It’s advisable for mystery writers to give each character a secret that may or may not relate to the murder victim. This makes them suspicious in the sleuth’s viewpoint until she can unravel what it is they’re hiding.
In Ladies of the ’80s: A Divas Christmas recent TV movie on Lifetime channel, five former soap stars reunite for a reunion show. But all isn’t as it seems in this character-driven story. (Spoiler Alert!) Two of the members have a long-standing feud. Once best friends, they broke apart when one of them moved to LA to pursue her career. As the group struggles to overcome their differences and make the reunion a success (with a budding romance between the producer and director), secrets come to light. These are the ones I remember (and any mistakes are mine):
The rich matriarch’s diamond jewelry is fake. Her ex-husband embezzled all her money and she’s broke.
The social media fashionista wears a blond wig. She’s gone natural and has gray hair.
The actress who abandoned her best friend moved to LA because her career had bombed, and she was too humiliated to tell anyone.
The health and wellness author is a junk food addict.
In writing a mystery, it helps to give each character a secret. This can be a motive for murder, or it can be an innocent secret like the ones above. Say your suspect is making unexplained payments from a checking account. The sleuth might suspect this person is being blackmailed, but perhaps instead they are funding a beloved aunt’s elder care. Or a character might disappear on regular nights of the week while the sleuth suspects they’re up to something nefarious. But they could be attending cooking school and don’t want anyone to know they want to be a chef.
These are all great examples of good secrets. They’re important to the character but do not connect the suspect to the crime. So when plotting your story and developing your characters, add in some of these hidden foibles to fool the reader and the sleuth.
Can you remember any examples from mysteries you’ve read recently?
