Insurance … dull? Or a cesspool of murder?

Last week, I launched my first novel Deadly Fall, an amateur sleuth mystery. My protagonist, Paula Savard, investigates the murder of her childhood friend.

As I was conceiving Paula’s character, among her many attributes, I gave her the job of insurance adjuster because I’m familiar with the field. The longest job I held – ten years – was insurance claims examiner, which involved reviewing reports of adjusters out in the field investigating whiplash and liability claims.

Paula’s job became part of her motivation to solve the murder. Here was a chance to apply her training and skills to something she finds more meaningful and exciting than sore necks. Paula, like me, viewed insurance as boring and this was part of her problem at the story start. She’s gone as far as she wants to go in her career and needs more.

While writing the story, I stayed as far away as possible from Paula’s insurance work. I thought this would be dull, compared to the mystery, romance and other personal aspects. I also worried my insurance information was out of date since I hadn’t worked in the field for over twenty years. My former insurance colleagues might have joked, “Don’t worry. There’s nothing new in insurance.” And to be honest, a lunch with two friends in insurance reassured me not a lot had changed.

By the end of Deadly Fall, Paula and I realized insurance offers plenty of scope for crime. Burglaries, fires, hit-and-run accidents might be cover-ups for murder. My editor at TouchWood urged me to include more of Paula-on-the-job, to give readers a better sense of her character and set up future books in the series. So, I wrote scenes of Paula dealing with two suspicious claims and threaded them through the book.

Meanwhile, I wrote a sequel titled Secret Spring. Once again, I set Paula off on an amateur quest, although had her working with a detective she developed a relationship with in Deadly Fall. Secret Spring incorporated more of Paula’s job. I hope my editor will be satisfied. She’s reading the manuscript now.

Last fall, I started Book Three and decided it was time for an insurance-related murder. A man dies in a house fire. Paula investigates the case from the fire insurance angle. On the job, Paula continues investigating two suspicious claims she began working on in Secret Spring. This book will require more than my current insurance knowledge. For research, I’m looking for a contact in the adjusting business.

Mysteries are often classified as professional or amateur sleuth. An insurance adjuster falls in the middle. Unlike a police detective, Paula’s job isn’t solving murders, but she can easily stumble upon them in the course of her work. As the series continues, she will stumble more.

Now that I’ve written stories from both Paula’s amateur and professional perspective, I see the difficulties with each genre. For the amateur sleuth, there’s the problem of motivation – why is she doing all these things and exposing herself to danger? For the professional, the why is simple: it’s her job. But, in Book Three I quickly realized Paula’s investigation would become mechanical for the reader if I didn’t make it personal for her. My conclusion from all this is, amateur or professional, writing a mystery is a challenge.

In his celebrated book On Writing, author Stephen King says that people love to read about someone else’s work. What may be routine to you, fascinates others. Every job is bound to contain possibilities for murder and crime. All it takes is a little what if? In Deadly Fall, Paula and I discovered this about insurance.

Last week, I went to Lethbridge to speak and read at the opening night of the Lethbridge Library Conference. This was my first presentation with an actual copy of Deadly Fall. I dressed for the occasion in a dark brown skirt and yellow shirt, which happen to be the colours of the Deadly Fall cover. I hadn’t thought about co-ordinating book cover and wardrobe before, but it’s not a bad idea.

Fellow writer Anne Sorbie picked me up in Calgary at noon on Thursday. I had met Anne only once briefly, but judged her a person with whom I could spend time in a car and share a hotel room. We arrived a few hours before our scheduled restaurant dinner with librarians and other writers travelling from Calgary. During our wait, we explored the hotel, had a snack and tea, went for a walk on the ridge outside the hotel and selected our passages to read that evening for our allotted five minutes.

From dinner, we drove to the Lethbridge library Crossings Branch, a large, lovely building on the outskirts of town. We five presenters were seated in front of the fireplace. Event organizer, Susan Toy, introduced us in turn. I spoke about the premise of Deadly Fall and read the excerpt on the inside flap, the beginning of Chapter Two. The librarians announced that the first Lethbridge Word on the Street will take place Sept 25, 2011.

Cake, mingling and book sales and signings followed the formal events. I spent a long time chatting with Neil McKinnon, a classmate from a years ago short story course at the Alexandra Writers Centre. He was in Lethbridge visiting his mother-in-law and had seen my name on the event poster. Neil’s short story collection Tuckahoe Slidebottle was published in 2007 and shortlisted for the Leacock Humour award. He spends most of the year in Mexico and told me about an annual writing conference in Puerto Vallarata, which I’d love an excuse to re-visit. I’ve since made contact with the PV writers’ group that organizes the conference and become an online member. Just reading about their writing activities in warm, sunny Mexico gives a boost to my winter day.

At our hotel, Anne and I had received a spring fling coupon for a platter of appetizers. We invited attendes to our hotel lounge for wine and food in a garden setting. One who came along was Blaine Greenwood, a Lethbridge poet and disc jokey at the university radio station. He invited us to the staion the next day to record 10-15 minute readings from our books. Anne and I got up early; Blaine drove us to the station in snow that foreshadowed a tough drive home. In a closed off room, I read Chapter One from Deadly Fall. Blaine plans to stagger the broadcasts and will let us know when they air. He won’t post the recordings on the radio website, so we’ll have to try to catch them “live.”

After our recordings, Anne and I hit the road. Conditions were white with snow drifted onto the left lane. A snowblower ahead of us blew up so much snow it reduced our visibility to zero at times. The snowblower got farther ahead; other vehicles passed; down the road we saw one smashed into the snowblower’s rear. Anne got us safely through. In addition to being a great travel compantion, she’s an A-one driver. As we reached Okotoks, the sun came out. We stopped for coffee with Okotoks writer Lee Kvern.

Altogether, it was an interesting, fun and productive trip that promises future opportunities. Many thanks to Susan Toy and Lethbridge librarian Elisabeth Hegerat for organizing it.