You Too Could Write a Mystery

By Local Author and Legal Expert Davis MacDonald

It was pretty normal morning. I settled in the living room with the arched window looking over Malaga Cove to RAT Beach; the surf sluicing up the sand as the remnants of a Mexican Storm delivered its last thrust at the land.

Coffee in hand I open the LA Times and happen to glance at a page 3 article laying there like a ticking bomb. Waiting to turn my life upside down….

I’d always toyed with the idea of writing a mystery novel. Practicing law for clients on shore and off for over thirty years, so many characters, so many happenstance incidents, so many tragedies, and lucks of the draw. So many stories rattling around in my head, ready to be written down. 3 or 4 times over I’d even done outlines a mystery novel ‘to be’, struggling with plot, internal organization salting of clues. The outline always got set aside, aborted by my inability to write that first sentence.

So, who wrote this time bomb article, and who was it about? I wish I could remember. Wish I’d saved it, perhaps laminated and framed on my wall somewhere behind my laptop. But I didn’t.

A female reporter interviewing a mystery author who routinely made the Times Best Seller List. I skimmed the article with semi-disinterest, my habit in our age of over-information. And then… And then…a single question and its answer flashed into my eyes and burned somewhere far back in my cerebral cortex.

Like someone turned on a light; or the ahah moment when we turn a corner to find a place we’ve always known.

And the question, my friends?

“How do you write your books; do you use an outline?”

And the answer…

“Oh no. No outline. I use the Faulkner method.

I have an interesting physical place in my mind to start with and some strong characters. And I have some very general idea about the theme of my story.

Then I let the characters speak to me. I write their stores as they speak. When they tell me they’re done, I’m done.”

Damn, I said to myself. I could do that!!!

The year was 2012. 8 Mystery Novels ago.

I write 1 mystery novel a year. I use the stories and events that have moved me over 40 years of law practice, dressed in fictional garb but with real substance beneath. I write about people and passions and greed, about sweet people with big hearts and mean people with nimble hands, about grand visions and small dreams, about loss and gain, about the luck of the draw, and those with cojones too small to draw. You’ll find characters you recognize in my books because they are people we all know.

My readers tell me the books are read past their bedtime, on the beach, on their plane, standing in line, and in their lap during long zoom meetings. Fast action suspense with intriguing puzzles and sizzler endings, incorporating 21st Century issues of import.

You too could write your own mystery story this way.

My name’s Davis MacDonald, and I’m a Mystery Writer. All because I happened to skim a certain LA Times article so many years ago.

Davis MacDonald’s “The Judge Series” encompassing eight suspenseful mystery novels, starting with THE HILL set in Palos Verdes, is on Amazon in Paperback, Kindle and Audiobook formats.

Davis MacDonald is a native Angeleno and makes his home in Malaga Cove, Palos Verdes, in an Italian Villa above the Queen’s Necklace that once was known as the ‘Hitchcock House’ because it was abandoned and overgrown for some years in the fifties. He’s raised four daughters and three sons there, a total of seven, the last of whom goes to USC and is planning a Law Career. Just before high school he has taken each child, one on one with Dad on a trip around the World. Seven times around the planet, talking to people and picking up stories.

Davis’ career has spanned Securities Lawyer, Law Professor, Bar Chairman, Fund Manager, Real Estate Syndicator, Yachtsman, and World traveler. He even ran for Congress from the Hill, losing to an unknown at the time from DC, Dana Rohrabacher.

Today when he’s not writing mystery novels, Davis continues his International Securities Lawyer practice, representing demanding clients on-shore and off. His career and travels have generated first-hand experiences and unique stories. As Jimmy Buffett sings, ‘Good times and riches and son-of-bitches, I’ve seen more than I can recall’.** It’s from these stores Davis draws inspiration for the events in his Mystery Novel Series.

Davis writes one mystery novel a year. Each book is a thriller with action and suspense, a puzzle to unravel, and twists and turns that leave the reader guessing, and sometimes gasping. Interestingly, each book has wound into it an expose on a significant social issue in our 21st Century World.

The Hill, set in Palos Verdes, deals with how much we’d risk for our lover; The Island with a community that can’t get along until suddenly it has to. Silicon Beach deals with the Homeless and why the problem is so difficult to fix; The Bay looks at the Koran and the roots of Jihadism against the West. Cabo exposes the slave trade in Mexico; and The Strand looks at yellow journalism and why people can be tried in the press. The Lake predicted the Covid Pandemic five months before it arrived. And The Cruise considers perhaps the next pandemic, one surrounding the micro-plastic we are unwittingly consuming as we eat.

Readers say they read his books on the beach, on airplanes, past their bedtime at night, standing in line, and even on their lap during endless zoom meetings.

Davis says, “I spend a year of my life writing a Mystery Novel because hidden within, behind the fun of the chase, are significant issues about which I’m passionate. Issues I want my reader to recognize and understand.”

Look for Davis’ next book in November of this year, entitled THE DARK WEB, (Book 9 in the Judge Series). His books are on Amazon in paperback, kindle, and audiobook. Remember its Davis with an ‘S’, and “MAC’donald, like the farmer.

Davis MacDonald – Murder Mystery Author (davismacdonald-author.com)

**From Changes in Attitude and Changes in Latitude written and sung by Jimmy Buffett, August, 1977