Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden may have retired from their jobs as UW literature professors, but they haven’t given up on UW literature.
Draine and Hinden are spouses and professors emeriti. Draine taught courses about the contemporary novel; Hinden taught modern drama. In 2006, shortly before they retired, they wrote a memoir together, A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France. Since then, they’ve embarked on a different challenge: writing a series of mystery novels, featuring amateur sleuths Nora Barnes and Toby Sandler. The fifth book in that series, The Bones of Bascom Hall, came out last fall.
Bones was published by the University of Wisconsin Press, where WAA members receive a 30 percent discount. “I think our ideal reader would be an alum of the University of Wisconsin,” says Hinden. “So we’re happy to get the word out to them.”
Badger Insider talked to the two authors about the elements of a good mystery novel.
What inspired your latest book?
Hinden: “We received, as a gift, a picture book of the history of the university. And that contained the story of the Bascom Hall fire of 1916 with some dramatic pictures. That was the spark that set us thinking about writing our next book in Madison, our hometown.”
Draine: “Michael discovered something we didn’t know while we were at the UW, about the fire in Bascom Hall. There had been a dome that got obliterated and never was rebuilt. But, when Michael was looking at photos, he said, ‘Okay, I've got a job for you, Betsy. I want you to go back to Bascom Hall and get into the attic. The old dome is gone, but the water tank is still there, a huge water tank. And I think we can do something with that. It would be a good place to hide a body.’ So I went and I took pictures, and we began plotting.”
What can you tell us about The Bones of Bascom Hall?
Hinden: “We wanted to write about the UW and its history. We focused on the bombing of Sterling Hall, where someone was killed, and the mystery of whatever became of the bomber who got away.”
Draine: “This was in the time of the Vietnam War, and the other event that is prominent in the plot is the Dow demonstrations. We have a group of 70-ish-year-old alums who are reliving the past, and they all were at the UW in ’67. They face the question of whether violence is ever justified in the face of either evil or political oppression. Should the student protesters have interfered with other students? And then, were the police justified? Did anything justify their violence against the students?”
When you’re writing a mystery novel, what should you keep in mind?
Draine: “As with any kind of fiction, you need to have characters who are relatable in some way. It’s absolutely key. More and more, the reader of mysteries is expecting that investigator character to be interesting, to have conflicts.”
Hinden: “As for setting, you want to bring readers to an imaginary place that interests them, or you want to show them a place they might know in a new light.”
Draine: “The victim is an important character, but I would say, more importantly, the people who are still alive, who may be threatened because of the murder that has happened and has not yet been solved. Those people need to be intriguing enough and quirky enough so that the reader will become invested in them.”
And in terms of plot …
Draine: “Well, you need to have a murder, a dead body, a crime. And that crime needs to have some kind of puzzle around who did it. Readers want interesting puzzles to solve: a room that was locked, for instance. That kind of impossibility drives the plot.”
Hinden: “The kind of mystery that intrigues me has an element of special knowledge — take Sherlock Holmes, who has the special ability to make deductions based on the tiniest clues.”
How would you describe the Nora Barnes/Toby Sandler mysteries?
Draine: “I think we have to plead guilty to being in the category of cozy. We are in that tradition, modeled by Agatha Christie, where, from the beginning, you can sense that nobody that you've gotten to like is going to be killed. It’s all going to work out in the end. Good triumphs. But we have added some philosophical weight.”
Hinden: “We haven’t mentioned suspense, which some other writers might have listed as the first and most important element. But suspense is alien to the cozy. Yet, we wanted to try to bridge the gap between the cozy and the thriller. The solving of a puzzle has a rhythm all its own.”
