Wednesday, June 8, 2022

The life of a mystery writer

 6 8 2022


We have it so hard! Here we are trucking along, trying to get a mystery published. Bragging to our friends that we know how to commit the perfect crime. Doing all our research, working hard on it. Then we decide to try it out.

 

 

Not our fault if we get caught. We tried.

 

 

The above is what I imagine was going through the head of Cynthia McDonnell, aspiring mystery writer, who decided to let her LEO husband, Don McDonnell have it. Googling her name will bring up a lot of info on this case.

 

 

Here’s something about her case:

https://forensicfiles.fandom.com/wiki/Cynthia_McDonnell

If that one goes away, which it might, here’s another article:

https://delanirbartlette.medium.com/cynthia-mcdonnell-murder-she-wrote-badly-4c2425ae1e50

 

 

True confession: I watch old Forensic File reruns and sometimes watch them more than once.

 

 

There’s another case now. I remembered watching this old one when the current case was settled. This wife is a romance writer, so maybe she had even less chance of success. She did write an essay entitled “How to Murder your Husband” but maybe it wasn’t well done. I didn’t read it. She, Nancy Brophy, was convicted last month.

 

 

But this older case is more interesting to me. I want to know if anyone was critiquing her work, and what courses she took to learn how to write a mystery. Because this was far from perfect! She did everything wrong! First, she said it was a break in. But she forget to make it LOOK like a break in. Then she decided to tell them it was a suicide, and concocted a big, wild, fake story to go with that. But she had no idea how to make it look like a suicide. It didn’t.

 

 

The part that makes an impression on me is that her bookshelf was used to make her look guilty.

Her bookshelf, from the show:



 

 

My bookshelf, photo taken yesterday:


 

 

See why this worries me? Mystery writers, I’ll bet all our shelves look like this, yes?

 


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