WHEN MURDER HITS CLOSE TO HOME by Maria Hudgins

Recently, my book club selected the book, Eyes of a Monster, by Ron Peterson, Jr, for discussion at our monthly meeting and we had probably the biggest group we've had in years. It was standing room only until we brought in extra chairs. At the end, nobody wanted to leave. What sparked such enthusiasm? One of our members suggested a book, a murder mystery, that was actually set in our neighborhood. We chose it for our next meeting. And, oh yes,  it was a true story. Only three names were changed and I think that was because the people referred to were minors at the time of the murder. It's exciting to see the names of people you actually know in a published book.

We all felt intimately connected to the story even though the murder itself occurred 43 years ago and none of us were directly connected to it, but almost all of us knew several people who were mentioned because ours is a close-knit community. Plus, we knew the streets and buildings, because we had driven these same streets on our way to the meeting. 

The murder occurred in 1981 but it wasn't solved until 2018. Definitely a cold case. A really cold case. It would never have been solved at all had it not been for the presence of a real-life detective and a real-life FBI agent. They had worked hundreds of hours with the old murder book from the late 1980s as their main resource.

None of us knew the victim, yet we all hurt as if we had known her intimately. She had been one of us in a way. Several of our members are former teachers. The victim was a teacher. We drive past her apartment building every day. Her parents lived on the street where several of our members live today.

Most of the people interviewed in the case were no longer available. Some had died. Most of the original investigators had, by this time, retired. Those 21st century sleuths had to work with 20th century records like micro-film. The murder book held photos taken with now-obsolete cameras. Documents were written with typewriters. Of course, there were no cell phone records. The investigators were spurred on by the discovery that their prime suspect had gone on to commit rapes, home invasions, and more murders.  He was, in fact, a serial killer who had largely escaped punishment thanks to bureaucratic snafus and clever lawyers. If not for the excellent memory of a teen-ager who witnessed the break-in and who still lived locally, they might never have gotten the proof they needed.

I'm telling you this because there's a moral in it for us writers. If you want to grab your readers--and we all do--you need to find a way to bring the story home to them. It doesn't have to be a true story. It doesn't have to make a physical connection to the reader. If it touches on a shared experience, a common problem, an attitude--anything that rings a bell of recognition--the reader will think, "I know what that's like. I've been there," and you will have a new fan.