Having selected a sensational true crime to use as a base for the first Max Hurlock Roaring 20s mystery, another dilemma popped up. It seems the true crime took place in New Jersey and our Max was based on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. So how to get him involved? There are three basic ways:

1- The murder happens at the exect spot where the detective happens to be (The Murder She Wrote method)

2- The  murder happens elsewhere; detective hears about the murder and decides to stick his nose in. (The Simon Bremer method from the Ellery Queen mysteries)

3-The murder happens elsewhere and a client comes to the detective with a request to investigate. (The Sherlock Holmes and scads of others method)

Method three seemed to hold the most promise, but I wanted to show the murder, or at least the discovery of the murder because it provides a good opening for the book. So the first chapter was the discovery of the crime and then the scene shifts to Max and Allison Hurlock at home, or, to be more exact, in the cockpits of their biplane, Gypsy. Yeah, that’s the ticket, but since this is their first case, why should anyone request that Max investigate? It’s a chicken and egg problem.

The solution was simplicity itself. Max is a WWI navy veteran. When on the ship, he solved the murder of a bo’sun’s mate and everyone started calling him Sherlock Hurlock. The father of one of the double murder, locked room victims was Max’s XO on the ship and remembered his old shipmate when the ship hit the fan. (so to speak) He calls on Max to come to New Jersey and find the truth and we are off to the races.

Now all we have to do is figure out the rest of the plot, add some more characters/suspects, and let human nature take its course.

Now that I had the characters and a backstory and hometown for them, they had to have something to do, so I went looking for a real life crime from the 1920s to base the first case on. I had one in mind already; a sensational double killing in a locked room up in Moorestown, New Jersey. There was a lot of information available on the case, which was controversial at the time. The young socialite couple were found dead in the girl’s locked bedroom from multiple gunshots to the head. Some believed it was a simple murder-suicide. Others insisted it had to be a double murder because no one could shoot himself several times in the head. Later, one of the witnesses was also murdered and also in a locked room, stirring the controversy further.

The whole thing already sounded like a mystery story, so it was just a matter of building a fictional treatment on the facts. I also planned to provide endnotes explaining the real case.

Of course, the first problem was to find a way to involve a Maryland based detective in a crime in New Jersey. This was actually not a problem since it turned out to fit pefectly with Max Hurlock’s background. I’ll tell you about it next time.

So what comes first, the characters or the plot? In real life of course, the characters are first and then they either do things or things happen to them and they react. That’s the basic plot for every novel ever written.  This  seems to be how many writers write as well. “Now I have my characters, so what will I have them do?” One of  the comments on my last post was about the necessity for conflict. Good point. You can’t have everyone acting in cheerful harmony all the time or the reader will be too busy yawning to finsh the story. Of course, with a husband and wife team, there is built in conflict. I don’t mean that they act like the Bickersons (old radio comedy reference alert) necessarilly, but they do have occasion to experience and comment on some of the inevitable rough edges of married life. Of course, with an citizen sleuth there is also the conflict with the local authorities, to whom a curious amateur is as welcome as a caterpillar in the salad.

Of course, you could call murder the ultimate conflict, and the suspects generate conflict with the detective, local law enforcement, and each other as well, so a lack of conflict should not be a problem in a mystery. What’s more, these conflicts are more than just the raisons on the mystery muffin, they help to reveal the character of the charactors. Someone said that conflict doesn’t build character, it reveals it.

So now we have our characters, our basic story type, and a formula for being able to mix up an interesting stew of coflicts and plot detours. The only thing left is to come up with a basic story to act as a framework for all these threads and see where it leads.

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Now I had the characters, their home base, and some backstory, but it had to be fleshed out if the characters were to be believable. I did some research on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in the 1920s at the Talbot County Library and found out the basics, then went looking for Max and Allison’s house. It had to be near St Michaels, but in an area rural enough to accomodate Gypsy, their war-surplus biplane. It had to be an old fsashioned wooden house with a large porch, since some of the action involved people coming and going to their front door, or Max and Allison conversing in wicker chairs as the sun went down. We found the perfect house in Claiborne, a Bed and Breakfast called Claiborne Cottage on the Bay. It happens that the owner was someone we knew, so obtaining permission to use and photograph it was no problem.

Having a specific house in mind was important to help visualize the action, and to keep details consistant from one story to the next. You can’t have the front door on the left side one time and the right side another.

One more research path was necessary. What was the world of flying like in the 1920s? Did they even have airports? How did the pilot in the rear cockpit of a Curtiss Jenny communicate with the passenger or co pilot in the front cockpit? We found a man who was a former aviation restoration specialist at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and dropped by his place (also on the Eastern Shore). He was currently restoring a 1930s biplane that had belonged to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, so he knew his stuff. He regaled us with flying stories and told us some tales and details about the early days of flight that would find their way into the books.

Now the characters, their home, their backgrounds and their interests had taken shape, it was time to let them loose. The question was what true crime to use as the first adventure? Look for part 4 and find out.

Once I decided on a detective, I started to think of a sidekick, a Dr. Watson sort of character, but much different. That left either a friend, coleage, relative, or love interest.

Because my own wife acts as my partner in investigating and researching, a wife seemed a natural for the Dr Watson role. She would have to be compatible, but also have a contrasting personality to add interest, conflict, and another point of view. She would have to be beautiful and smart as well. My wife suggested calling this paragon of female virtue Allison, after the character in the old novel Peyton Place. Unlike the detective, who would be a methodical, technical minded type and something of a country boy, Allison would be an aspiring writer from the more urban Western Shore of Maryland, and a Goucher graduate. Since the 20s were an era of empowerment for women, Allison would not be content to merely follow the detective around, she would be a free-lance writer of magazine articles. This would also give her the chance to develop on her own, and to turn up clues to help out her husband. She would also come in handy for the more delicate questioning of female suspects and for prying information out of some of the more reluctant men. So Allison Hurlock was born.

Returning to the detective, he would be an engineering graduate and an ex WWI naval officer. He got his start by solving a murder on his ship, and his reputation grew from there. To give him a little more color, he would run a part-time flying service with a war surplus Curtiss Jenny biplane, something a number of veterans did at the time.

Now the Hurlocks were almost ready, but there was still the problem of  what should the detective’s first name be? Nothing seemed to sound right, so my wife and I started reading street signs as we drove along the St Michael’s Road. Suddenly we saw it: Macks Lane, and Max Hurlock was born. (Google it yourself-Macks Lane, St Michaels, Maryland)

So now Max “Sherlock” Hurlock and wife Allison Hurlock were ready to send out into the world. Now what? Stay tuned.

The Harbor in St Michaels, Maryland

(First in a series about writing the Max Hurlock Roaring 20s Mysteries)

After my book Master Detective was published, I decided to stick with the facts in my future works, but to maybe improve on them a bit. In the course of researching Master Detective I found numerous real life cases that read like fiction. Why not write a series of mysteries based on some of these real crimes? And why not set the cases in the Roaring 20s with Prohibition, bootleggers, flappers, and bathtub gin? Of course the detective would have to be someone who lives where I do, Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The area was a hotbed of moonshining and rumrunning during that time and is full of fascinating places and history.

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So I set out to find my detective. He had to have a name that evoked the area, and, because I like wordplay, the name should rhyme with Sherlock so people could call him Sherlock ______. There was no other name than Hurlock, a local town that was once a railroad and shipping hub. But how about a first name? Nothing seemed to fit so I put off making that decision for the time being. The next question was how to tell the reader what Mr. Hurlock is thinking as he investigates. There are two classic methods. One is to have the detective narrate in the first person. You know the routine: something like “I woke up with a throbbing head and no answers to the question of who killed the colonel? Every lead I tried had come up empty.”

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The other method is to have a sidekick, or a Dr. Watson type to discuss the developments and thereby reveal what the detective is thinking and why. This seemed more promising because it allows for the detective to exchange opinions and allows the scene to occasionally shift elsewhere if needed.

But how to find a sidekick when I still didn’t even have the detective’s first name?

Check back later for the exciting answer! (Well, it was exciting to me.)

So who's running the ship?

We recently got back from a cruiseon the Celebrity Infinity. I never encountered a celebrity on the cruise. (or infinity either, for that matter), but I did contribute a copy of Master Detective to the ship’s library. Captain Margarita (is that a great name for a cruise ship captain or what?) accepted on behalf of the ship and a good time was had by all. I just hope the pages are resistant to sun tan lotion.

The speaker then ordered some more mayonnaise from the waiter, who was obviously an old friend. When the waiter brought the mayonnaise, the hunter complained it had taken too long. The waiter’s reply?
“Geez, Henry. You can  spend all day in a tree waiting for a deer but you can’t wait for some mayonnaise?”

Ah, the voice of the people.

Instead, the cover showed what looked like a fully rigged clipper ship, a type that was seldom if ever used for blockade running. In the background was what looked like a science fiction city, or possibly a World’s Fair, complete with high rises, domes and towers. In addition, a closer inspection revealed a speed boat in the middle distance. All the picture needed was a few airplanes. On the back cover was the silhouette of a tall ship; no sidewheels; no smokestacks. In the 1860s, Nassau was a town of mostly one and two story wood buildings. Only the occasional church steeple got above two stories.

I contacted the publisher and made my concerns known. A week or so later, a revised cover appeared. The city of tomorrow had been replaced by a series of smudgy looking islands. The speedboat was gone, and the clipper ship now had a smokestack added amidships. Not the best solution, but not a screaming anacronism either. The silhouette on the back cover, however, now sported rows of oars on each side! Despairing of ever getting the silhouette right, I asked them to lose it, which they did. So here is the final cover. All things considered, it’s not bad. What do you think?