I always assumed writing well would be achieved with relative ease. I’ve read thousands of books and know what I like, but it’s not as easy as I imagined, and some days it’s not possible. Life intervenes. Children are ill. Parents are unwell. The weight of all your responsibilities crush you and you can’t crawl to the laptop, or stay awake at it, or think a creative thought.

Aspiring writers are advised to write what they know. I understand that. There’s a comfort in confidence about the subject matter so one can focus on the story arc, the mechanics of pacing and conflict, both internal and external, and the tyranny of grammar. Research is minimal. Ideas can flow without interruption to check facts. It’s simply easier if you know the details without question.

Where does that leave the crime fiction writer then? I assure you I have never murdered anyone regardless of provocation. I haven’t beaten, stabbed, or shot another person. I only start fires in my fireplace, and I always check for side effects and maximal doses of any medication. I don’t poison rats and risk inadvertently poisoning owls and have only rudimentary knowledge of culinary herbs, nothing lethal. Anyone who knows me understands I use recipes as guidelines so I could never intentionally brew a noxious elixir to kill anyone.

With a few notable exceptions, crime fiction is written by individuals like me who have never murdered a single soul. There are ex-military and ex-police officers who write, and they may have killed people in the line of duty, but that’s not murder, again with a few newsworthy exceptions.  

For the overwhelming majority, we develop macabre storylines and research the how-to, hoping nothing ever happens in our lives where our browsing history and library content casts suspicion upon us by law enforcement. (My writing group would defend me, but their own research material might make my situation worse and cause them to be charged as co-conspirators.)

The trick with research is not make it obvious you’ve done it and allow that researched knowledge to slide effortlessly onto the page. It may be only a few phrases sprinkled into a 300-page manuscript. It certainly is not a lecture on the subject stuck somewhere in the book, so people know you’ve done the work. Give enough to make readers believe you and field experts not find glaring faults.

I recently had the disconcerting experience of reading the latest offering in a series where there is a mistake in the forensics that non-medical people wouldn’t probably catch. But I do have that knowledge. I have no quibble with how the victims died, but the error in discovery makes me wonder two things: does outrageous success render editors powerless to identify flaws and force corrections and is this senior citizen author able to track details like she could previously? In either case, she gets one more chance. I’ll read the next, with less enthusiastic anticipation than usual. If more errors sneak through, I’m sadly one author down on my must-read list.

Fortunately, there’s always another ready to step into the vacancy with an engaging story soundly researched and seamlessly presented.