After 30+ mostly historical novels, I’m now writing about Inspector Raquel Laing, a Homicide detective who works with the SFPD Cold Case Unit. Looking back, I see that many of my stories revolve around an unsolved event from the past—I suppose that any novel with unresolved backstory could be considered a cold-case story—but for an actual suspense novel, the “cold” element has to be more than a nagging puzzle or general unpunished wrong.
“Cold case” refers to an investigation gone dead, regardless of the amount of time passed. No unexplored leads, no unexamined evidence, no uninterrogated witness or family member or friend—there’s nowhere else to look. (At least, it looks that way.)
In real life, no murder or disappearance ever goes completely still. Ripples spread. The trauma of those left behind, the raw agony of unknowing, never fades entirely, whether it’s a missing person, an unsolved murder, or a devastating scandal. Headlines move on, regardless of those who remember. It is the ultimate injustice, a festering sore in the lives of those involved.
Into this situation steps the writer.
We begin here, with an awareness of unhealed loss and holes left in lives. Solving that—delivering justice—is a worthy goal for any fictional sleuth. But is it enough?
Josephine Tey brilliantly used detection as an academic exercise in Daughter of Time (though really, what couldn’t that goddess of Golden Age crime get away with?) but modern suspense readers expect something just a little more urgent than a bed-bound detective wrestling with a historical puzzle involving Richard III. What we want now is tension that builds and stakes that ramp up, and up.
Which is more urgent? Your character has a chance to—
—solve a crime no one else did, or
—free her father from a miscarriage of justice, or
—free her father, framed by a crooked cop, before his looming execution, or
—free her father now—because that crooked cop is coming after her?
I, your reader, need to care. Like a good historical novel—which deals with interesting past events, but more essentially holds a mirror to the present—I want a cold-case story that heats up, bringing a dead then into an ever more suspenseful now.
How, then, do we deal with time? If the case is Tey’s 15th century murder, the evidence to be considered is documentary, if not archaeological. A more recent case will open greater options in forensics, while a more modern one yet introduces possible witnesses, concrete evidence—and a chance to actually arrest the villain.
The story may follow a single time line, with the investigator untangling threads of evidence as she goes. Or you may want to embrace immediacy and actually show the past events happening. If so, dividing it into two parts, then followed by now, is naturally the simplest. With three parts, we see the investigator uncovering the cold case—and we learn why the case matters—before pausing to watch the actual events taking place, then returning to a high-gear now. Then there’s the real challenge, when past events wind around the present investigation—and the investigator’s life.
Clarity is key. As a reader, I can never keep track of dates in the chapter heads, so in my stories I simply use THEN and NOW, even if THEN covers more than one time. I also like starting some NOW chapters in the head of the same person who ended the previous THEN chapter. But I will admit, it takes a lot of attention, notes, graphs, and headaches, to remember who knows what when.
For the mechanics of a clear and rational plot, Beta readers—issued a set of specific questions—are key. But first, last, and in between, you as a=the writer can never lose track of the stakes involved.
That cold case has to heat the reader up. The past has to matter in the present. Then is always now.
