Mina Khan asked Maya Corrigan:

What are the most essential ingredients for a good mystery?

Maya Corrigan Mysteries have a lot of similarities to cakes. Cakes start with the same basic ingredients—flour, eggs, fat, and sugar. Different proportions and more ingredients produce variations like pound or sponge cakes, chocolate, lemon, or carrot cakes. Similarly, mysteries start with the same essential ingredients—a crime, characters affected by it, clues, and closure. Endless variations in the mystery plot derive from an emphasis on one or another of the basic elements and the added ingredients.

A mystery starts with questions about a crime, usually who committed it and why. A professional or an amateur detective arrives at the answers by gathering clues from physical evidence and through interactions with the characters. Because crime is a traumatic event, it changes everyone involved: the victim’s family and friends, the culprit, the suspects, and the detective. Most mysteries end with some type of closure: the crime solved, the truth revealed, and some form of justice, not always within the confines of the law.

Depending on the writer, the emphasis in a mystery can be on the puzzle element, character development, or even the social milieu in which the crime occurred. Some added ingredients that I appreciate in a mystery are humor, irony, and wit to leaven the serious subject of crime.

Thank you for asking this question, Mina.

flag