Motives for Murder

RHYS BOWEN:  Some of us Reds find ourselves teaching classes and workshops on mystery writing and one thing I always stress is motive. I find that some mystery books that are otherwise good stories fall down when it comes to motive.  If someone dropped dead into the punch-bowl at a wedding would you instantly perk up and say “Oh goody! A murder for me to solve!”
That would not be me. My first thought would be, “I need to get out of here fast. There is a killer on the loose.”

So coming up with a plausible motive for the amateur sleuth is always a challenge. What would make me get involved? If it was one of my near and dear ones and the police had arrested him and wouldn’t listen, then I’d want to do all I could to save him. But if a friend was accused? A neighbor? Would I poke my nose in then?

And then we come to the more important motive for murder. Unless you are a psychopath, what would make YOU kill?  Would you kill because your daughter didn’t make the cheerleading team? Implausible, you say, and this happened. Would you kill because someone else went to the prom with your dream date thirty years ago? I’ve read that in a book too.

I have to say that the mysteries that work best for me both as a reader and a writer are ones in which I have empathy for the killer. Someone pushed into a corner so hard that the only way out was murder. I am pretty sure I could kill to protect my children.  If a Nazi soldier burst in I could shoot him before he killed my babies. But could I calmly plot to kill someone with whom my daughter was in an abusive relationship? That’s where it gets murky. And I like to play with murkiness. I enjoy working with gray areas of right and wrong. In one of the Evan books three women meet in a shelter for battered women and plot to be each other’s alibi in killing their husbands. Evan solves the case and says to his boss, “But she won’t go to jail, will she? She was being battered by him.”
And his superior looks him in the eye and says coldly, “Not at the moment she pulled the trigger.” And Evan realizes that he’s condemned this woman to an undeserved life in prison.

But the more I think about it, I realize that sometimes I only takes a tiny trigger point. As happened to me on a flight a couple of weeks ago. I sat next to a woman. We got chatting. She asked what I did. When I told her I write two books a year she smiled at me and said, “That’s nice. It keeps you busy, doesn’t it?”
Keeps me busy? Would you say to a brain surgeon: You did five brain surgeries last week? That’s nice. It keeps you busy, doesn’t it?”
I felt like saying it, but instead I thought “I’m taking a good look at you and you’ll wind up dead in one of my upcoming books!”

That’s one of the advantages of being a mystery writer. We can kill off those who piss us off. Kill them in horrible ways and never get caught. We have the perfect career! 
So now I’m thinking of other people who might wind up dead. Those nameless banks and credit card companies who keep me on hold for half an hour and then go through endless “If you want to speak to someone who has red hair and whose last name begins with M press 2!” And call centers in India whose employees speak no known language. And those telemarketers in India who tell me the IRS is after me.....
Those who use the phrase “Twentyfour/seven.” Or the phrase, “Each and every.” Or the word “Irregardless.”  Or use lay instead of lie. I’m sure there are plenty more.

So Reds, confess. Have you ever killed off someone in a book who was a thinly disguised real life person who annoyed you?
And what would be your motive for murder?

HALLIE EPHRON: In "Night Night, Sleep Tight" I killed off a character who's a thinly-disguised version of my dad. I made him a screenwriter (my dad was) who's found floating in his own pool (a la Sunset Blvd). I like to think my dad would have loved it. He's been a character in at least two other books -- my sister Delia's "Hanging Up" and my sister Nora's "Heartburn." But I'm the only one who killed him. The moral: don't raise your children to be writers.

My other murder victims are strangers. Complete strangers. Really,

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I think about this ALL the time. I mean--what would honestly cause someone to actually kill someone? And being a psychopath doesn't count, that's boring. Unless you are Hannibal Lecter.  Then there's self-defense, or defense of another. Those are reasonable reasons. But it would STILL be difficult, right?
Anyway, I analyzed it, so much, before I wrote PRIME TIME for that very reason, Rhys, I wanted the book to make sense.
I got it down to: Power. Control. Love. Money.  And really--all four of those are only Power and Control. And I think there has to be an extra behavioral psychology of--feeling like the world is unfair to you, and you are only doing something to get what's rightfully yours.
Have I killed any real people? No, but--and I will say no more--I have made them into buffoons. Deciding that humiliation and incompetence is more painful than death.

LUCY BURDETTE: figuring out motive is very hard, and I completely agree that a weak motive equals disappointing book. Over the years, I have ended up with a lot of old grudges in my mysteries, nursed by fires of disappointment until they can't be ignored. Also, I think hiding an important secret can end up being a powerful motive. But it has to be a secret that the person feels could ruin his or her life, whether or not that's true. Pure rage and sociopathy are less interesting to me.

DEBORAH CROMBIE : It's so hard to come up with credible motives. I think plain greed is the least interesting. But loss of status and reputation are powerful, and if that includes money that works, too. Protection of secrets and protection of loved ones, or the prevention of another crime are good, too. And then there's always sweet revenge!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hank, I like your formulation of Power and Control. I usually think of it as Money or Love (gone wrong.) In some ways, I think it would be great to write historical mysteries like Rhys and Susan, because not so long ago, Reputation and Scandal were also valid motives for murder, in fiction if not in real life. Nowadays, of course, if you have a terrible scandal, you go on a talk show or release the sex tape. Illegitimacy, secret adoption, being gay, having an affair - I mean, I'm glad they're not life-destroying events anymore! But you have to admit, they did make for some juicy reading in the Golden Age mysteries of the 30s and 40s.

As to killing off anyone real - no. But I have made a real person a wicked villain, and it pleases me every time I think about it!

RHYS:  Julia, this is exactly why I write historical mysteries. So many lovely motives: I love another but I am not free. I am the true heir. I am hiding an illegitimate child etc etc. One motive no one has mentioned so far is FEAR. I think fear is one of the biggest motivators to action, including murder.

So time to confess, dear readers: what would make you kill?