Does It Have to Be Murder?

Warner Bros.

I've been chatting with a podcaster about the upcoming season for her and her husband's show, where they read mysteries live. The husband, who handles the music, tries to solve the mystery by the end of the show. She can't because she reads every story before it's even accepted.

This year, they're doing something different. Anything but murder. Which got me thinking (and about more than my proposed story.) Does every crime fiction story need a body count?

This summer, I'm editing anthologies. A lot of anthologies. Plus, I read an ARC for the upcoming Bouchercon anthology. Virtually all the stories in that and two of the anthologies I've copy edited involve murder. My next anthology short story? Murder. The last three crime fiction novels I've read? Murder. Hell, one was the basis for Season 1 of Bosch.

While I've never agreed with Donald Maas's philosophy of increasing the body count with each book in a series – Let's call that what it is: a cheap ploy eventually leading to bad writing – I do concede murder is the highest of stakes. You're taking a life. If you ask most people how many of the Ten Commandments they've broken, the more honest will likely say, "I ain't killed anyone. Yet." Everyone lies at one point or another. Most people have taken something that wasn't theirs, broken with their parents, and that most underrated of the Big Ten, envied. I'm reading Cormac McCarthy right now, and boy, does he give a writer a case of envy. Leaving out the "God commandments," we continually break the Sabbath. Hell, I'm writing this on a Sunday morning. And while most people get through life without cheating on a lover or a spouse, more do than will admit it. But murder?

Murder is the big one. The taking of life. Most people quote that commandment as "Thou shalt not kill," but really, the original word translates as "murder," the deliberate taking of life. Killing in war or self-defense doesn't count because that other person is trying to kill you, or at least, inflict grievous harm. Accidents? You might get sued, but you won't go to prison unless you did something really stupid, like drive drunk or neglected some obvious bit of safety. But the deliberate taking of life? Either in a fit of rage or through (allegedly) careful planning?

I don't care what religious creed you follow, even if you're an atheist -- or maybe especially if you are one – that's the big kahuna. Taking life deliberately and without any mitigating reason is a huge crime against humanity.

But is it possible to write about crime and not murder? Does it really need a body count?

It takes a bit of skill, and quite often, it goes toward comedic. Oceans 11 is a prime example. It's the heist. It's George Clooney and Brad Pitt being smartasses. The source material is an excuse from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. to play cops-and-robbers.

Catch Me if You Can, the Tom Hanks-Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle based on real life, focuses on Leo's cat-and-mouse game with Hanks's FBI agent and their later collaboration. Murder is not a primary plot device.

Cannonball Run

And if you want to get to the heart of it, the two Cannonball Run movies are really light-hearted (and admittedly light-headed) crime movies. The crime just happens to be an illegal road race that turns into a bunch of comedy sketches sewn together.

But notice the tongues firmly planted in cheeks for these movies. There are relatively few bodies in these films. And when there are, it's often an accident or natural causes, sometimes the inciting event.

Yet if you go all the way back to one of the first modern detective stories, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter," the plot does not center on a body but a missing letter. Our intrepid detective, Dupin, foreshadows Sherlock Holmes in his talent for looking beyond the obvious. The letter is soiled and wrinkled, looking like an old, well-worn paper and not a recently written missive that could bring down the French government. Doyle would revisit this time and again. The stories are not comedic, but neither do they depend on a body.

So, does it have to be murder? For the same reason we all rubberneck at a traffic pile-up or a train wreck, murder grabs our attention faster. Someone's life ended because someone else deliberately ended it. But there are plenty of ways to spin up other crimes: Theft, fraud, adultery (not a crime, but a dirty deed.) It's all in how you handle it. Instead of bleeding, someone simply needs to ask, "Are you in or out?"

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to sketch out a story of the adventures of Florida Man!