How to Write a Detective Team

by JPC Allen

I’ll state the obvious: if you want to write a mystery, you must have a detective. But detectives come in all shapes and sizes, so you have a lot of room to develop an interesting main character. As you write, you might find your story is better if you have a duo of detectives. When I began my first novel, A Shadow on the Snow, my detective was 19-year-old Rae Riley. Since my mystery was aimed at teens, my amateur detective had to be one. But as I wrote, I realized Rae’s father, since he is the sheriff of their fictional Ohio county, had to join her in the investigation or else he’d look incompetent and lose her respect and those of my readers. So I stumbled into a mystery-solving team, and my stories are the better for it. Below are my tips on how to write a detective team.

Decide if you write from the POV of one member or both.

Whether I tell my story from one or two perspectives is critical to how I plot my mystery and determines how I lay out the clues. In my series, I write from Rae’s POV and only her POV, and I write in first person. The story has to happen to her, and she has to make the story happen. Her father, Mal, can provide her information, but readers only see him through her eyes. Since I write fair play mysteries, Rae has to learn everything readers need to solve the mystery.

If I was writing from both of their POVs, then I could have scenes with just Mal and have him discover things that Rae may not be aware of, but readers would be and, gradually, they would have more knowledge about the mystery than either main character. That would be a different reading experience than if they see the story through Rae’s eyes alone.

So decisions on POV affects not only your story construction but how readers interact with the story.

The team should have contrasts.

If you’re two detectives are too much alike, then you only need one of them. Holmes and Watson have appealed to readers for over a century because they perfectly contrast each other. In my series, Rae is a quiet, thoughtful amateur photographer. She has a photographer’s eye for noticing details. She also has a drive to help people, which draws her into cases.

Mal is more outgoing, confident, and carries a lot of authority in his manner. He’s also very protective, especially of his children.

Because of the contrasts in personality …

The team should have conflict.

Nothing’s more boring than two characters who never disagree. One of the delights of the of the Nero Wolfe mystery series is how the eccentricities and quirks of the great detective Nero Wolfe aggravate his right-hand man, Archie Goodwin.

Rae’s desire to help people in trouble brings her into conflict with Mal, who wants her to stay safe. Another source of conflict is the fact that Rae just discovered Mal is her father, so the process of getting to know each other is full of starts and stops. In A Storm of Doubts, after their first real fight, Rae senses Mal wants to tell her something but keeps putting it off.  Conflict brings some needed tension to a warm relationship that could get too cozy to stay interesting.

Creating a detective team is a lot of work but a lot of fun. What detective teams do you love to read?

JPC Allen started her writing career in second grade with an homage to Scooby Doo. Her Christmas mystery “A Rose from the Ashes” was the first Rae Riley mystery and her latest Rae Riley novel, A Storm of Doubts released in March 2024. Follow her to her next mystery at Facebook, Instagram, Bookbub, Goodreads, and Amazon.