annashay 
Anna Scotti reveals the origin of Lori, her “librarian on the run” who has made numerous appearances in EQMM, and discusses how and why this recurring character’s arc differs from those of other famous names in mystery fiction. Be sure to read the latest story featuring Lori in Anna’s latest piece for EQMM, “Traveller From and Antique Land” in our [May/June issue, on sale now!]
Writers dream of creating realistic recurring characters like Kate Atkinson’s troubled, hapless Jackson Brodie or Caleb Carr’s contradictory Laszlo Kreizer, who seem to grow deeper and more complex with each incarnation. Don’t get me wrong—there are still plenty of plot-driven mysteries published in which the clues and reveal take the starring role, while the main character, once established, changes little or not at all—even over the course of a series. That’s called a “flat character arc,” and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, Miss Marple—all remained essentially as depicted in their first adventures. But readers seem to have a growing appetite for more character-driven fare, books that straddle the gap between fast-paced thriller and literary fiction.
Few readers—or critics— still maintain that there is a firm delineation between literary fiction and genre fiction. Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, Sarah Waters and dozens of contemporary cross-genre authors have put that argument to rest, bringing the elements of literature to commercial genres like thriller, mystery, and horror. Sophisticated readers who came of age reading Lawrence Block’s alcoholic Matthew Scudder, say, or Sue Grafton’s damaged, cynical Kinsey Milhone want a complex plot—something to figure out, something to solve—but they also want a three-dimensional protagonist with flaws, someone with real challenges and triumphs. To achieve that truly three-dimensional character—especially within the parameters of short fiction— the character must change, not just over the course of one tale, but over the course of the extended five or ten or twenty-episode story. At the same time, the writer must establish enough about the character to make him or her believable, memorable, and relatable. Add to that the necessity that every installment of a series must be able to stand on its own; the writer cannot assume readers have read the story or stories preceding. There’s a delicate balance to providing enough information that a story works independent of backstory, while limiting repetition for readers who may know the character’s circumstances well. And oh, yeah—don’t forget you’ve got a murder to solve.
I never planned, when writing “That Which We Call Patience” (EQ Nov/Dec 2019) for it to be the start of a series. My parents had moved into an assisted-living facility and I was amazed to realize that it was just like high school—there were the artsy types, the popular group, the outcasts, the mean girls—I knew I had to set a murder amongst these vital, vibrant senior folk.I wrote “Patience” without realizing I would fall in love with the brainy, erudite librarian at the center of the story, but I did, and have been inspired to write about her again and again.
If you are a writer, or an aspiring writer, take advantage of a lesson I learned the hard way. If you are going to create a recurring character living under aliases, establish his or her name early in the game. I didn’t, and the decision has haunted me. In “Patience,” the librarian was called “Audrey Smith.” In the next installment, “What the Morning Never Suspected” (EQ Sept/Oct 2020) she became “Cam Baker,” but as she kept solving murders, blowing her cover, and being moved to new locations and aliases, she was also known as “Juliette Gregory,” “Serena Dutton,” “Sonia Sutton,” “Dana Kane,” and eventually by her real name, Lorraine Yarborough. When the collection of the first nine stories from EQMM was to be published by Down & Out Books, the editor asked me to write two new stories that had not been previously published. Not wanting to interfere with the ongoing EQ timeline, I wrote a story predating Patience—the character’s first WITSEC adventure—and another explaining how she adopted her pit bull, Lola, who appears in the latest stories in the magazine. The problem? I did not reveal the character’s real name—Lorraine—until the sixth installment. It created an awkward situation—readers often discover episodic stories out of order, and I didn’t want to undermine the very dramatic moment when Lori’s name is finally revealed. So as the series gained popularity and I began to entertain requests for interviews and speaking engagements, there was no good way to refer to my character except as “the librarian on the run” or “the librarian in WITSEC” or as “Cam Baker, but-that’s-not-her-real-name.” That was a problem when we were coming up with book cover blurbs and summaries for potential reviewers, too. So learn from my mistake—if you create a character living under an alias, establish one name early on so you have something consistent to call her!
So, character evolution. Remember back in AP English when Ms. Grundy told you about the four kinds of character arc? We’ve already noted a few iconic “flat” characters—those that, however brilliantly rendered, stay essentially the same from one story to the next, because they are solving crimes in a plot-driven bit of fiction. But character-driven tales must involve a character arc—a look at how the character is being changed by conflict. There’s the moral ascending arc (main character redeems himself!) moral descending (main character descends to the pit!) and the transformational (main character becomes a man!). Transformational arcs are most often found in young adult literature—i.e., the bildungsroman, or “coming of age” story. It’s the other two that concern us as mystery writers and readers—good folks gone wrong, or wrong folks gone good—or some kind of messy mix of the two.
Lori’s story begins long before “Patience,” in which she is seen to be a bright and resourceful young woman who has stumbled into trouble by trusting the wrong man. Lori’s master’s degree, nearly-complete PhD, and plum job at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago have not prevented her from being taken in by a villainous cartel boss who, as it turns out, wasn’t even trying very hard to disguise his true character. That’s right; bright gal falls for charismatic bad man. Who’d have thunk it? That concept worked well for the first few stories, as “Juliette,” and then “Audrey,” struggled with loneliness, disorientation, and the occasional murder, while tossing off Shakespearean bons mots and griping about her low-level jobs and reduced circumstances. Readers liked this “librarian on the run” very much—as did I—but in order to keep those readers engaged, something had to change. No one can live as Lori was living—desperately lonely, fundamentally deceitful—without profound changes to her outlook or even to her character. In the fourth story, Lori develops a massive crush on a dashing police detective who turns out to be very happily married, but she’s able to see the humor in her own chagrin. By the fifth, “A Heaven or a Hell,” our girl has established a friendship with the detective and his wife, though she’s careful not to spend too much time alone with him, noting that, as Ralph Waldo Emerson explained, “we are a puny and fickle folk.” Lori is still Cam at this point, but she has begun to change—she’s wry, a bit sardonic, less apt to rely on her pantheon of philosophers and literary deities for guidance than to trust her own bitter experience.
“A Heaven or a Hell” represented a milestone for both of us, protagonist and author, as the story was selected for inclusion in 2022’s The Best Mystery Stories of the Year (Mysterious Press) and Lori began to get fan mail, sometimes complaining that I’d mixed up some small detail of her existence—where her Piltdown Man tattoo is located, for example, or the genders of her faithful greyhounds. Lori is often found sipping on a beer or a glass of sauvignon blanc to unwind at the end of a long day of wrangling seventh graders or busting killers, but—she’s okay. She dreams of seeing her parents again (they’ve been told that she’s dead) and possibly of finishing that doctorate started so long ago.
In the “Longest Pleasure” (EQ Nov/Dec 2021) Lori has moved again and is now working as a personal organizer in Venice, California. She starts to take notice of her handsome WITSEC handler, Owen James, flirting madly with him when he’ll allow it. She also gets to know a young man, recently released from prison, who will figure in a future story, and that’s more of the fun of building a fictional world, and another of the pitfalls, too. Because when you successfully construct an alternate reality, a world that doesn’t exist, but could, readers will hold you to the rules. If Dylan’s eyes are chocolate brown in story five, they’d better not be leaf green in story seven. There are a lot of details to keep track of: what exactly was Lori’s PhD dissertation about, and did she live alone, or with a roommate, or with her erstwhile, homicidal love? The author may forget, dashing off descriptions gaily, without thought of keeping an excel spreadsheet open to note details, but readers are ruthless and they will call you on your errors every time.
Lori is, by story six, fed up with living undercover, tired of being uprooted and moved again and again, drinking a bit more than she ought, and just in general ready for a change. It’s mid-pandemic, and when Owen James reveals that Lori’s father has died, she rebels, setting off a chain of disasters that reverberate through all the stories that follow. “It’s Not Even Past,” in addition to being the eponymous sixth story in the Down & Out collection, was selected for inclusion in the 2024 edition of The Best Mystery Stories of the Year (Mysterious Press) and was a finalist for a Derringer Award, the coveted prize given to short mystery fiction writers by their peers each year. So I was on top of the world—but Lori, not so much. By story seven she’s managing a run-down resort in South Carolina, a little out of shape and rather disillusioned with the world. “Into the Silent Land” was recorded by Rabia Chaudry for The Mystery Hour podcast, and even I was a bit surprised by its bleakness; the only bright spot is the growing chemistry between Owen and Lori, though he seems to choose professionalism over romance in the end.
Lori is experiencing a descending character arc. Though she remains fundamentally good, she struggles with incipient alcoholism, depression, and lethargy. In “A New Weariness” (EQ May/June 2024), Lori is forced to realize that the government may never release her from her “protected witness” status. She may never find her happy ending with Owen, she may never see her mother or her dear friends, the detective and his wife, again, and she will probably never finish her degree and reclaim her old persona. She’s no longer pretending to be a woman living in the shadows; she is exactly that. “A New Weariness” carried Lori and me to our third inclusion in Best Mystery Stories of the Year (2025 Mysterious Press) but it was something of a pyrrhic victory, for Lori at least, as the next installment finds her living on the island of Maui, drinking heavily and steadily, using one night stands to stave off her crushing loneliness—and that’s before things fall apart.
In “Traveller from an Antique Land” (EQ May/June 2025) Lori has essentially hit bottom. She’s living in a homeless encampment on the streets of Los Angeles, no longer a prisoner of the state, but one of her own addiction and depression. But it can’t continue. A character must grow and change in order to stay of interest to readers, and for Lori, the only direction possible is up. Stay tuned.
