W is for Winning

 

At the end of every STAC Mystery Joe, Sheila and Brenda come out winners. They have to. It’s in the nature of the beast. What would be the point if the police solved the crime or if the perpetrator escaped the clutches of our friendly gang of boomers?

Note: there are no spoilers here, but to fully understand what I’m talking about, you’d have to read the books.

But look again at, say, My Deadly Valentine, and how much of a winner is Joe? How many hard lessons did he learn in A Murder for Christmas? Was Brenda really a winner in The I-Spy Murders?

The same can be said of The Handshaker. Is it really a victory? And in Voices, did winning mean everything or was the price of victory too high.

The happy ending is not a prerequisite of any crime novel or thriller, but victory has to be assured. Winning, however, may mean defeating the bad guy, but quite often it leaves the hero with a feeling of that other ‘W’. Sadder but wiser.

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The STAC Mysteries are available as paperbacks and as e-book downloads in all formats, or direct from Crooked Cat Books in MOBI, EPUB and PDF formats