Writing a Mystery Series - A Guest Post by Michael Haskins

Today, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Michael Haskins. He is the author of ten Mick Murphy Key West Mysteries and a selection of short stories set in Key West. His latest book, Mistaken Identity, was released in December. Haskins was our featured writer on September 16, 2012.

 

More often than not, readers of mysteries like a series. The characters in the series become friends to the reader and keeps them looking for the next book. This also challenges the writer to keep his/her series and characters fresh, exciting and current.

In my Mick Murphy Mystery Series, I have one main character – Mick Murphy, a journalist burnt out from covering the drug cartels in Mexico – and a diverse group of secondary characters. There’s the chief of police, a character whose background may or may not be with the CIA or one of the government’s other secret agencies, an old Catholic priest whose congregation in Central America was murdered by government death squads, and a few other eclectic characters from the streets and boats of Key West.

The crime that I write about doesn’t really happen on the island. For years, the crime report in the local paper was a humorous page. When such humor became politically incorrect, the writing of the column changed.

I read a few papers online from Boston, Miami, and other cities to look for the small, offbeat crime articles, and when I find one I try to figure out a reason those characters would be in Key West. The usual answer to is kill my character for something in his past. That means drug cartels and hitmen. Read papers from around the country, and even Europe, and you will find drugs are involved in many of the crimes, especially smuggling.

To keep the theme of drug cartels from becoming stale, I look for the offbeat reason the cartel members are in the Keys. I have also taken my characters out of the Keys, and even to Ireland, but the reason always has a Key West connection.

My protagonist, Mick Murphy, is not a super hero and not a Dudley Do-Right. He gets people killed including girlfriends and often can’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag! His friends are all more than capable of doing the things he can’t or won’t. At one point in the writing, I realized Murphy had to kill. The reality of the situation called for it. It made my character change and, I believe, in a series, as in life, people change.

Sometimes for the best, sometimes not.

For more information, visit the author's website at https://michaelhaskins.net