The Plausible Amateur: Why We Love Sleuths Who Shouldn’t Be Sleuthing

By Michelle Barker

While the amateur sleuth is the hallmark of cozy mysteries, they can also appear in traditional mysteries and thrillers. Regardless of where they show up, the charm of the amateur sleuth lies in contradiction: they don’t belong in the world of crime, and yet somehow they thrive there.

The first amateur sleuth was Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin who appeared in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, but it’s Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple who is recognized as establishing the trope. Many beloved amateur sleuths have followed in her footsteps, from Nancy Drew to Flavia de Luce.

A bonus to using an amateur as your investigator is that they’re more likely to be relatable to the reader. We can’t connect as easily with someone like Sherlock Holmes, at least on the level of his knowledge and expertise, so Arthur Conan Doyle gives him Watson as the amateur sidekick. An amateur is likely to strike a chord with the reader because they’re just like us.

The amateur sleuth also brings a certain freshness to what can feel like a very formulaic genre. Most mysteries open with a beat we call The Detective and Their Methods, where the detective gets the chance to demonstrate how they operate. An amateur sleuth is bound to have a different approach to solving crimes than the typical cop or private investigator. How will a cafe owner or a high school teacher approach this mystery? The reader will be eager to see how things unfold.

Who you choose as your amateur sleuth is important. Not just anyone qualifies for the job. In order for the reader to believe in them, your amateur must be suited to investigating, and it must make sense for them to get involved. But for the most part, they will also have an advantage: no one will take them seriously or even suspect that they’re on the case.

The Plausibility Factor

An amateur sleuth should be extraordinary in some way: highly observant or intuitive, persistent to the point of relentlessness, resourceful, a creative thinker. This is where The Detective and Their Methods plot point can be helpful: you can use it to establish your amateur sleuth’s capacity for intuitive thinking and cleverness.

In The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mma Ramotswe calls herself a professional investigator, but the truth is, she starts out as an amateur and relies on Clovis Andersen’s book, The Principles of Private Investigation, along with wisdom, intuition, and a deep knowledge of human nature. A large part of the novel is spent on her gaining expertise and trying to prove herself to doubters. But we see her capacity for solving crimes right at the start when she outs a man who’s pretending to be someone’s father.

Similarly, Poe opens The Murders in the Rue Morgue with a study of how a person must think if they want to solve a crime and allows Dupin to demonstrate his ability to make intuitive connections by correctly guessing what his friend is thinking.

Another aspect of plausibility you will need to address is the amateur sleuth’s access to information. If there’s no good reason for them to have that access, then anything they learn will feel a little too convenient. Mma Ramotswe sets herself up as an investigator and has clients, so her access to information is quickly established. Poe gives Dupin a friend on the police force.

That said, there is room to strain credulity a little. Witness the many (perhaps too many) novels that involve pets helping amateur sleuths solve the crime. And then there is Flavia de Luce, the beloved amateur sleuth who is only eleven years old.

But these amateurs still need a good reason to get involved in the case. Why do they care? Is the case personal for them? It should be, else the reader might not buy their willingness to put in the time, face danger, and see the investigation through to the end. Dupin gets involved in the murders in the Rue Morgue because it’s his friend who is arrested for the crimes, and he feels he owes it to him to dig deeper and find out what really happened. In The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Flavia de Luce is determined to clear her father of an accusation of murder.

The Amateur Factor

Making your sleuth an amateur means they’re probably going to screw up somewhere along the way. They won’t necessarily know where to find certain information or how to handle a prickly suspect. They might not know how to follow someone inconspicuously. Key here is to remember that their lack of professional expertise is what makes them both relatable and charming.

This lack of expertise, however, does not give you a free pass to rely on coincidence to solve the case. Coincidence is something authors should avoid in any genre: it takes agency away from the protagonist and makes the reader stop trusting you.

What a lack of expertise does give you is the possibility of your sleuth becoming an underdog. Chances are the pros—the police, private investigators, and others—will underestimate your amateur sleuth because they “don’t know what they’re doing,” or “have no idea what they’re getting into.” A lack of expertise sometimes allows a person to see things in new and unexpected ways because they’re not hampered by rules and regulations.

An underdog story is an easy way to create connection between the reader and the protagonist. We love to see underdogs triumph—even more so, an underdog who’s standing up for justice or fighting evil.

Who Can Be an Amateur Sleuth?

Well, as we like to say at The Darling Axe, anything can work if it’s done well. Bookshop owners are a gimme—and yes, they almost always have cats. But many authors have thought outside the box: a hotel maid, a mystery author, a group of elderly friends who decide to investigate cold cases in their retirement community—all have played the part.

Tropes and Pitfalls to Avoid

While anything can be done well, some things have been done so well (and so often) that they should be avoided: the nosy neighbor, the pet that accidentally uncovers a key clue, the bumbling but mean law enforcement agent, convenient eavesdropping (convenient anything, for that matter: make your amateur sleuth work for what they find out!), overly chatty informants who tell all for no plausible reason, and too much attention on how to cook, knit, sew or bake something.

Watch out for the instant-detective upgrade your sleuth might get. You want to give them a realistic learning curve rather than leaping from never having solved anything to Sherlock-level deduction. On the other hand, don’t repeatedly send them out alone at night where they are sure to run into danger. Yes, it’s dramatic, but there’s no virtue to having a dumb protagonist.

Make your villain villainous—and give them skills. Don’t make it too easy for your amateur sleuth to figure things out. And by the way, unless your sleuth is retired (which many are) or independently wealthy, they should also have a job.

Finally, while many cozy mysteries take place in small towns where gossip is a thing, beware of making too many plot twists hinge on this grapevine or the story will feel contrived.

Standalone or Series?

While many mysteries end up becoming series, these days publishers are less willing to take a risk on an unknown author. Even if you do envision your amateur sleuth going on to solve numerous crimes over multiple books, it’s a good idea to resolve things in such a way that your first book can stand alone.

That said, building in the possibility of development allows you to say in your query that your novel has series potential. If you give your amateur sleuth a long-term project or goal, or if they have a personal issue or a long-shot love arc that can develop over time, this will keep them fresh and dynamic and keep readers interested over many books.

In Conclusion

Choosing to write a mystery that features an amateur sleuth comes with both challenges and advantages. The key, as in all fiction, is to convince us of the authenticity of your protagonist and their situation. If we believe in your amateur sleuth, we’ll follow them down every dark alley and into all the spiderwebbed corners.

Michelle Barker is an award-winning author and poet. She is the co-author of two craft books: Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling and Story Skeleton: The Classics. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in literary reviews worldwide. She has published three YA novels (one fantasy and two historical fiction), a historical picture book, and a chapbook of poetry. Michelle holds a BA in English literature (UBC) and an MFA in creative writing (UBC). Many of the writers she’s worked with have gone on to win publishing contracts and honours for their work. Michelle lives and writes in Vancouver, Canada.