With the help of DorothyL, an on-line mystery book discussion list that includes many writers and bookstore owners, we have identified more than 50 mystery writers who have incorporated homeless characters in their books. No other genre gives this much attention to homelessness. Like any good detectives, we set off to discover why. Writers need to observe people and their environments in order to write realistically.
Writers also tend to identify with misfits, outsiders and underdogs.
What a happy mix, then, to be able to focus on the misfits and a quest for justice by using homeless characters. We have detected four strong patterns among mystery novels that use homeless characters, but confess these categories are somewhat arbitrary and overlap. Just as in modern movies and TV shows, homeless characters in mysteries are often introduced to set a scene, establish atmosphere. Starting in the mid to late 80s, both Sarah Paretsky and Barbara Wilson set their mysteries in downtrodden urban neighborhoods. In Paretsky's Burn Marks and later in Tunnel Vision she uses homeless women who live in the subway tunnels beneath Chicago as a main focus.