The Witch Elm & how to write a good mystery
I am obsessed with Tana French. I recently finished The Witch Elm, her latest mystery novel. As I read, I covered it in sticky notes, trying to figure out how French constructed it--what phrases and sentences piqued my interest? When did I feel the stakes getting higher? When did I suspect whom? What thematic questions and patterns of language was I noticing weaving it all together? I decided I wanted to write a little bit about what reading The Witch Elm reminded and revealed to me about what I love and want to emulate in my own mystery novel. These are those reminders:
1. Early on, introduce the idea that something is going to get really messed up, but do it by dropping hints that connect a vague looming catastrophe with a location, person, or event, not by starting off with an excerpt from later in the novel (as some mysteries do). It takes The Witch Elm FOREVER to get to the murder mystery, but very early on, the novel trains readers to think of Ivy House, the eventual location of the murder, as a place associated with tragedy and nostalgia. In the second paragraph of chapter one, the narrator says, I donât think anyone could convince me, even now, that I was anything other than lucky to have the Ivy House. Itâs that little aside--even now--that feels prophetic and mysterious and doom-laden and makes me want to read more.
2. Use the mystery genre to address thematic questions that it is ideally suited to consider. French is always asking big unanswerable questions in her mysteries--about memory, or home, or family, or madness--and she knows how the genreâs most basic elements (like violent acts, defamiliarizing the familiar, and not really knowing the people we think we know) work really really well to investigate these hugely complex and urgent questions. She also weaves issues of class, colonialism, heteronormativity, and the like so deeply into the mystery plots that if you tried to take them out, they would completely fray apart. In The Witch Elm, sheâs asking questions about privilege and power by getting into the mind of a man whoâs a classic ânice guyâ: white, straight, oblivious, well-meaning. His encounters with violence and murder throw his confident, privileged sense of self into chaos. There are no easy answers about how much he learns and why he does what he does and what we think and feel about him in the end. The mystery plot wraps up, but, as always, French leaves us with the sense of larger questions unresolved. As in all her novels, the world never goes back to being a safe, knowable place.
3. Be interesting. Bizarre scenarios. Puzzling clues. Plenty of reveals. Lots of atmosphere. Let a skull fall out of the hole in a tree. Let the protagonist have to rethink his entire adolescence. Donât get too hung up on being ârealisticâ--but do make sure the mystery plot comes together in cohesive and satisfying ways. French gets away with a lot of weird stuff because she makes it work, plot-wise (and because her prose is so ridiculously good).
4. Make us care about the characters. But let them do terrible things. We care about them more, not less, if they hurt us. Sometimes I hesitate to make characters I like do things that might make readers not like them anymore. But the mystery genre requires it--and these things raise the stakes, give us character insights, and break our hearts in satisfying ways. I want to avoid spoilers for Frenchâs novel here, so Iâll just say that I was compelled, not simply repelled, by the characters who do bad things, because they are complex and fascinating and because, in complicated difficult ways, sometimes I found that I was still on their side.
5. Include those long, detail-rich descriptions of places and memories and people and feelings that you really want to write. Jasmine creepers swinging dizzily outside the window, back and forth. A watercolor off-kilter on the wall, swallows in a heart-stopping nosedive. Crazy slants of light across the table. Sensory descriptions can create atmosphere, add to the sense of urgency, guide readers to feel certain ways. Theyâre not boring--and they donât just hold up the action. Donât sacrifice prose style, description, reflection, or character building for the mystery plot.
