It used to be that if someone was murdered in a house, no one would want to live there. And for some people, that’s still true.
But for others, being the site of a gruesome murder is a selling point. Or at least a reason to attend the open house.
It’s the decision to embrace or deny its murderous past that the town on Rainier has to grapple with in author Shelley Burr’s noir murder mystery thriller Murder Town (paperback, Kindle, audiobook). And a decision that the residents have to grapple with further when someone turns up dead.
In the following email interview, Burr discusses what inspired and influenced this murderous story.
To start, what is Murder Town about, and when and where is it set?
Murder Town is set in the fictional town of Rainier, which was terrorized by a series of murders in the early 2000s. The town’s name is now inextricably linked to the Rainier Ripper, and everyone who lives there still grapples with the trauma of what happened.
Now in economic decline, the town is approached with a proposal: let a dark tourism company run a walking tour of the murder sites. This will bring desperately needed customers to the town’s struggling businesses, but means trading on the memory of their lost friends and family. Before they can come to a decision, the tour operator is murdered in a way eerily reminiscent of the first Rainier Ripper murder.
Where did you get the idea for Murder Town?
The initial idea for Murder Town was sparked when I read this article about Snowtown, South Australia. Snowtown is known in Australia for the “bodies in barrels” murders committed there. The article discussed the two paths the town could take: try to move away from the association, maybe even change the name, or lean into it, and encourage the type of people who stop in town to take selfies in front of the bank where the bodies were found.
When I read the news, or research true crime, part of me is always looking for humans in a complex situation, one that sparks my sympathy and doesn’t have any easy answers. Murder Town grew from there.
And is there a reason it’s Murder Town and not Murder City or Murder Suburb or Murder Unincorporated Village?
Rainier had to be just the right size to make the story work. Any smaller or bigger and it would have been something else entirely.
Rainier is stuck in its past, both emotionally and physically. In the story, the tour operator points out that the reason the location is so appealing for a dark tourism attraction is because it still looks exactly the same. The town’s struggling economy hasn’t allowed for any new construction or redevelopment.
When I was writing Murder Town, I attended a talk at the crime fiction festival Bad Sydney, [which is] run by a man who does walking tours of old murder sites in Sydney and Melbourne. He told us the story of a 19th century murder that had taken place only a few blocks away from the festival venue, so I walked there afterward to see for myself. It was now a 7-11. There was a scrolling marquee showing headlines about some puffed up political scandal.
Visiting the site added nothing to my experience of the story, because cities endlessly overwrite themselves. But if you go to Glenrowan to see the site of the shootout between Ned Kelly’s gang and the police, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the story.
Murder City would be a completely different book. Probably a good one, but not one I’m well suited to write.
Also, is there a reason why the Rainier Ripper was a serial killer as opposed to a serial rapist or a spree killer or a contract killer who had a long career before they got caught?
Murder Town is about dark tourism, and true crime as entertainment. The Rainier Ripper had to be a serial killer because those are the crimes that we tend to latch on to and mythologize. In spite of them being exceptionally rare, or maybe because they’re so rare.
There are also important reasons in text why the historical crimes that kick off the plot had to be murders, but that would be a big spoiler.
Murder Town sounds like it’s a thriller, maybe a noir one, but not a murder mystery. How do you describe it, genre-wise?
I’m a genre nerd, so asking me which subgenre I would put any crime fiction book into, including my own, is a dangerous game unless you have an hour and a strong drink.
Murder Town is a murder mystery in that there is a mysterious murder that is solved by the end. It isn’t the sort of murder mystery where in the end peace and order is restored because a single monster is rooted out, allowing everyone else to resume their happy lives. In that way, I would classify it as noir.
It is also definitely a thriller, in the sense that the reader is aware that the characters are in immense danger throughout the story.
There could even have been a version of Murder Town that was a horror novel, though I leaned away from those elements in favor of focusing on the mystery.
Murder Town is your second novel after Wake. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on Murder Town but not on anything else you’ve written?
Murder Town takes more influence from golden age mysteries than Wake did, like the works of Agatha Christie or P.D. James. I wanted to write a proper puzzle box mystery, and play with the locked room trope. In Murder Town, all of the most likely suspects for the modern day murder are in the same room at the time of the murder, in full view of each other.
What about non-literary influences; was Murder Town influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games?
I don’t play much myself, but my husband is a very enthusiastic tabletop gamer. Sometimes he runs his own games, in Dungeons & Dragons or Unknown Armies, a game where the world is full of secret factions scheming against each other. You can definitely see the influence of that kind of storytelling in my work.
Being married to someone who isn’t a writer, but loves story and has taught himself to tell stories in a different medium, is such a boon to my work. He has tricks he’s learned from steering his players out of a corner they’re painting themselves into, which is a huge help. We can sit together and talk over a tricky problem I’m having, throw ideas back and forth.
Now, the original version of Murder Town was released in Australia as Ripper. Aside from the title, did you change anything else about the book for the U.S. edition?
Nothing has been tweaked to localize it, which to be honest I was a little surprised by. There are elements of the story that would have played out really differently if the events took place in the United States. For example, the main character Gemma would have to consider the possibility that other characters might have concealed firearms, something that never crosses her mind in the Australian set version.
There is one revelation late in the book that a character did something illegal many years ago. It would have been perfectly legal if the story was set in the U.S. I’m quite interested to see if U.S. readers react to that twist differently than Australian readers.
And how many times did your U.S. publisher ask if you could switch the location from the Rainier in the Australian outback to the city of Rainier, Oregon?
Not once. I don’t know what I would have done if asked. It might have been an interesting challenge.
I did once receive a proposal to make a TV adaptation of Wake, but set in the Scottish Highlands. I was tempted to say yes in hopes they’d cast David Tennant in it.
The question I’m still grappling with is: Is the mark of success to write a story that’s so intrinsically linked to setting that it couldn’t be anywhere else, or to write one so universal you could set it anywhere?
I asked earlier if Murder Town was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Murder Town could work as a series of movies, a show, or a game?
I think it would be amazing to have Murder Town adapted into a video game. A hidden objects game, or a location exploration game similar to Gone Home or The Painscreek Killings. The player character could sneak into all the houses and businesses in Rainier and go through people’s drawers and luggage, read their emails and listen to their voicemails until they piece together what everyone is up to.
So, is there anything else someone might need to know about Murder Town?
There is a non-fiction book that I read while writing Murder Town that I can’t shout out in promotion because the title alone is a massive spoiler. It’s listed in the acknowledgements. If you read Murder Town and enjoy it, please consider checking that book out, it’s very good.
Finally, if someone enjoys Murder Town, what thriller that’s either set in Australia or involves a serial killer, or both, would you suggest they check out?
Jack Heath’s The Wife Swap and Dinuka McKenzie’s Detective Kate Miles series. They’re both compelling, surprising, satisfying mysteries.
