My guest blogger this week is award-winning
author Leslie Wheeler
who writes the Miranda Lewis Living History Mysteries which began with Murder
at Plimoth Plantation, recently re-released for the first time as a trade
paperback, and the Berkshire Hilltown Mysteries, which began with Rattlesnake
Hill and continues with Shuntoll Road
Secondary characters can be fun to
write and fun to read about, because they don’t bear the burdens of the main
characters who not only have to solve crimes, but are often struggling with
personal issues. Two secondary characters that I enjoyed creating and that
early readers of my new mystery, Shuntoll Road
Maxine Kepler is
loud in voice and dress. She’s described as rarely speaking below a shout and
favoring bright colored clothing—attributes that, as a short person among
taller people, she uses to call attention to herself. Also, as a single woman
in her forties, she is engaged in a perpetual search for “Mr. Right,” whether
he happens to be a someone else’s boyfriend or not. And she never misses an
opportunity to flirt with a man she considers attractive, even in the midst of
an emergency phone call.
Grandma Waite,
aka “Crazy Scarlett,” is far from being your typical warm, fuzzy granny, as her
nickname suggests, though she is fiercely protective of her great-granddaughter
and namesake, Scarlett. A beauty in her youth, she dresses all in black and her
Shirley-Temple-style curls are dyed jet black. Regarded as a witch by many in
town, she spies on her grandson and his family who live across the street,
interrogates their visitors, and makes frequent, ominous pronouncements about
trouble to come. She is definitely not a person you want to mess with, as
another character discovers when she descends on him “like an angry crow,”
shrieking at him to leave immediately. When he refuses, she pounds on the cab
of his truck with her umbrella until he finally does and ends up driving smack
into a huge pothole.
Both Grandma
Waite and Maxine Kepler provide some of the more amusing moments in the book.
Still, as characters in a mystery novel, where everything needs to advance the
story, each also serves a serious purpose.
Maxine is a
long-time friend of Gwen Waite, who next to Kathryn is the most important
character in the novel. A fellow New Yorker, Maxine is a link between Gwen and
her past life, a past that included another friend, Niall Corrigan, who, as a
successful real estate developer, has come to the Berkshires ostensibly to
build an upscale development but with a hidden agenda. Both Maxine and Niall
are privy to the secret event that caused Gwen to leave the city. And when
drama queen Maxine persists in putting air quotes around Gwen’s “accident” that
left her in a coma years ago, Kathryn begins to suspect it wasn’t a bad car
accident, as Gwen claims.
Maxine also
serves as an intermediary between Niall and Gwen in his efforts to have a
romantic relationship with Gwen, who isn’t as happily married as she’d like
people to believe. Determined to find a partner for herself, Maxine has set her
cap for Earl Barker, Kathryn’s boyfriend, and pressures Kathryn, who has
returned to the Berkshires with the goal of seeing if she and Earl can rebuild
their all-but-shattered relationship, to make up her mind, “because if you
don’t grab him, someone else (Maxine herself) will.”
As for Grandma
Waite, she gave me the opportunity to weave in a colorful bit of my fictional
town New Nottingham’s history (stolen from the history of the real-life
Berkshire town where I have a house) in that she’s rumored to be a descendant
of a notorious madam who ran a brothel in the tiny hamlet of Gomorrah that was
once part of New Nottingham. More importantly, Grandma Waite’s uncanny ability
to recognize evil in other people is crucial to the climax. But to say more
would be to risk giving away the ending.
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Readers: Do you use secondary characters to provide humor even if they
serve a serious purpose? If so, please share.
I love well-developed secondary characters, some of which end up with their own stories. Yours sound fascinating. You've got a great cover too!
ReplyDeleteGood luck and God's blessings
PamT
Thanks for your comment, Pamela. I'm delighted to hear that you like well-developed secondary characters, and yes, they can end up with their own stories. In Shuntoll Road, I have another secondary character, Charlotte Hinckley, who joins my main character in her fight against a New York developer and became so important that when she told me she should play a pivotal role in the next book, I agreed. Thanks also for your kind words about the cover. The scene of the pond at dusk is from a photo I took of the pond on my property, though the figure is photo shopped.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about your secondary characters. Sounds like spin-offs could be in the offing for Maxine and Grandma Waite. Sometimes the secondary characters become so popular that they overshadow the main characters. J.R. Ewing and the Dowager Crawley are two examples. I'm glad Jacqueline featured you, so I can get to know you and your work.
ReplyDeleteYour series sounds like an entertaining read. I'm going to check it out ASAP. As for my own humorous mystery series, I added a grandmother character in book 4 and she basically took over the series. Whenever I need comic relief, in walks Gran!
ReplyDeleteI added a secondary character to the end of one of my fantasy books, and now the hog has moved over to his own point of view character (sharing half and half with the hero) in the next book. What a pushy dude!
ReplyDeleteI think I've met both Maxine and Granny (with different names) in the past few years. In my second novel in a 4-book series, I brought in a secondary character, a Swiss scientist who's developing a 4D printer (no, not 3D), which added a whole new subplot. But the BEST secondary character I've ever discovered is Tomlinson, in Randy Wayne White's Doc Ford series; he's a beer-drinking, pot-smoking, womanizing Internet zen guru and is a brilliant foil to the strictured Doc Ford, an ex-NSA operative, now a marine biologist on Sanibel Island, Florida.
ReplyDeleteThanks for having me as a guest on your blog, Jacquie. And good luck with your new release!
ReplyDeleteLeslie
It's a pleasure to have you, Leslie. One of my favorite comic characters is Grandma Mazur in the Stephanie Plum series from Evanovich.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Jacquie. Haven't read Janet Evanovich in a while, so I don't recall Grandma Mazur, but will look her up. If she's anything like Grandma Waite in Shuntoll, I know I'll enjoy her.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the insights! I find that well-crafted secondary characters are like the bubbles in Champagne: they lift everything up with their own energy. It's counter-intuitive, but I find that's often the place pour on the quirks and creativity.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fine simile!
Delete