Annette Dashofy--Suspense versus Mystery

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Welcome to one of our frequent and favorite guests here on JRW, Annette Dashofy! It seems like we've been with Annette's protagonist Zoe Chambers every step of the way, and I have such admiration for Annette stepping off in a slightly different direction with her new Zoe book--the 12th!

Suspense versus Mystery by Annette Dashofy

When I started working on the twelfth Zoe Chambers Mystery, as always, I had a seed of an idea. Honestly, I had several seeds. A flood. A trapped and critically injured father. His kidnapped daughter. They all sounded viable until I started plotting Helpless. That’s when I made a few realizations.

 

1.      The story had to take place within a very compressed timeline.

2.      This wasn’t going to be a traditional whodunit.

3.      Writing suspense is way out of my wheelhouse.

 

I based the flooding on a couple of tropical storms, remnants of hurricanes, that made their way to southwestern Pennsylvania over the last 20 years. Around here, the water rises, coming closer and closer over a matter of hours, and then recedes quickly. Combined with the critically injured father in the story, I knew I needed this book to take place in under 24 hours.

What the heck was I thinking?

Let me tell you about outlining a story that only lasts 24 hours. Getting the timelines to work from both Zoe Chambers-Adams’s and Pete Adams’s points of view was maddening. I used a spreadsheet. I used postcards. I had to calculate how long it took to get from Point A to Point B and then tack on time for traveling through floodwaters and downed trees. Then I had to coordinate what was happening with Zoe and Pete, who were in different locations, but who were in communication with each other. I’d write a scene, calculate how much time had passed, figure out where that fell on the other character’s timeline, and find out it didn’t match.

I lost count of how many times I told my husband, “This book is going to kill me.”

It also soon became apparent this poor man, who couldn’t be moved, had seen the person who kidnapped his daughter. He didn’t know who the guy was, but he’d recognize him if he saw him again. Hence, this wasn’t going to be a traditional whodunit with the usual red herrings and suspects, all of whom might be the killer. The reader would also have an inkling of why this madman had taken the girl.

The narrative questions don’t involve “who is the killer?” Instead, the reader asks, “Where is the child?” “Is she even alive?” And “Will the girl’s father survive?” And the big one. “Will The Bad Guy outsmart Chief Pete Adams and escape with or without the little girl?”

I pondered giving The Bad Guy a point of view in the book, but quickly abandoned that idea.

So, I found myself writing suspense, a race against time in the truest sense. Thanks to modern technology, Zoe Chambers-Adams keeps an eye on her weather app’s radar to follow the progress of the advancing storm. The Bad Guy’s identity eventually becomes known, but it takes a while for Pete to recognize how cunning he is. Call it a chess match or a cat-and-mouse game, the fact is both Zoe and Pete are battling man and the elements against the ticking clock of Mother Nature’s wrath.

DEBS: Okay, the suspense is killing me just from reading this! Here's more about HELPLESS:

As a massive weather system barrels toward them, Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams and his wife, County Coroner Zoe Chambers-Adams, soon learn how unprepared they really are. A 911 call reports a dead young mother, her critically injured husband, and their missing seven-year-old daughter. Pete and Zoe realize that as the storm moved north from Louisiana, a mysterious killer came with it.  

The wounded and trapped father is Zoe’s friend and blacksmith, and he asks her to stay with him during the rescue efforts. Pete encourages her to oblige, hoping she can uncover clues that might help the investigation. But as attempts to free the victim fail and his condition worsens, Zoe’s questions reveal he doesn’t know why his family was targeted and child kidnapped. Yet he stays alive, hoping for one last glimpse of his little girl.

Pursuing the murderer and the kidnapped child, Pete and his officers battle downed trees, massive flooding, and a widespread loss of communications. They’re isolated with no backup, while facing rising water and impassable roads. The killer faces the same problems, yet somehow stays one step ahead of law enforcement. But he is becoming desperate, and more people are dying because of it. 

As two lives hang in the balance, can Pete win the race against time and weather to stop a savage and cunning predator? And will he and Zoe be able to reunite a family before it’s too late? 

USA Today bestseller Annette Dashofy is the author of over a dozen novels including the five-time Agatha Award nominated Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic-turned-coroner in rural Pennsylvania as well as the Detective Honeywell series set along Lake Erie. Her standalone novel, Death By Equine is the 2021 winner of the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for excellence in thoroughbred racing literature. In addition, she is an active member of Sisters in Crime and Pennwriters. Annette and her husband live on ten acres of what was her grandfather’s dairy farm with one very spoiled cat.

DEBS: How about it, dear Reds and readers--what's your favorite book with a ticking clock?