What Is The Back Story?
We are all wondering why? Why would that man kill those students? I am sitting with that question this morning even as I am in the editing process of my own murder mystery. Why am I writing a story about murder?
I don't read murder mysteries to glory in death or because I am fascinated with the act of taking human life. It actually repels me. What draws me in is the story of "why". What brings a person to take the life of another?
That story is in the first book of the Old Testament. What brought Cain to kill his brother Abel? Was he overcome by evil or did his narrative need evil to be realized? We are all the hero in our story. It is when we stop questioning the truth of our tale that deception finds a foothold. I can usually tell when I'm spinning a yarn. The need to rationalize my actions is the clue. "I had to do it." "I saw no other way out."
“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
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And, I thank-you for reading some of my mystery novel, Rubato. Judith, a piano teacher extraordinaire, makes a decision which, upon reflection, changes the lives of others, not for the better.
Thought provoking quote from Steinbeck. Thanks for sharing.
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