Meet the Characters of Magnolia Bluff: The Investigator

Once again I’m taking a stroll down the streets of Magnolia Bluff, Texas.

I say hello to those I meet on my morning walk. There’s Gunter Fight entering his bank. We exchange waves. 

I pass by the bakery, mostly because my waistline says I should, but I do wave to Noonan Leigh, the owner. He’s busy so I don’t know if he saw me or not. Best pastries, cakes, and doughnuts in town at Bluff Bakery. At least so I hear.

Down by the courthouse I run into Reece Sovern. He’s the police investigator in Magnolia Bluff. And rather than my words to tell you about Reece, I’m going to once again let Caleb Pirtle talk to you and fill you in on Magnolia Bluff’s detective.

You can find the original blogpost here.

Down deep inside, Detective Reece Sovern may be the happiest man in town. He has a murder to investigate. He’s in the big-time now.

Reece Sovern has been a policeman all of his life.

Spent years driving a patrol car.

Kept his nose clean.

Worked his way up the chain of command.

And now he’s a detective in the small town of Magnolia Bluff.

Mostly he investigates the small stuff.

Thefts.

Burglaries.

Peeping Toms.

But in Death Wears a Crimson Hat, Book 1 of the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles, Reece Sovern finds himself with a murder and a hit-and-run.

Maybe the hit-and-run was an attempted murder.

He’ll find out.

Down deep inside, Reece Sovern may be the happiest man in town.

He’s in the big-time now.

He’ll begin his investigation by talking to the biggest and probably the richest flirt in Magnolia Bluff.

*

Standing on the sidewalk, Reece Sovern unwrapped a cigar, stuck it in his mouth, and walked back to the city hall and police complex to get his car. He’d start by talking to Scarlett Hayden.

Sovern drove around the north end of Burnet Reservoir to Hayden’s Resort, which was situated on the northwest shore of the reservoir.

He remembered when the Haydens bought the fifty acres, put in twenty cabins, and then added a campground with twenty spots. They’d built a fabulous Prairie-style home for themselves, as well.

After all these years, the whole shebang must be worth a few millions, the detective thought, as he pulled into the drive, which was marked private. He wound his way through bald cypress, pecan, Texas ash, cottonwood, bur oak, and cedar elm. He emerged in a clearing. He recognized Scarlett’s big Land Rover and speculated that the beat up Honda parked next to it belonged to some young guy from the college. If one were to believe the gossip, that is.

Of course, if one did believe the gossip, Scarlett Hayden would rarely, if ever, be vertical. And he’d just seen her a little while ago in a vertical position. Besides, she had a resort to run, even though the Smiths did much of the day to day management, Scarlett still had to watch the big picture, which probably meant she was vertical quite a bit of the time.

He parked his car, got out, and walked up to the door. A vision flashed before his eyes of Scarlett walking into Thurgood’s coffee shop. He shook his head and pressed the doorbell.

After what seemed forever, the door opened.

“Mr. Sovern. What a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?”

She was wearing one of those filmy white outfits that women wore in the movies from the 1930s. Jesus, he said to himself. Out loud he said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Sure. C’mon in.” She stepped away from the door and headed for somewhere in the house.

He entered, closed the door, and followed. Her outfit billowed behind her like a cumulus cloud until she stopped at a door.

“We can talk in here.” Her hand motioned for Sovern to enter the room, which he did.

Scarlett followed and sat on the sofa, then tucked her legs under her.

Sovern sat, met her gaze, swallowed, pushed his glasses up his nose, and asked, “What happens if Mary Lou dies? With the society, that is?”

“We elect a new queen. And we’ll add a couple new members.”

“What does the society actually do?”

Scarlett chuckled. “It doesn’t do anything, Mr. Sovern. We girls just wanna have fun. So, we have fun.”

“I find it difficult to picture Mary Lou Fight having fun.”

Scarlett laughed loudly. “Then you don’t know Mary Lou. She has the most fun of us all. All of her gossipy little doings. She damn well has everyone in fear of her. What will she tell? What will she not? And at what price?”

“And you? Does she have you in the palm of her hand?”

“Good lord, no. But that’s only because I don’t give a damn.”

“So who do you think would want Louisa Middlebrook and Mary Lou Fight dead?”

“Louisa?” Sovern watched her cock her head and aim her eyes at the ceiling, and hold that pose for a moment, before turning those dark orbs of hers back to him. “I don’t have a clue. Most likely someone she pissed off when she became Mary Lou’s lap dog.”

“Lap dog?”

“Oh, yes. Mary Lou gave Louisa social standing. Made her somebody. And for that honor, she practically worshipped Mary Lou.”

Sovern thought on that for a moment, and then said, “And Mrs. Fight?”

Once again, Scarlett’s throaty laugh filled the room. “You’d be better off asking, Reece…”

The investigator couldn’t help but notice how she drew out his name and that her eyes became filled with longing. He cleared his throat.

“You’d be better off asking who didn’t want to kill her.”

“And who might that be?”

“I’d guess her husband, Harry Thurgood, and myself, of course. Actually, I have second thoughts about her husband.”

“Why do you exempt Thurgood and yourself?”

“Because neither one of us gives a damn about this little pimple on the butt of nowhere.”

*

Please click HERE to find Death Wears A Crimson Hat on Amazon.

Sandy Signing In wrote on Amazon:

Death Wears A Crimson Hat is a well-written mystery. It’s filled with characters, especially members of the Hats, who are deeply flawed and very believable. Mary Lou’s unprincipled character is one that evokes both dread and disgust. So, I’d have to say that the author, CW Hawes, definitely elicited an emotional response in this reader. Hawes also used character personalities, dialog and action in a way that kept me completely engaged throughout the book. Great job, Mr. Hawes! This is a story that I can highly recommend.

You can’t beat that for a hearty recommendation. Thank you Sandy Signing In!

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright, award-winning poet, and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

The Fourth Wall, or Secondary Belief

Pierce Mostyn trying to save his team from the denizens of Agate Bay.

Anyone familiar with drama knows about the Fourth Wall. It’s that invisible wall that separates the world of the play from the world of the audience. The Fourth Wall prevents the characters from knowing the audience exists, while letting the audience observe the world of the characters in the play.

In literature, this is known as Secondary Belief. The world of the story is separate from the world of the reader. And as long as the world of the story is believable — even though perhaps very different from the world of the reader — the reader will accept it and be entertained.

Magic acts, for example, work on this principle. The audience knows the woman is not cut in half, but accepts what it sees as real in order to be entertained.

In order for the Fourth Wall, or Secondary Belief, to work two things must happen:

• The writer must make the fictional world believable
• The audience/reader must accept the fictional world as believable.

The Burden of the Writer

How does the writer make the fictional world believable? That is the burden of the storyteller — to create a consistent world that, because of its consistency, is believable.

The operative word here is consistent.

For example, we know there are no such things as orcs, or hobbits, or elves, or a place called Middle Earth. However, JRR Tolkien created his world so that it was consistent and therefore appears real and believable to us. And we are thus entertained by the story.

The Burden of the Audience

The audience/reader knows when he or she reads a novel, or watches a movie, that the story or movie is fiction. It is not true. That is what it is called Primary Belief.

However, if the world comes across as realistic and consistent, and therefore believable, the audience/reader will choose to believe what is going on as though it is true. That is Secondary Belief.

If the writer fails to make the story completely believable, or consistent, the audience can choose to suspend disbelief in order to continue to be entertained.

However, once the audience can no longer suspend disbelief, the writer has completely failed.

The Storyteller’s Art

A good storyteller draws you in. Sometimes without you even fully knowing it.

Saki, in “Sredni Vashtar”, starts with a sickly boy, Conradin. Saki paints us a picture of Conradin that we find believable. Perhaps because the boy is like us. We learn of Conradin’s world and of his over protective aunt. And slowly, slowly we find ourselves on Conradin’s side in his struggle with his aunt — because it is also our struggle against authority. We believe because something similar has happened to us. The author has hooked us without our even knowing it.

But he couldn’t have done that if the world of the story wasn’t consistent and therefore believable.

A poor storyteller may hit all the plot points on the head and may pack the story with action on every page, but if the tale isn’t consistent within what we understand to be believable — we will feel the story to be artificial and not ring true. And sadly forgettable.

Recently I started reading a novel where the main character was bonded with some sort of sentient cat and even though they couldn’t stand each other they couldn’t separate because of their bond. That was difficult to believe, but I accepted it and continued reading.

But when the cat kills several people and the townsfolk just stand around and look at the dead bodies, don’t call the authorities, and don’t do anything against the cat and main character, who are outsiders, the writer lost me. Where is that a normal reaction to murder? Certainly not in my world.

In addition, the plotting was so wooden, mechanical, and obvious I found it too painful to continue. It was writing on par with a paint by numbers kit.

The key to telling a good story is consistency in the fictional world. There’s a reason for the old saying that fiction must be believable, whereas real life doesn’t.

We can except the inconsistencies in real life, even though they might not make sense, because that is how real life is. But we are intolerant of those same inconsistencies when it comes to fiction. The fictional world must hang together. It must be reasonable. That is just how we are.

The advantage of traditional publishing is that the editor at the publishing house will reject any manuscript that is unbelievable. We the reader are spared, for the most part, lousy stories. That isn't always the case, but mostly.

Indie authors have no such gatekeeper — other than their readers. Even if the author uses an editor, there is nothing to make the writer incorporate the editor’s suggestions.

The biggest failing I find among indie authors is that their storylines, characters, and the world of the story lack consistency. They simply aren’t believable. Sometimes I can suspend disbelief, but most of the time the books are just too bad to do so.

Therefore my advice to would-be authors is to make sure your characters are consistent with themselves, that there are no gaping holes in your fictional world (in other words, that your world is consistent), and that your storyline flows naturally and doesn’t appear to have been written by the numbers.

We readers want to believe. You writers, help us to believe by being consistent.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

Hey, look! Even Cthulhu is reading the Pierce Mostyn adventures! 

And you can too starting January 29.