Chapter 35: Hiding Lockboxes

If Whispers are meant to fly under the reader’s radar, Lockboxes do the exact opposite. They draw attention to themselves, waving at the reader and saying, “Hey! Check me out! I’m a clue!”

Yes, Lockboxes are meant to be seen by the reader— but they aren’t meant to be immediately understood. Instead, they have to be puzzled out. Lockboxes tend to live with the Sleuth for a while, tugging at her brain, holding out the promise of a solved case if only they can be deciphered.

Frequently, in order to crack open the Lockbox and get at its meaning, your Sleuth will have to find a Key—a second piece of information that shows them how to interpret the first.

In the rest of this chapter, we’ll talk about four ways of presenting Lockboxes in your novel. These aren’t your only options—there are innumerable ways to come up with Lockboxes, and to unveil their contents.

Distortion

When you use Distortion, the Sleuth will first encounter the clue in a distorted form.

In an episode of Monk called “Mr. Monk Goes to the Ballgame,” Monk investigates the shooting of a businessman and his wife. The man survived the shooting briefly, and managed to crawl to a witness and gasp out his last words: Girls Can’t Eat Fifteen Pizzas.

Could he have been confused? Delirious? No. He repeated the words several times. This is clearly a clue—but what could it mean?