Saturday, December 12: Mississippi Mud
CRIMINAL RECORDS
by John M. Floyd
On the advice of two of my children (both of them devoted Apple users), I recently bought an iMac, and during the conversion from Windows, I wound up sorting through a lot of my old MS Word files. Many of them were of course story manuscripts — and that gave me an idea.
At this site we’re always talking, sometimes in an indirect way, about short crime stories: which ones are good, which authors we like the most, how to try to construct stories with entertaining characters and plots and endings, etc. All these are subjects that are fun to write about and (I hope) read about, if you enjoy mystery fiction.
Today I’d like to cover specific crimes that happen in short stories, and — even more specific than that — the ones that have happened in my own short stories. Some of my tales (fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc.) don’t involve crimes at all, but my mysteries do because they have crimes as a part of their plots. As I think I mentioned in a previous column, there’s one handy thing about writing mystery/crime/suspense fiction: plenty of conflict is already built in.
Anyhow, the following is a list of illegal activities that have either occurred in or formed the basis for some of my published mystery/suspense stories. I went back through my files and chose a hundred of them (there are many more, but even I was beginning to get tired of it by then) and I didn’t realize until I started putting together the list that I seem to be especially fond of murder, burglary, and bank robberies, although I assure you my experience with those isn’t firsthand.
In no particular order, here are those stories and the crimes that fueled them (I even included a few settings):
“Murphy’s Lawyer” — murder/insurance fraud
“The Jumper” — jewelry store robbery, Atlanta
“Wheels of Fortune” — carjacking/bank robbery, New York City
“The Pullman Case” — locked-room murder
“Batteries Not Included” — auto theft
“The Bomb Squad” — murder (explosives)
“Old Soldiers” — con game
“Vacationland” — hotel robbery, Orlando
“Clara’s Helper” — murder (poison)
“Going Straight” — bank robbery/kidnapping
“Civic Duties” — embezzlement
“Diamond Jim” — home burglary
“Careers” — murder on airplane, Tokyo
“Della’s Cellar” — arson
“The Early Death of Pinto Bishop” — robbery/kidnapping, Old West
“Smoke Test” — murder (electrocution)
“Mugging Mrs. Jones” — suburban burglary
“A Thousand Words” — murder/bank robbery, Gulf Coast
“Good Samaritan” — burglary/ATM theft
“The Winslow Tunnel” — murder/train robbery, northwest Arkansas
“Old School” — cashbox robbery at class reunion
“Rainbow’s End” — murder/bank robbery, Alaska
“The Pony Creek Gang” — murder (poison)
“A Place in History” — murder for hire, time-travel
“Name Games” — safe-deposit-box robbery
“Illumination” — murder (radiation)
“The Medicine Show” — con game
“Survival” — murder (fall from cliff) on uncharted island
“Henry’s Ford” — robbery/forgery/auto theft
“A Stitch in Time” — prison escape/kidnapping
“Dry Spell” — cashbox robbery/assault
“Teamwork” — jewelry store robbery, Mississippi
“Family Business” — murder of business partner (rifle)
“One-Way Ticket” — armed robbery, England
“Knights of the Court” — revenge murder (pistol)
“Guardian Angel” — burglary/con game
“The Proposal” — murder (poison), Texas
“Ladies’ Day” — home burglary
“Neighborhood Watch” — bank robbery
“The Blue Wolf” — insurance fraud, South Pacific
“A Day at the Office” — locked-room murder
“A Piece of Cake” — mall store robbery
“Hardison Park” — murder (hammer)/bribery, West Coast
“Silent Partner” — murder (poison), Georgia
“A Little Knight Music” — auto theft
“Lucy’s Gold” — stagecoach robbery, 1880s Kansas
“Lookout Mountain” — store burglary
“Word Games” — murder/extortion
“A Thief in the Night” — apartment burglary
“Lindy’s Luck” — mall jewelry store robbery, Jackson, Mississippi
“Sink or Swim” — prison escape
“A Green Thumb” — murder (snakebite)
“A Watchful Eye” — extortion, Central Park
“Sneaky Pete” — horseracing fraud
“High Anxiety” — suburban burglary
“The Powder Room” — murder (explosives), rural Arkansas
“The Sixth Victim” — murder (axe)
“Frankie” — school shooting
“One Less Thing” — jewelry store robbery/loan sharking
“Four for Dinner” — kidnapping/extortion
“The Moon and Marcie Wade” — serial murder, college campus
“Newton’s Law” — murder, Old West
“King of the City” — blackmail/drug trafficking
“Christmas Gifts” — con game/robbery
“Standard Procedure” — hit-and-run
“Creativity” — murder on airplane
“Early Retirement” — insider bank robbery
“Battleground” — murder (starvation), South Africa
“Eddie’s Motel” — DUI, attempted jailbreak
“The Range” — serial murder (knife)
“Nothing But the Truth” — futuristic robbery/murder
“Run Time” — murder (explosives), state prison
“Denny’s Mountain” — murder, Arizona desert
“Little White Lies” — armed robbery
“True Colors” — murder in office building
“Customer Service” — bank robbery
“Night Work” — ATM theft, Mississippi
“Hartmann’s Case” — destruction of federal property
“Oversight” — murder (fall from airplane)
“Saving Mrs. Hapwell” — attempted murder
“The Cookie Monster” — church robbery
“Debbie and Bernie and Belle” — con game
“Thursday’s Child” — bank robbery/murder, San Francisco
“Angel on Duty” — cashbox robbery
“An Hour at Finley’s” — murder (strangulation)
“The Warden’s Game” — murder/extortion, Alaska
“Not One Word” — school robbery
“Vital Signs” — murder/bank robbery
“Speed Dial” — revenge murder/kidnapping
“Greased Lightnin’” — murder, Old West
“Backward Thinking” — home burglary
“Remembering Tally” — political corruption, attempted murder
“Button’s and Bo’s” — murder/convenience-store robbery, Mississippi
“Dooley’s Code” — suburban robbery
“Clockwork” — murder for hire (explosives)
“A Gathering of Angels” — purse-snatching
“The Judge’s Wife” — kidnapping
“Sweet Caroline” — suburban burglary
“Appearances” — robbery, state fair
“The Willisburg Stage” — murder/blackmail, rural Texas
What are some of the fictional crimes you read about the most? If you’re an author, which ones do you usually choose to write about? Do you prefer murder in the mysteries you read? For that matter, do you lean more toward lighthearted crime fiction, or serious? Do you like standalone stories? Series stories? Familiar settings? Exotic settings?
Or does it even matter? Maybe variety is the spice of life …
YOu know what I like best, John? Stories where you can’t figure out exactly what crime was committed. I mean, you know SOMETHING illegal (or that should be illegal) happened, but it’s hard to name.
I’m thinking of a story that appeared in EQMM probably 25 years ago, and I have no idea on the author or title, but the main character was an actress on a live soap opera. She changed the script during the show, wiping out one of her rivals. What do you call the crime of killing a fictional character?
Short stories give you a lot more leeway in crime. It seems that in crime novels, the crime is always (99.98%) murder. I often look at the types of motives behind the murders.
BTW, John, I love your titles.
Rob, your comment brings to mind the early novels of Patricia McGerr. Her first novel (Pick Your Victim) is an armchair mystery of sorts, in which a GI at a military base gets a scrap of newspaper used as padding in a care package, and the scrap reports a murder, but the name of the victim was torn off.
Steve, you’re right–I think readers are sometimes more receptive to lesser crimes in short stories. Maybe the stakes just always must be higher in novels, who knows?
Rob, if you do recall the title of the EQ story you referred to, please let me know. That’s one I’d like to find and read.
In looking over your titles, I found myself thinking So that’s who wrote that!
For Christmas, I want a MacBook Air, but this year the post office ditched the letters to Santa. (sigh)
Leigh, you just can’t count on the P.O. anymore, right? (Except in A Miracle on 34th Street.) As for Apple, I’d been threatening to make the move from Windows for some time, and even though I’m an old PC guy, I think this was the right choice for me. Love this iMac.
My little company test drove the Mac in 1984 and by the end of the year, we had a PC, an Amiga, and a Mac, all starving for memory.
We wrote software for IBM who was impressed by our reference cards and supplemental materials, all designed and written on the Mac. The love affair hasn’t ceased.
Hello, John! More intriguing questions from the Mississippi Mud, I see. If you can make change for a nickel I’ll give you my two cents.
I think you’ve nailed it with the variety line. It all depends on the delivery. A theft, for instance, can be almost as shocking as a murder, depending on the circumstances of the characters involved, and the setting.
Even in terms of light versus serious my taste vacillates. Sometimes I don’t want to be crushed by a violent, brooding story; Sometimes I do.
I don’t have a formula for how I incorporate the criminal element in my own fiction. Sometimes I come up with an idea where the crime wants to take center stage, but I don’t think that’s my norm. Other times, if there’s a criminal element at all, it happens before or after the action of the story, or behind the scenes.
There you have it, John. I hope you had a festive and merry Christmas!