How To Write A Murder

the i n t r o d u c t i o n

It all started with a few advertising contests. That billboard for Colgate toothpaste on 5th? That was mine. I was only a freshman in high school during that time, so I didn't really know what I was doing. The details just said, "What would you say?" I didn't use Colgate, I used Crest, so I just wrote the first thing that came to mind. Don't be a ditz and make the switch to Colgate. So maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to say, but coming from a very prestigious all girl's private school has its advantages.

I racked up about a hundred dollars for the ad. Trust me, I wasn't rolling in the bread like I wanted to. You'd think my parents would have save the money for college or something, but instead blew it on a '59 deuce and a quarter. Probably so dad could get in with the rest of his loaded co-workers. It was a nice car and all, but a Buick Electra was a bit too outlandish to drive around the Boston area.

Spending most of my life holed up in a nunnery, rebelling against the teacher was like a sin. We all did it though. Becky still hadn't been caught for smoking in the bathrooms. She tried in every bathroom, even the one that the headmisstress used often. No cigar. We were all trying to get out of there. For me, rebelling came in the form of writing. I was particularly inspired by those authors that were unconventional and not talked about until you made a big deal about them. If I could write a big hit novel like Hemingway or Hitchcock, then I could make it to the big time and out of Lexington.

Mr. Fitzgerald, or Mr. Fitz as us girls liked to call him, was the young and fab literature teacher who thought I had a real talent for writing. It's not something I chose to be good at, it was just something I did during class to make it look like I was paying attention and writing notes. He said that my writing showed a darkness that was "captivating and moving". In my junior year, he entered me in the 1965 Miss Mystery Contest.

I spent that summer thinking about what I was going to write about. It hit me as I was listening to The Animals on the radio. I could write a murder mystery. Something that would stand out above everybody else's Doyle impersonation. I would be more like Hitchcock. I got my dad's Selectric out and starting burning ribbon. The words came to me naturally.

I had read enough mystery novels to know what everyone else would be writing about. A detective, male, late thirties, smokes a pipe, and has a somewhat thicker sidekick. No, this one would be about a female detective who gets involved in the murder of a member in an local band. It was perfect, because Boston had so many wannabe Beatles bands, that nobody would care if one was...gone.

As I handed my finished story to Mr. Fitz, I had no idea of all the trouble it would end up causing. It was just a handful of papers with a few hundred words on them. How could one story become the main suspect of an actual murder mystery? It was my very own shot heard around the world.