Wanna know how to write a mystery? Read Hammett.
Hell you can even just watch John Houston’s The Maltese Falcon. It was his first film and he did what so few directors bother with, he followed the novel almost exactly.
Which is why the novel and the film have become the absolute lodestone for mysteries.
Now you can’t hurt yourself reading any of Hammett’s novels. In just five books he established the iconic plots and characters for mysteries for generations. The Thin Man sets the standard for couples sleuths, the Red Harvest is the inspiration for every Stranger Comes to Town Things Happen story and The Dain Curse is the most complex mystery every plotted. (Spoiler: The mystery is solved by the end of the first chapter). The Glass Key establishes the basis for political intrigue but it is the Falcon that makes murder magnificent.
And even though we love Sam Spade, (Ably brought to life by Bogie), it is the cheerful, jovial menace of Kasper Gutman (unforgettably played by Sidney Greenstreet) which establishes the one unbreakable rule of any heroic adventure. The hero can only be as heroic as the villain allows him to be.
No think about that for just a minute. Could Clarice Starling be as compelling without the ominous presence of Hannibal Lecter? Would we care about Nakatomi Plaza if Hans Gruber and his merry men hadn’t come along? (Made Bruce Willis a big star in one film) Would Bogie be Sam Spade without Kasper Gutman?
No, of course not. Oh we’d still love Sam Spade cause he’s Bogie after all, but would he be instantly memorable?
Take a look at the legacy left by Kasper Gutman and his alter ego Sidney Greenstreet, cause it was Greenstreet who gave Gutman his lingering menace.
There have been dozens of tries at making another Maltese Falcon, some even with the same name, (Anyone remember the 1931 or 1936 versions?) and television has done it endlessly, the good, Hawaii Five-O F.O.B. Honolulu, with Wo Fat as the jolly fat man, the outstanding Art Carney TVM with Lily Tomlin, The Late Show and the bad, Star Trek the Next Generation The Big Goodbye, with the lamentably named Cyrus Redblock ghosting Mr. Greenstreet.
And the one thing remains constant, the image of the jovial fat man as a deadly opponent and terrifying villain.
And Mr. Greenstreet did it all without a single bit of violence, sure he threatened and connived, but no physical intimidation. And that is why to this very day, in the next century, the image of a jovial fat man strikes an immediate chill, it’s Kasper Gutman come to get us.
And because of that reaction, rather like seeing snake, a spider or a great white shark we know things are going to get tough for the good guys. And they need to.
There’s nothing worse than an under employed hero. The poor guy sits around twiddling his thumbs, whistling Dixie and tiddling his winks without so much as a shadow to jump at. No unless some rotter comes along and makes things bad for all and sundry there’s no reason to have a hero. Might just as well be a Hallmark romance with everything working out peachy for the happy couple.
So to be a great hero you have to have a villain. And all the better if he is a really loathsome, degenerate, perverted monster. It’s hard to get your cape to flow if all you are doing is keeping girl scouts from be short-change on a cookie sale.
No you need carnage, destruction and the Four Horsemen, that’s the spirit and so much the better if there is no way anyone can fix the problem. That allows the hero to be clever too. Enter the next generation hero, the Hacker, the nerd scientist, even, shudder...a girl.
Yeppers, a girl can shrug out of her heels and stockings and sharpen her martial arts skills and become the hero, (Thank you Honor Blackman, Dame Diana Rigg, Dame Linda Thorson and Dame Joanna Lumley, the Avenger girls who taught every lady it’s okay to put up a fight), trading snappy come backs and lightning blows with the best caped crusader skill and vanquishing evil just like the tough guys.
But they still have to have that guy(or gal) with the mad on for everyone. Give me a villain and I promise a hero won’t be far behind.
So what? I hear you asking.
So this, you want to write a great or even a passable mystery, you have got to have a bad guy. You have to spend as much time on the bad guy as you do on the hero, maybe not the same amount of space, but the same amount of thought.
You have to remember, the foulness of your villain indicates the studliness of your hero. (Okay so ladies do not want nor actually have the reason to be studly, but they can be paragons with good manners and a highly developed passion for shoes.)
If you aren’t getting the answers you want from agents and publishers, maybe the catch isn’t in your writing but in your villain.
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