I Don’t Know. It’s a Mystery: The Catholic Mystery Author

Today I have the honor of presenting an intriguing guest post by Catholic author Erin McCole Cupp, whose most recent book Don’t You Forget About Me is a cozy mystery that I highly recommend. (You can read my enthusiastic review here.)

Now here Erin is to share her insight on what it means to be a Catholic mystery author:

I Don’t Know. It’s a Mystery: The Catholic Mystery Author

The camera lens glared in my peripheral vision like an outsized doll’s eye. I stood with a proof of Don’t You Forget About Me in my icy, trembling fingers. My publisher and another Full Quiver Author hovered in the background, giving me “thumbs up” signs and encouraging grins. My mind was a great jumble of cries to the Holy Spirit, all of which could be translated best as, “HELP ME!” All the buzz of the Catholic Marketing Network Trade Show floor floated around us. I think I smiled, maybe. A microphone hovered inches from my lips.

The guy holding the microphone was roving reporter Doug Keck, the host of EWTN’s Bookmark.

“So,” Doug asked, “as a Catholic author, what drew you to the mystery genre?”

I remember almost blurting, “I don’t know.” That would’ve been an honest answer, but it also would’ve been a stupid one. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit gave me something to say about how as Catholics, the concept of mystery is central to our faith and our relationship with the Trinity… but in the event they actually air my clip with Doug some day, I’d be interested to hear what I really answered, because I think I blocked it out.

When I later told my husband about the experience, he made a reference to one of our favorite movies.

“‘I don’t know,’” he said in his best Geoffrey-Rush-as-Philip-Henslowe voice. “’It’s a mystery.’”

The Mystery of Faith. The Mysteries of the Rosary. They Mystery of Transubstantiation. The Trinitarian Mystery of Three Persons in One God. All of these fly high above any “whodunit” even the most devout Catholic could write. But is there a connection? I don’t know. It’s a mystery. But let’s take a look anyway, because that’s what mysteries call us to do. They invite us into the puzzle.

Why do so many of us crave mystery novels? There are plenty of people who believe that the mystery genre is the most satisfying way to illustrate the Christian faith, and more specifically the Catholic Christian faith, because in a typical mystery novel the bad guys lose, the good guys win, and right triumphs over all. Mystery fiction is supposed to be more satisfying than real life because in real life, sometimes the worst sinners do get away with murder.

And yet, if art is supposed to imitate life, and life is not always fair, why are we reading mystery novels?

You saw all those faith capital-M Mysteries I listed above, right? They’re Mysteries because we only have clues about them now. We don’t have the full story. God, the Ultimate Author, is luring us in, hoping we’ll stay with Him until the big finish, when all is revealed and our desperate longings for resolution will be so deeply satisfied. We will only find out the full story that ties all the clues together if we hang on to the end, through all the mischief and mayhem of this here, our exile.

Ah. So perhaps reading mystery fiction, as well as writing it, is just another portrait of God’s love for us. For the reader, He is foreshadowing the ultimate resolution of all the bread crumb trails we chase as the main characters of our own plots. To the writer He gives a glimmer of the delight He experiences when bringing us, His favorite creations, through our brushes with death and into the safety of the happy ending of His eternal love.

Every good work we do is supposed to be a reflection of God’s love for us. Even stories about murder, misappropriation, malice and more can do that for us, if we put both our reading and our writing at His service.

About Erin

Author Erin McCole Cupp distributing slices of Philadelphia-style tomato pie at the 2013 Catholic Marketing Network Trade Show (c) James Hrkach 2013

Erin McCole Cupp is a wife, mother, and lay Dominican who lives with her family of vertebrates somewhere out in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania. Her short writing has appeared in Canticle Magazine, The Catholic Standard and Times, Parents, The Philadelphia City Paper, The White Shoe Irregular, Outer Darkness Magazine, and the newsletter of her children’s playgroup. She has been a guest blogger for the Catholic Writers Guild, and she blogs about year-round meatless Fridays at Mrs. Mackerelsnapper, OP.  Her other professional experiences include acting, costuming, youth ministry, international scholar advising, and waiting tables.  She has been voted “Best Speaker” for her chastity talks at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania’s Newman Center.  She is the founder of Warriors of Lourdes, an organization that unites people in prayer against child abuse.  When Erin is not writing, cooking or parenting, she can be found reading, singing a bit too loudly, sewing for people she loves, or gardening in spite of herself.

Both of Erin’s books are available on Amazon.