Can Illegitimacy Drive Modern Mystery Plots?

Illegitimacy and the consequential stigmas of extramarital children have played a key role in the works of great authors, including Shakespeare, Voltaire, Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Hardy, to name but a few. Some noted mystery writers also have used out-of-wedlock birth as a plot centerpiece, including Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White and Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors. But there's no arguing that times have changed. As of 2015, 40.3% of all births in the U.S. occurred outside of marriage (compared with 7% in 1940). And today's illegitimacy rates are even higher for most European countries. The majority of births (over 50%) are outside of marriage in Iceland, Estonia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Portugal, and nearly half of births also are extramarital in the Netherlands, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Belgium, Hungary, Spain, Austria and Finland. As out-of-wedlock birth has become more commonplace, the social and legal status of illegitimate children, unwed mothers and cohabiting couples has improved. In the United States, for example, U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s found that most legal disabilities imposed on illegitimacy violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. Yet extramarital children can still provide mystery writers with murder motives. Even the old "Secret Shame" plot can be updated. For example, while illegitimacy alone may no longer be as socially unacceptable, illegitimacy resulting from other taboos--such as incest, rape or even adultery--can create a secret that someone will murder to conceal or avenge. Another plot device that still resonates is "The Unwanted Heir." When there is an inheritance to divide, even legitimate siblings can turn on each other, and a family outsider who stakes a claim can spark more than rude confrontations. "Cain and Abel" is one of the oldest plots around, so it's easy to imagine bitter feelings between marital and extramarital siblings going to lethal lengths as they vie with each other for social status, financial gain or parental affection. Finally, there's the traditional "Revenge" plot. Although many loving couples raise happy children outside of marriage today, there are less sanguine situations in which the violent feelings of a spurned lover, a betrayed spouse or an abandoned child can lead to murder. For more famous fiction works with an illegitimacy theme, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimacy_in_fiction

'Impossible Murders' Challenge Mystery Buffs

The "impossible murder" or the "locked room murder" is a fun mystery plot device that includes early examples such as Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone and Arthur Conan Doyle outings with Sherlock Holmes. These mystery puzzlers generally include a victim who is apparently alone, or a murderer who inexplicably disappears, and suspects who have solid alibis and/or could not have logically committed the crime. "Impossible murder" purists turn up their noses at any explanations that rely on supernatural agents, hokey secret passages, or gimmicks like Edgar Allan Poe's killer orangutan in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. John Dickson Carr is a master of the "locked room" tale. Consider his 1935 puzzler The Hollow Man about a professor found murdered in a room locked from the inside, with people apparently present in the hall outside during the murder, and the ground below the room's window covered in unbroken snow. Similarly, award-winning French author Paul Halter specializes in "impossible murders" and began his career with The Fourth Door: The Houdini Murders, in which seemingly impossible murders are believed to be the work of a reincarnated Houdini--until Dr. Alan Twist unveils the rational solution. Ellery Queen penned a doozy with The King Is Dead, in which a wealthy munitions magnate, whose brother threatens to shoot him at midnight, locks himself in a hermetically sealed office. When the brother, under constant observation, pulls the trigger of an empty gun at midnight, the magnate is hit by a bullet, proved to be from the same gun, in his sealed room, where no gun is found. Two Japanese authors of impossible murder stories include Soji Shimada and Keigo Higashino. Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders challenges the reader to explain a cycle of gruesome "impossible" murders that begin with the locked-room death of an artist and continue to take the lives of his relatives over four decades. In Higashino’s Salvation of a Saint, the murderer's identity is known, but she has a seemingly unbreakable alibi: She was on the other side of Japan at the time of the murder. For a list of more "locked room" mysteries, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-room_mystery

Victorian Mysteries Debut Modern Crime-Solving

Looking to escape back in time with your next mystery? England's Victorian era is a favorite setting because it can combine old-fashioned moral certitudes with relatively modern crime-solving thanks to the era's policing and forensic science advances. Indeed, the Victorian period ushered in the first true detective fiction, such as Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales, and Edgar Allan Poe's three seminal detective stories (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter). If you want to sample other British Victorian mystery masters, try Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, unique for its contemporary portrait of a daring, ruthless woman. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was famed for his Victorian Gothic mysteries, and a good example is Uncle Silas about a sinister uncle threatening a plucky heroine. But many modern writers are carrying on the Victorian mystery tradition--sometimes borrowing from the masters. For example, a series by Laurie R. King pairs an aging Sherlock Holmes with clever teen Mary Russell, starting with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. Lynn Shepherd's The Solitary House has two Charles Maddoxes, a private detective and his "thief taker"great uncle, solving a mystery involving the cast of Dickens' Bleak House. Meanwhile, The Asylum by John Harwood is inspired by Wilkie's structure and atmosphere as a young woman awakens in an asylum under a name she denies and repudiated by relatives. Among the modern Victorian-era mystery series are those penned by Anne Perry, with The Cater Street Hangman as the first entry of her popular Thomas Pitt London mysteries. While "Victorian" connotes England, the same time period has inspired great mysteries set in the U.S. One of the best is Caleb Carr's The Alienist about 1896 child mutilation murders in New York, with an investigative team made up of a New York Times crime reporter,  his "alienist" (psychologist) friend, and then NYC Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mystery series also is set in Victorian-era New York but is notable for its female sleuth, midwife Sarah Brandt, first introduced in Murder on Astor Place. For more Victorian mystery ideas: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/56604-victorian-crimes-mysteries-2013.html