by Andy Scheer
You needn’t hammer home your moral.
If you want your fiction to drive home a message, focus on something else.
Recently I’ve re-visited Aaron Elkins’s mysteries series featuring forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver. Each resonates with certain themes.
As with any classic mystery, there’s a quest for justice and truth.
But other chords resonate: the value of friendship and the pleasures of exotic travel, well-prepared food, and the comforts of home.
Underneath runs an even stronger testament to marriage. These aren’t romance novels, but they show a married couple deeply in love. Gideon and Julie argue and reconcile, they share chores and ideas. Especially they complete one another — serving as examples more memorable than most sermons on Ephesians 5.
There’s nothing here to threaten a reader whose marriage fires don’t burn as warmly. Just an invitation to enjoy the glow with their spouse.
All while discovering whodunnit.
