How to rite Killer Fiction by Carolyn Wheat Page B

ties her, we see the blood trickling down her arms, we experience her agony of despair as she tries and fails to loosen her bonds.
    That's what you want in your confrontation scene. The rest of the book may involve the highest levels of ratiocination since the late, great Ellery, but for the confrontation chapters, go for pure adrenaline. Slow down the filmstrip and milk the situation for every ounce of terror. Let the detective feel every possible emotion from deepest despair to exhilarating hope as she struggles with a killer bent on eliminating her.
    What, then, is the difference between a suspense ending and a mystery ending with suspense overtones? Suspense is its own reward; we don't care in a suspense novel if we know from page one who the villain is. In a mystery, we can keep the puzzle going even through the confrontation; it's no less satisfying if the detective is shoved into the autoclave by an unknown killer than if he's already identified the villain as Evil Doctor X. The suspense is just an extra on the menu; the main dish is the whodunit.
    The Coda_
    Linda Barnes closes Snapshot with a seder. To this traditional Jewish ceremonial dinner her detective Carlotta Carlyle invites a decidedly untra-ditional family. Carlotta's friends Gloria and Roz (who wears a pink T-shirt that says "Will work for sex"); Roz's new boyfriend, a mobster named Sam Gianelli, Carlotta's Little Sister Paolina and her Colombian family all sit around the table. Now that the crime has been solved, the unorthodox group that surrounds Carlotta has become even closer and they celebrate that closeness with a ceremonial dinner.
    The cozy coda shows that the fabric of society has been rewoven after it was torn by the victim and his killer (according to W.H. Auden, the victim was as much a disrupter as the murderer). We see order restored, peace preserved, sheep safely grazing, ordinary life moving along in its ordinary way without the threat of violent death.
    Since mysteries now choose to explore aspects of the detective's personal life, the intensely personal coda has become important. Not only has Jenny Cain solved a murder in I.O.U., she has reconciled in some way with her mentally ill mother. Not only did Matt Scudder face down ruthless killers in Eight Million Ways to Die, he also faced his own alcoholism. Some detectives find a meaningful relationship; others end one.
    The Meta-Novel _
    I first heard the term "meta-novel" at a writer's conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The idea is that even though each book in a series stands alone, when read collectively they form one big ongoing novel about the main character. Each book represents its own arc: in book one of the series we meet the character and establish a meta-goal that will carry him through further books, in book two that meta-goal is tested, in book three—you get the picture.
    It's All One Big Book
    Looked at this way, every book about Kinsey Millhone, from A Is for Alibi to the latest letter of the alphabet, constitutes one big novel with a lot of different episodes, kind of like a television series. As we read through the series, we learn more about Kinsey and we deepen our connection to her so that even minor conflicts in later books mean something to us because we know her so well and we're aware of exactly what pushes her buttons. When something big happens, such as finding lost family members in J Is for Judgment, it resonates because we're fully aware of her orphaned childhood.
    I always think of M*A*S* when this topic comes up. Remember the episode that focused on the dreams of the regular cast members? Hot Lips Houlihan, who was always searching for love, dreamed that she was a bride—only her white dress was covered in operating room blood.
    Klinger, who longed to return to his home town of Toledo, Ohio, dreamed he was on a train going home—only every place in town he wanted to see was boarded up and closed down. Each dream took each character far inside himself, and each