An alert from Phil Rubin about this Tom Gauld cartoon:
(#1)
Gauld — who has a Page on this blog — does a lot of strips on genre writing of various kinds, including a series on mystery fiction (two more below). This one plays on the advice given to writers to write about what you know, so that if you want to write about some subculture, you’ll need to immerse yourself in it — to become, insofar as this is possible, an insider.
Somewhat problematic if you want to write about murders. On the other hand, murder mysteries are devices for taking readers into little worlds they might know nothing of — quaint English country villages, or change-ringing, or medieval monasteries, or thoroughbred racing, or Australian aboriginal life, whatever. Or several themes at once, as Edith Maxwell has done with murder mysteries set in 19th-century New England, among Quaker midwives. (Edith is herself a Friend in Amesbury MA, so she has first-hand knowledge of some of this; the historical setting and the midwifery, however, are acts of imagination, fostered by research.)
