Guest Blogger - Emilie Richards

I'm proud to say I've never killed anybody I liked.  Actually, in real life, I've never killed "anybody."  But on paper?  That's a different story.  I've killed strangers.  I've killed the shrewish wife of a politician, and the woman who tried to have my husband fired.  No, wait, make that the woman who tried to have my sleuth's husband fired.  Sometimes I get confused.

As my series, Ministry is Murder, has progressed, I've killed an obnoxious foster sister, a Simon Cowell wannabe gone completely to the dark side, and a celebrity chef.  Ah, the fleeting rewards of a day's work.  But along the way I've never dispatched any character I liked, nor even one who could possibly be redeemed as a human being.  Not that all my victims are one hundred percent evil.  What fun would creating that person be?  But each of my dispatchables has stepped just over that invisible line.  You know, the one that has a sign that reads: "This person isn't ever going to change for the better."  And in my mysteries?  I guess that's a death sentence.

After all that talk of blood and gore, I'll confess I'm really tenderhearted.  I stopped watching CSI when the depiction of violence increased.  I stopped reading authors who were otherwise hilarious when it became clear they found graphic descriptions of death and mayhem funniest of all.  When it comes right down to it, the traditional mystery novel is about justice, not about murder.  We don't care quite as much who gets murdered as who sets the world back to rights afterwards and how they do it.

I like setting the world to rights, and so does Aggie Sloan-Wilcox, my minister's wife sleuth.  I just feel a little sorry for the next irredeemable character we come across in Emerald Springs, Ohio.  Some people's days are numbered.