Tuesday, April 7, 2015

6 Views on Avoiding the "Cabot Cove Syndrome"


At the Left Coast Crime Convention in Portland, OR in mid-March, I kept hearing series mystery writers bring up the “Cabot Cove Syndrome”. Like the Black Plague, these authors were concerned about how to avoid it or, alternatively, reassured people they had avoided it.

Everyone, well, everyone meaning mystery readers and writers, knows the reference. Jessica Fletcher, author and amateur detective, kept falling all over dead bodies in her remote little town of Cabot Cove. I read on Wikipedia that someone did a study in 2012 and found that Cabot Cove’s murder rate was 1,490 per million people. That’s 50% higher that the world’s highest murder rate. Given those figures, no insurance company concerned with the bottom line would insure anyone living there since the odds of dying there were so high.

So the syndrome has come to mean that murder happens in small towns or remote locations at a well-above average rate. And that one amateur investigator would always be involved, stretches credulity even more. This sobering set of facts strikes at the heart of cozy mysteries which tend to be set in smaller towns or rural areas.

No one blinks an eye at someone encountering deaths weekly in New York City or Hong Kong or … well, you name the big city. We kind of expect larger numbers of folks in higher density locales to die. But, Cabot Cove? Nah. Some people don’t buy it. Even when Jessica left Cabot Cove, death seemed to follow her. What was it about that woman?

On a search to find out how mystery writers avoid the “Cabot Cove Syndrome” I encountered some pretty interesting perspectives. Here are the six views:

1) Change up the crimes.
There is a camp of writers who change crimes in their mysteries. Not every book has a murder. And that works fine if the crime that is committed is one with high stakes so readers keep reading. Blackmail could work. It can be just as damaging to fear the loss of reputation and esteem when a secret is revealed. But keep the crime concealed and revealed as in any mystery. Nothing worse than a non-mysterious mystery.

2) After x number of books, start a new series.
Some authors think that by limiting how many bodies a series piles up they avoid the syndrome. Book six can be the exact same crime that might have been in the first series, but the author renames the series and creates new characters and sets it in a new locale, and Bingo! Book one of anew series is born, just waiting for more bodies to accumulate. It’s kind of a genius technique, yes?

3) Authors set the series in a vacation area to bring in outsiders to kill.
Some authors figure that they can increase the killable population by setting their cozy mystery in a seaside town or theme park area. Others have a growth spurt in the town via new industry or government agency. Lots of new blood, so to speak, to kill off what with new residents, transients, and tourists. A problem I see is with making the dead guy familiar enough to people so they don’t confuse him with the last book’s dead guy. But this is definitely do-able, and some authors are doing it.

4) Create a new kind of series.
At least one author has re-defined what a series is by setting each book in a very different venue and introducing characters for that book, dropping characters from other books. A unifying thread among books in the series ties them together. The antique print dealer travels and ends up in many locales. One could also have an ensemble cast, say college friends, who each takes the lead in solving crimes in her town (with the help of the friends). There are a multiplicative of ways to re-conceptualize a series.

5) In the spirit of Jessica Fletcher, send the sleuth off to new towns.
This is a twist on #4 but also a throwback to what the Murder, She Wrote authors ended up doing with Jessica Fletcher on the long-running series. It was pretty clear that about the only people left to kill were Jessica, the sheriff, and Jessica’s good friends that nobody wanted dead. A danger with this strategy is that people got attached to Cabot Cove and the series lost its local flavor. If the series starts off that way (as in #4), it would probably play better. This alternative was the most frequently mentioned by authors I studied.

6) Fuhgedaboutit!
There is a contingent of authors who don’t worry about the “Cabot Cove Syndrome”. They say that if readers like the book they will willingly suspend disbelief. They say that mystery readers may be more forgiving than mystery writers. They point to Agatha Christie’s enduring “Miss Marple” series as evidence.

So where do I come down on this? It’s not as much an issue for me since Glendale, Arizona is a mid-size town set next to behemoth Phoenix. I got bodies to kill.

I am also inspired by Louise Penny, who once said she never even considered the “Cabot Cove Syndrome” when she wrote Still Life, and it wasn’t until the third book she became alarmed as the small town residents died off at a rapid rate. Now she has her sleuth travel every second book to break it up. Book four in my series does that when Alli and Gina are demo cooks on a cruise ship in the Aegean. Nice work if you can get it.

16 comments:

  1. Although I have observed the phenomenon, I had no idea there was a syndrome for it, nor authors weighing in. Your article had a good list of ideas. BTW: Can't wait to read your next Alli & Gina mystery.

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    1. Thanks, Sandy. There's a syndrome for everything, isn't there? lol Thanks for your comments!

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  2. Liked your blog. I'd never seen the Cabot Cove Syndrome addressed so well before.

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    1. Thanks, Janet. I couldn't find a summary article, just authors' individual strategies, so I decided to pull together what I found. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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  3. My protagonist, being a rabbi, doesn't stumble on bodies, but they come to her, as it were. People who disagree with the official findings of cause of death ask her to look into what may have really occurred. After her first success in making the police look like idiots (the secondary motive of every amateur sleuth worth the title), she is asked more often.

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    1. It doesn't matter, Ilene, whether she finds them or they find her. The Cabot Cove Syndrome is that there are more murders happening than the population can support reasonably. That is an issue with small towns and cozies. I don't know the population of your little town, so it might not be an issue in your books.

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  4. In my Rocky Bluff P.D. series, there is a murder in every book and Rocky Bluff is a small town--however it's near bigger cities. In my latest, Violent Departures, the murder happened years earlier. The Deputy Tempe Crabtree series does have a large number of murders for a small town. The one I'm writing now Tempe and her husband are away from home.

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    1. One or two authors did say that they used past murders to cut down the CCS, but not enough to make it a trend. I am thinking of doing that, too. Any plans other than travel for Tempe to address CCS? Thanks for coming by to comment. I appreciate the visit.

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  5. Enjoyed your very interesting post, Sharon! I like number 4 and number 5. Though, the Mojave Desert is vast, plenty of room for a few dead bodies. (smile) Now, to write enough books to even be considered a series...

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    1. Yeah, you shouldn't worry about the problem some of us have! lol Thanks for coming by to read and comment.

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  6. I'm of the "set the series in a vacation area" persuasion. The regulars show up in each book, but the victim comes from outside. Still, if you think about it, as the murder count of visitors climbs, who'd want to come to the area? I think mystery readers are willing to suspend disbelief when they read a series (I know I am), since recurring murders in one place or involving one sleuth wouldn't be believable if the situation were analyzed.

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    1. Yep, Allan, that can work for a while to avoid the syndrome, but you nailed it. After a while, no one would go to even "the happiest place of Earth" if your odds of getting murdered there seemed likely! lol I also agree that most of our readers are there for the stories and will cut us some slack, but boy, book critics and authors (as attested to by the number of mentions on the Internet) worry a lot! Thanks so much for coming by. Are you part of the April A-Z Challenge?

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  7. My two series are based in Los Angeles. I don't believe that a cozy has to take place in a small town, but that's just me. Traveling opens new doors and ideas, too -- that is, the characters traveling. Excellent post, Sharon, and it made me stop and think about what I've been reading. Some believable, some not. I think it's all in how the author handles it.

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    1. Marja! What a treat to have you reading this! I agree with you. I think the definition of cozy has changed since Miss Marple did her thing. I am set in Glendale, AZ, a community on the outskirts of Phoenix, and I don't think it hurts the "cozy" label a bit. Some cozies even have "language" and mild " adult situations" now, which is a bigger step. Most people don't live in tiny villages anymore and I think they are mature enough to realize we set our stories where it makes sense to have it.

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  8. Hi, Sharon, I hope this isn't posting twice. As usual I found your article fascinating and timely since I've been wondering the same thing. How many murder are too many in a small town? I'm setting the latest one in Miami (if I can ever get it finished) and then will go back to Palm Springs for fresh blood.

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    1. I think one thing that is happening is that the definition of cozy is broadening beyond the small town settings. That makes it much easier to avoid the syndrome. Thanks for coming by again!

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