The Tyranny of Titles

Sandra Parshall

Titles are important to me, as a reader and a writer. An intriguing title makes me look at a book even if I know nothing else about it.

Readers aren’t likely to come across my books while browsing in Barnes & Noble or Borders – most small press mysteries aren’t stocked by the big chains – but they might see them in independent stores and libraries. I want my titles to trigger the “Hmm. What’s this about?” reaction.

I came up with titles I love for my first three books: The Heat of the Moon (metaphor), Disturbing the Dead (literal; skeletal remains are uncovered in the first chapter), and Broken Places (metaphor again). I’m not so crazy about the title of the book I have to turn in by the end of the year for publication next September 1. Unless I come up with something I love very soon, the book will be called Under the Dog Star.

I don’t actually hate it, and it fits the story. Veterinarian Rachel Goddard is trying to save a pack of feral dogs who were abandoned in the countryside by their owners, while Captain Tom Bridger, a sheriff’s deputy, is trying to break up a dog-fighting operation. When a prominent citizen with a wildly dysfunctional family is killed by a dog... Let’s just say that things get complicated, as they should in any mystery. Lily Barker, a local woman who claims to have “the sight” (Tom scoffs at such notions, but Rachel isn't so quick to judge), warns that evil took root in the county “under the dog star” and now flourishes in hidden places.

I’ve never liked titles that begin with prepositions: In the..., Below a..., Under the... But here I am, putting one on my new book. Unless I experience a stroke of genius in the next four weeks.

This is the first of my titles that I haven’t truly loved. What do you think? Am I worrying for no reason?

Here are the opening paragraphs, to give you a taste of the story and tone.

    In the silver moonlight, the dogs appeared as a dark mass moving down the hill and across the pasture. They headed straight toward three dozen sheep huddled on a carpet of autumn leaves under an oak tree.
    Tom Bridger aimed his shotgun at the sky and fired.
    The blast stopped the dogs for a second. The startled sheep jerked apart, turned and ran.
    A single dog broke from the pack and streaked after the sheep. The rest of the dogs followed, yelping and baying.
    Tom fired into the air again, and again. The dogs didn’t stop until his fourth shot. They milled about in the pasture as if trying to make up their minds whether to stay or go.
    Another shotgun blast decided the issue for them. They wheeled around and took off in the direction they’d come from.

    Lying in the dark, with Tom’s space in the bed growing cold beside her, Rachel tensed at the sound of gunshots in the distance. She clutched the blanket, bunching it in both fists. She knew Tom wouldn’t shoot to kill, but she also knew he was losing patience after going out night after night to protect his sheep from the feral dog pack.  (c) 2010 Sandra Parshall

(Murder coming right up!)

The Mystery of Titles

Sandra Parshall


The new baby doesn’t have a name. Yet. I’m still thinking “it” and “the book” and sometimes “the albatross” when I should have a perfect name already typed onto the title page. Before too many more days have passed, I will place its fate in other hands, but it won’t leave me until it has a title.

The titles for The Heat of the Moon and Disturbing the Dead popped out of the text at me, screaming, “I’m the title, I’m the title!” The only screaming this time around has come from my end.

Part of the problem, of course, is that all the great titles have been snatched up by those greedy bestselling authors. A title can’t be copyrighted, but when it has graced a NY Times bestseller, it can’t be reused anytime soon, if ever. Otherwise, my new book might be called Tell No One.

For many mystery writers, titles don’t seem to be a major headache. If they write cozies that focus on cooking or crafts or some other specialized interest, titles are always drawn from those subjects. Puns abound, and they must be fun to come up with. Not too many dark suspense novels have funny puns for titles, though, so I won’t even look in that direction.

Should I go with something that screams THRILLER or SUSPENSE? The problem there is how to devise a title that won’t sound like everything else on the shelf and, possibly, lead to confusion with another book. Do a simple title check on Amazon and you’ll find hundreds of thousands of available books with titles containing Killer, Kill, Murder, Death, Blood, Dark/Darkness. Not all are crime novels, but a hefty percentage are.

Should I go literary? Everybody tells me The Heat of the Moon is a “literary” title, and some find fault with it because it doesn’t immediately bring to mind psychological suspense, which is what the book is. Yet they admit it is intriguing, and after reading the book they agree the title fits. A surprising number of crime novels do have so-called literary titles, and this makes no difference whatever to readers if the author is well-known. What James Lee Burke fan would pass over A Morning for Flamingos or A Stained White Radiance because they don’t have obvious mystery titles? (On the other hand, maybe In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead “sounds like a mystery” because it has dead in it.)

Poetry is usually a good source of titles, but so far my search through Eliot, Plath, Auden, Yeats, Roethke, Merwin and other favorites has turned up few possibilities – again, the best have already been used, often more than once. The Bible is also filled with the titles of other people’s books, and I have spent more than a little time lately cursing at holy scripture.

So I continue with the final tweaks as the day of decision approaches. I try to put aside frustration and trust that the book knows its name. One day soon, it will share that information with me.