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.
