The Great Detective: Ten Ways Holmes Influenced the Mystery Genre: Guest Post by Amber M. Royer

Amber M. Royer:  The Great Detective: Ten Ways Holmes Influenced the Mystery Genre

In A Study in Chocolate, the fifth book in my Bean to Bar Mysteries, my protagonist receives a copy of A Study in Scarlet, as a way of being called out by a Sherlock Holmes fan who is the book’s antagonist.  This killer is trying to take on the role of Moriarty (though this person is nowhere near up to the task) and is trying to cast Felicity as Holmes.  

I had a great deal of fun writing this fan dynamic – as Holmes is considered by many to be THE iconic detective. The Guinness Book of World Records lists him as, “the most portrayed human literary character in film and television history.” It’s not the first time I’ve referenced him. In the third book in my series, part of the plot surrounds a Holmes-themed LARP (live action roleplaying game) taking place on board a mystery-themed cruise. (I tend to reference all of my favorite detectives at some point – which isn’t that different from Doyle himself, who had Sherlock and Watson discuss Poe’s Detective Dupin, who was obviously something of the model for Holmes.  In a somewhat meta move, Holmes declares himself the superior detective, right in the first novel, A Study in Scarlet.)

Poe may have set the stage, but it was Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes that captured the public imagination and basically invented a new literary genre.  Here’s my top ten favorite things about the legacy Holmes left us mystery writers.  And mystery fans.
 
1. The “Consulting” Detective – Dupin and Holmes are two early examples of characters who are solving crimes, despite not being part of organized law enforcement. Dupin’s motivations for solving cases shifts in each of the three stories he is a part of.  But Sherlock Holmes is different.  He has intentionally educated himself in all the sciences related to criminology – leaving huge gaps in other areas of basic knowledge. Many fictional detectives that followed have had similar interests in criminology, keen skills of observation, and a need to either solve puzzles or find justice. Characters such as Shawn Spenser and Richard Castle wind up accompanying the authorities, in a true “consulting detective” capacity, but more loosely, this is the model for every amateur sleuth to ever sneak away from a cake shop or library to solve an inexplicably long series of murders.

2. The Sidekick/Sounding Board Friend – As an audience, we respond to Dr. Watson as the narrator of the Sherlock Holmes stories. This serves two purposes: to blunt Holmes’ abrasive personality, and also to give us someone whose shoes to step into to watch the detective’s brilliant mind. Watson-type characters still exist, obviously.  (My favorite current example is Chet, from Chet and Bernie, who happens to be a dog who is thrilled to watch his seedy-detective master solve crimes.) This idea gets flipped in series where the detective is the first person narrator (as in my series, and many other cozy mysteries). That friend character is still there – but more to give the protagonist someone to bounce ideas off of, and the opportunity to say out loud things the protag would only be thinking.

3. Fascination With Trace Evidence – Holmes was obsessed with forensic science, sometimes conducting experiments on himself, and maintaining a full chemistry lab at 221 Baker Street. The Royal Society of Chemistry even gave Holmes honorary membership. Their website says, “Holmes began, albeit it fictionally, a tradition that is now part of everyday policing around the world in which science and rational thinking are allied to combat evil.” So Holmes also gives us the pattern for CSI and Bones, and every other fictional detective that is focused in on science.

4. Created the Iconic “Detective” Look – The deerstalker hat that we associate with Holmes was never mentioned in the pages of the actual stories or novels. (Though there is a reference to "his ear-flapped travelling cap.")  We first get the illustrations of Holmes in a deerstalker from Sidney Paget, who illustrated the stories Doyle wrote for The Strand Magazine. While the actual hat would have only been worn for traveling, Paget continued illustrating Holmes wearing the hat in London – and the image stuck.  Now, just the illustration of a deerstalker hat by itself gives up a symbol for not only Holmes, but for detectives in general. As writers, our takeaway is: if you want an iconic detective, give that person an iconic look. Poirot twirling his fastidiously waxed mustache. Columbo with his rumpled raincoat.  Dick Tracy and his yellow fedora.  Adrian Monk with his wipes. This is part of what makes all these characters larger than life.

5. Highlighting Deductive Reasoning – Doyle gives evidence of his influence from Poe’s Detective Dupin’s focus on deductive reasoning. Several times in the stories, Sherlock compares himself to Dupin, noting the similarities. There are a lot of characters who in turn give nods back to Sherlock for their interest in deductive reasoning and crime solving. If you look at the opening credits of Diagnosis Murder, the collection of Holmes memorabilia is right there. In Castle, Beckett gives Castle a deerstalker when he goes out on his own as a private investigator.  Even when the nods aren’t there, characters like Shawn Spencer and Adrian Monk are showing off their hyper-awareness of detail that allows them to solve murders others can’t.

6. Emphasized the Need for a Different Perspective – one of the hardest things about writing any sort of consulting or amateur detective is giving a reason why this person is the one solving the crime in question – instead of the authorities. With Holmes, it was his sheer deductive brilliance, honed at great cost to other areas of his education and ability to function in society. His obsession with following the clues gave him a different perspective. That’s still something we’re trying to do with characters today. I’ve focused on making Felicity’s shop a hub in the community, giving access to people who the police might not have thought to question. I’ve also given her empathy and a need to find meaning in loss (as she is a relatively recent widow) as the driving force.

7. Set the Pattern for the “Big Reveal” – I love the way in most mysteries, the clues come together, the detective figures it out, and then the audience gets a scene where the baddie is captured and all our suspicions are confirmed. (Or we find out our guesses were off base, and we’re genuinely surprised at the reveal of the killer’s identity. Which – if we can follow a logical thread of clues back to the introduction of the actual culprit, can be equally satisfying.) In the Holmes stories, we sometimes see Watson standing in our place, ready to receive the big reveal.  One of my favorite examples of this is in, “The Dying Detective,” where misdirection has kept Watson unaware of Holmes’s subterfuge, though the clues are clearly there.

8. Created the Modern Concept of Fandom – Sherlock Holmes captured the popular imagination of his author’s times in a way that hadn’t really happened before.  When Doyle wrote the story where he killed off Holmes, 20,000 people unsubscribed from The Strand Magazine out of outrage.  Some sources say people wore black and openly mourned. Not able to handle losing this favorite character, people started writing Holmes fan fiction as far back as 1897. (Holmes fans were the ones who coined the word canon, when it all started getting confusing.)  There are still Sherlock Holmes fan societies, keeping their favorite character alive today.

9. Adaptations – There have been numerous film adaptations of Holmes stories, as well as different takes on Holmes in both print and film. There have even been cartoons.  (The Great Mouse Detective, anyone?  That one was a favorite of mine, growing up.) The different takes on the character, even in media coming out near the same time, are fascinating – for example, the different ways the source material was adapted for Elementary vs. Sherlock – and the much stronger action-adventure interpretation of the Robert Downey, Jr. films. There’s a fun take in the new Enola Holmes films, which pictures Sherlock as the protagonist’s older brother, giving a different side to Sherlock’s personality.
 
10. Pop Culture And Meta References – There are a number of other literary characters who are huge fans of Sherlock Holmes. There are two episodes in Star Trek Next Generation where Data dons a deerstalker and the holodeck conjures up Moriarty for him to prove that he can dynamically solve a crime as well as a human (and later, Moriarty tries to escape the computer.)  Probably my favorite homage, though, is Detective Conan (also titled Case Closed), an anime where teenage detective Kudo Shinichi is forced to take an experimental drug that turns him into a child. On the run, he takes on the alias Edogawa Conan – based on his two favorite authors – Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Ranpo, the pen name of the guy who played a formative role in the development of Japanese mystery and thriller fiction. The Holmes connection, runs through the story in subtle ways (they live in Beika City – Baker City – after all).  In the sixth feature-length film, Conan and his friends become trapped in virtual reality game that sets them down in Holmes’s London, and it is Conan’s knowledge of the Holmes characters that allows them all to survive. (The Case Closed series is still ongoing and extremely popular in Japan, with over 900 episodes and – at present – 25 feature films.) 

I’m sure I’ve missed a few of the things people love about Holmes.  What’s your favorite thing about this iconic literary detective?

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Amber Royer writes the Chocoverse space opera series, and the Bean to Bar Mysteries. She is also the author of Story Like a Journalist: a Workbook for Novelists, and has co-authored a chocolate-related cookbook with her husband. She also teaches creative writing and is an author coach.

 

FOODIE FRIDAYS: Art as Growth in Cozy Mysteries: Guest Post by Amber Royer

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Amber Royer: Art as Growth in Cozy Mysteries

In my latest cozy mystery, A Shot in the 80% Dark, my chocolate-maker sleuth learns about treating chocolate as an art medium. I hadn’t really thought about what that would do to Felicity as a character or to the structure of the book. Rather, I was just focusing in on a different aspect of what can be done with chocolate. Felicity doesn’t see herself as creative or artistic. And that’s probably my fault, as her author. I had given her so much to deal with in life that I hadn’t really let her have the breathing room to sit down and reflect on her creative side.

Her artistic instincts are there, from the way she handles chocolate to the way she has decorated her business, to the labels she’s done for her chocolate bars.  She just assumes that because she doesn’t have talent for drawing or painting, she can’t do art with a capital A. But then the gallery she’s been commissioned to do a chocolate sculpture for wants to host an immersive exhibit surrounding the photographs of cacao trees that Felicity has taken in her visits to the origin of the beans she uses in the chocolate she makes. Felicity has thought about those photographs as stock for her social media – but having someone see the beauty in the images makes Felicity realize that maybe her whole social media account has been a creative outlet that has been serving her as a lifeline all along.

I’m big about writing characters with sound psychological responses, and if you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Self-actualization is at the top. Felicity has been dealing with grief (she lost her husband prior to the first book) and has been gradually realizing that she needs to empathize more and to take more time listening to her friends if she wants to have the deep connections you that will get you steady on the rung of Love and Belonging. But over the first three books, she’s been building those connections, so now, it’s psychologically plausible for her to reach up towards that higher rung.

By moving her upwards, I let her have more positive energy in her life, which does wonders for the people around her.  It also helps keep it from feeling like the series is stagnating.  With cozies, so much of it has to stay the same in order not to confuse readers coming in at the middle of the series, or alienating readers who loved the first books. Giving Felicity’s outlook an arc, and her artistic side aspirations helps keep it interesting to write, too.Now that I’ve included Felicity’s artistic side, I feel like I need to lean into it in later books in the series.  The book-after-next is going to be titled A Study In Chocolate.  There will be a chocolate portrait involved in the plot. Painting with chocolate or on chocolate is actually more common than you might think. (I took a class a couple of years ago where I got meta and painted a cacao tree on a chocolate bar.  I’m not the best with a paintbrush, but I do like to tinker with art forms that require that kind of skill. I’m better with photography and graphic design – or words – but you don’t have to be objectively “good” at a specific form of art to have fun doing it.) 

Felicity doesn’t even have a favorite artist at this point. (There is mention in the first couple of books in the series that she appreciates the local sculptures that have been carved out of dead trees as a symbol of resiliency, and the sculptures of endangered sea turtles – one of which is practically on her business’s doorstep. But I don’t think this really counts as a favorite artist, since she connects more with the reason for the art.) I need to spend some time thinking about WHY she doesn’t have a deeply personal favorite.  After all, everyone connects to art in some way. It may be an overly popular choice, but my favorite artist is Van Gogh. I did a project on the impressionists, and I kept coming back to his Café Terrace at Night, because it was so warm and inviting.  As I learned more about the artists, I kept feeling a connection to Van Gogh more than to the others. His struggles with his art, the way he felt like an outsider in many situations, his tumultuous changes in career – these all mirrored things I had felt, but in a magnified way.  He knew what it was like to pour himself into a project only to have it crash and burn. He kept creating art in the face of that, kept trying to move forward despite the breakdown that held him back, doing painting after painting of that tree he could see out of his window, because he needed his creative outlet. I’ve been much the same with words. I find that when I don’t write, I’m more prone to anxiety and depression, because I lose both my sense of routine, and my ability to use my creative side to put order to my life and help process emotion.

Felicity is familiar with a number of painters. When she finally has to choose a favorite artist in A Study in Chocolate, I don’t think Van Gogh is going to wind up being hers too. As research for that book, my husband and I recently visited Galveston’s Art Walk Event. (The books are set on Galveston Island, with Felicity’s fictional shop on the Historic Strand.) We got to see images of local landmarks, and some of my favorite marine animals, done in different scales and styles. Given all of that, and the vibrancy of the local art scene, I’m beginning to think that Felicity’s favorite painter might turn out to be a local artist.
It will be fun to have the excuse to experience more art to find out.

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Amber Royer writes the Chocoverse space opera series, and the Bean to Bar Mysteries. She is also the author of Story Like a Journalist: a Workbook for Novelists, and has co-authored a chocolate-related cookbook with her husband. She also teaches creative writing and is an author coach.

 

LEARNING ABOUT SEA TURTLES: Guest Post by Amber M. Royer

Amber M. Royer:

Learning About Sea Turtles 

When it comes to researching something for a book, eventually the easily accessible resources will leave you at a dead end, and the scholarly ones can be above your pay grade. You need to talk to an actual expert. The beauty of talking to a real actual person is that as a writer, you don’t always realize what parts of a topic you don’t fully understand – and so you might not even know the right questions to ask. 

In 70% Dark Intentions, the second book in my Bean to Bar Mysteries, part of the plot revolves around endangered sea turtles that nest on Galveston Island. I wanted to be careful with what I had to say on the subject, in part because I wanted to get turtle biology and behaviors right – but also because I didn’t want to say anything that would inadvertently encourage someone to interfere with these amazing animals. 

I’ve always liked sea turtles, even more so when I got to visit a turtle sanctuary in Acapulco and see some of the tiny little ones awaiting release into the ocean. (I don’t remember what species those turtles were, but I did take this picture.) It’s one reason I gave Logan (one of my protagonist Felicity’s two potential love interests) the name Ridley Puddle Jumpers for his flight business. After all, the Kemp’s ridley nests on Galveston beaches. It was a reference that showed how this transplanted guy from Minnesota had started to form connections to the island, and I meant to leave it at that. But in the first Bean to Bar Mystery, I had made references to the tree sculptures (trees that were drowned during hurricane Hugo but left in place, with the wood carved into chainsaw sculptures) as a symbol of renewal. I knew that for Logan, sea turtles symbolized hope and second chances. So when we visited Galveston last, and I saw the Turtles Around Town sculptures dotting the street where Felicity has her fictional shop, I knew the turtles – and the sculptures -- needed to show up in the book. 

I did my due diligence and researched basic information about the turtles. But what I needed to know was how turtle nests were handled when found on the coast, so I decided to approach an expert. I have found that most people are passionate about their work, especially if you have enough knowledge about their area of expertise to discuss it intelligently. (You don’t have to be a fellow expert, or even able to discuss the topic on a professional level – just reasonably well informed.) Things also tend to go better if you have a list of questions to ask, and possibly even a few excerpts of what you are planning to write to present with the idea that you want to make sure you have the terminology right – not enough to overwhelm the expert, just enough to get across the feel of the project. I think the excerpts I presented to my turtle expert reassured her that I was taking the topic seriously, and that I had attempted to do my research. 

But – there were a few things I had gotten wrong. And far better to have an expert correct me in the drafting stage (even if I felt a bit silly) than to have readers point it out to me later. 

One of the biggest was when I said that Kemp’s ridleys had always been in the area. This was especially embarrassing, because I’m from the Texas Gulf Coast. And I don’t remember people talking about sea turtles in Galveston when I was a kid, except for the fact that there was a restaurant called Tortuga, right near the Seawall. I personally have never seen a sea turtle nest. But I assumed that lack of experience was just because the turtles were so endangered. Kid’s don’t catch everything, right? In this case . . . wrong. Kemp’s ridleys were first documented nesting on Galveston beaches in 2002. Consulting with an expert kept me from making a major factual error. 

Realizing that I hadn’t even known what questions to ask, the turtle expert I had contacted gave me several scientific papers to read, where I learned about the fascinating efforts to create a thriving breeding colony of these turtles on Padre Island – many of which the turtle expert had been involved with. The main takeaway: with only one active breeding beach in Mexico used by most of the Kemp’s ridleys, there needed to be a backup location in case of natural disaster, which resulted in a multi-national conservation project. (This is of course, a vast oversimplification.) I learned about turtle imprinting (the theory that nesting turtles return to the beaches where they were born), which was further researched with the tracking program used to measure Kemp’s ridley populations, and how “head starting” turtles that were born on one beach and released on a different one likely led to turtles from Mexico nesting in Galveston. (At least that’s how I understand it – some of those papers were above my pay grade.) 

The biggest challenge once I had all that information: not putting it all in the book. Logan is fascinated by the sea turtles, so in my mind, he knows the information, but it doesn’t make sense for him to share everything he knows in dialogue. (He’s not a viewpoint character, so it’s never a problem.) 

When we finally got back around to the original question of how nests are handled, I found that what happens in reality (immediate relocation of the eggs to the breeding colony) was different than how turtle nests are handled in many other places – and different from what I wanted to do in my book. And in the end, I decided that that is actually for the best, considering my original concern about writing anything that might negatively impact the turtles. I added an author’s note saying that this book included a fictional what if the nest were left in place – and a note about who to call and what to do in the event the reader should actually locate a turtle nest to help keep the little ones safe. 

I know a lot of writers are hesitant to approach experts, but try to go into the situation with a positive mindset. I’ve asked a ton of odd research questions over the years (ask me sometime about that one time I wound up on a tour for incoming astrophysics grad students) and only once have I had someone flat out tell me no. I would say that as long as you are earnest in wanting to get the aspects of the book that they know about as accurate as possible, you are professional in the way you approach your request, you don’t take up too much of the expert’s time, and you do as much research as you can ahead of time, more often than not, people are happy to share knowledge they are passionate about. 

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Amber Royer is the author of The Chocoverse Science Fiction Series and The Bean to Bar Mysteries. She likes to tell stories that involve complex characters caught up in sticky situations larger than themselves, with no easy answers in sight.

NOTE: Here is the link and re-use information for the stock photo included in the images folder: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kemp%27s_Ridley_sea_turtle_nesting.JPG

Chocolate Maker vs. Chocolatier: How Choosing a Protagonist’s Focus Changes the Parameters of Cozy: Guest Post by Amber Royer

AMBER ROYER:

Chocolate Maker vs. Chocolatier: How Choosing a Protagonist’s Focus Changes the Parameters of Cozy 

When you think of cozy mysteries set in a chocolate shop, you probably picture someone making bonbons and fudge, dipping candied oranges in coverture, and stacking toffee into glass cloches. These chocolatiers can be true artists, working with flavor, design and texture to create memorable experiences. And there are a number of excellent mystery series with chocolatiers at their centers. But when I decided to write a mystery about chocolate, I wanted to do something different. I wrote a science fiction trilogy about chocolate first, and while researching and publicizing those books, I met a number of people in the craft chocolate industry. These artisans have much in common with coffee roasters and wine makers. Many of them travel to the countries where chocolate is grown, or work with farmers to increase the quality of cacao beans. Chocolate makers often build or repair their own equipment, and some have developed the ability to judge bean roasts by smell alone. 

I chose a craft chocolate maker as my sleuth for the Bean to Bar Mysteries for several reasons. Obviously, I didn’t want to waste all that research. I’ve taken bean to bar chocolate making classes from some of the founders of the craft chocolate movement, winnowed cacao beans with a hairdryer on my patio, visited chocolate shops in multiple countries, taken a jeep down a dry-ish riverbed river to visit a cacao plantation, even started growing cacao trees as houseplants. 

But having a passion doesn’t make a good book – unless you have a protagonist who uses that passion to fulfill the needs of the plot. I needed this character to be a chocolate maker, because she has to feel a bit larger than life for some of the plots I have planned for later books – while at the same time being a 32-year-old widow who owns a lop-eared bunny and lives with her aunt and uncle. The drive to problem solve, and the innate taste for adventure I’ve seen in many of the real-world craft chocolate professionals I’ve interviewed seemed like a perfect fit. 

Every novel has a scope and a scale. Scope is the amount of time and space covered in a story. Scale is the magnitude of what is included (like the budget for a film – more characters, more settings = larger scale productions). Scale also includes the sweep – the grandness of the events at hand. In the cozy starring a character working in a shop, both of those elements are usually very small. Small scopes allow for a sense of intimacy, which is why the majority of these are written first person (the confessional voice, after all) and some of them are present tense (throwing the reader into the midst of the events). Limiting the number of settings and the size of the cast (at least as far as suspects) allows for a shorter book with a tighter focus. 

NOTE: With cozy series, there tend to be cameo appearances from characters that were important to earlier books who still live in the setting, but this doesn’t necessarily broaden the scale, as their stories have already been explored. 

I wanted to stick with a tight scope (most every book I’ve ever written takes place in less than a week), but I want to gradually broaden the scale. I tried to imply that with the plot of the first book, where the conflict turns out to be over more than a single murder. Almost immediately, Felicity finds herself teaming up with a guy who used to be private security to the stars – and who has a muddled past. As the series progresses, this is going to develop into larger scale conflicts, as his world starts colliding with hers – and she has to start making decisions about the scale of the world she’s prepared to live in. 

Several aspects of Felicity’s life make chocolate maker a better fit for her than chocolatier, because that different lens of looking at what chocolate is changes her way of looking at everything – and everyone. Her being a chocolate maker changes the parameters of what potential plots can fit into her ‘verse, because suddenly she’s dealing with import laws and international influences. It becomes a different KIND of cozy, than if she was ordering and working with pre-made chocolate. That difference is subtle in the first book, when she is still struggling with fitting back into the island community she left a decade before. But it will become more pronounced later on. 

The most important aspect of her character is her need for reinvention. Out of all the chocolate makers I’ve spoken with, not one of them said they grew up wanting to be Willie Wonka. This is a career that people fall into because something sparks a passion, and often they are giving up a career doing something only tangentially related. A number of the chocolate makers I’ve met started out as computer guys or engineers – so they geek out over the process or the machines. So it makes perfect sense to have Felicity give up a career as a physical therapist because she can’t stand being around people in pain due to her own grief – to turn to something that involves chemistry, which she excelled at in school, and also makes people happy. 

It has become a trope to have a cozy character returning home because of a job failure, often combined with a bad breakup. I wanted to step away from that, and explore other reasons for homecoming. Felicity’s move home doesn’t have failure at its root at all, but rather loss – her husband passed away, which prompts her move/career change. Which, ironically, gives her a less negative place to start from. This isn’t about re-building her self-esteem while others continually underestimate her (which is what the job loss trope lends itself to) – but rather, it is about her figuring out how to build a life that means something to her, since her compass has been stripped away. 

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Amber Royer writes the CHOCOVERSE comic telenovela-style foodie-inspired space opera series, and the BEAN TO BAR MYSTERIES. She is also the author of STORY LIKE A JOURNALIST: A WORKBOOK FOR NOVELISTS, which boils down her writing knowledge into an actionable plan involving over 100 worksheets to build a comprehensive story plan for your novel. She blogs about creative writing technique and all things chocolate at www.amberroyer.com.