen closest to its ignition point, which leads him to suspect the professor. You don’t often read firefighters being cast as bad guys, but it was a fun riff on stereotypes for me.
This is the second piece of mine for AHMM with overt references to a Hitchcock film. In one of the prior stories, I included a Vertigo reference and a few allusions to Rear Window. It’s hard to write a thriller without thinking of Hitch, so I don’t try.
Trace Evidence 