Getting Mysterious with Z. M. Renick

The Fourth Black Beacon Book of Mystery will be released on the 23rd of November, but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and the Goodreads listing is up. To get you in the mood for mystery, we’ve interviewed our contributing authors. Are you keen to peer into their minds—a complex world of clues, red herrings, and puzzling plots? This volume of mysteries will be as challenging as ever, but our cast of amateur sleuths, private investigators, and police inspectors will leave no stone unturned!

Hi Z. M. Renick,

What is it about the genre of mystery that gets the cogs turning in your head?

For me, a mystery is primarily about the characters: who are they, how did they end up in these circumstances where a murder (or other crime) was committed, and how does it affect them to be part of it? In a short story, obviously there’s limited time, but in a mystery novel, I like the see all the threads of fate for each of the characters followed and straightened out before the final solution to the mystery.

What ingredients are needed for a great fair-play mystery in which the reader can try to solve the puzzle before all is revealed?

The question of what makes a mystery fair-play is more complicated that it appears at first. The obvious answer is that the reader needs to have all of the same information that the detective has. But the detective knows a number of things that aren’t necessarily in the book—not secrets that the author is deliberately hiding from the reader, but simply things about how the world works, things “everyone knows.” He knows that the sky is blue and leaves are green. He knows the weather on a typical July day. He knows the laws of physics. He knows that you have to win by at least thirty-one points to “skunk” your opponent in cribbage, and that no coach’s challenges are allowed during the last two minutes of a half in football. Just how much of that “common knowledge” should be allowed as part of the mystery while still keeping it “fair play”? Ideally, very little outside knowledge should be part of a fair-play mystery. But, at the same time, it’s hard to make the detective an interesting character if he acts as though he was born in a box, knowing nothing more than the facts presented the narrative. You have to include some of his outside life—and even the most diligent of fair-play authors expect that the reader will be able to make some connections between the facts presented without needing everything spelled out. A good fair-play mystery needs to be a balancing act between the story elements and the puzzle. The puzzle is what makes it a mystery—but without the story, you might as well be putting together a jigsaw.

What are your protagonist’s strengths and weaknesses, trademark quirks, and bad habits?

My detective, Patrick Riley, is a real estate agent who specializes in houses with mysterious pasts. His major strength and weakness are the same: isolation, and a tendency to be intellectual rather than emotional when relating to other people. He has a face that never shows any expression whatsoever, to the point where people have questioned if he’s even human. That can make it hard for him to connect to people sometimes, but it also gives him the ability to bluff when he needs to.

A great mystery needs a killer plot and likeable—or despicable—characters, but setting and atmosphere are also key. What are your favourite settings for a really mysterious atmosphere?

The best setting for a mystery, I believe, is a very old place. Old houses, old churches or hotels, even old-growth forests. Not only do old places have secrets, which can make for excellent additions to a modern crime, but there’s something about being in a setting where potentially dozens or even hundreds of mysteries might have taken place over the years that adds to the significance of this one. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some great mysteries that take place in modern suburbs, but I feel like an old setting adds to the weight of a mystery.

What’s the most mysterious place you’ve ever been? 

It may be cliche, but the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, the home of Sarah Winchester, widow of the treasurer of the Winchester rifle company. It’s a tourist attraction now, admittedly, but the combination of the strange architecture of the house as well as the stories about Sarah herself, make the house into the sort of place that could inspire several hundred mysteries.

What was the last mystery you read?

The Gladstone Bag by Charlotte MacLeod. I’ve just recently discovered MacLeod, an author from the late twentieth century, and I’ve been working my way through her Sarah Kelling mysteries, as well as looking for her other stories.

What are you working on now?

Currently I’m taking a break from mystery and working on publishing the next urban fantasy novel in my Seelie Court series, To Dream Alone. The story features a sheriff’s deputy investigating the disappearance of several children and discovering a connection between those disappearances and another series that happened at the tail-end of the Old West era.

Where can we find you online?

The best place to get information on my writing, as well as whatever else goes through my head, is at my substack, https://zmrenick.substack.com/ You can also follow me on X under my other penname, @ArianneTillay.