Libby Cudmore on 'Negative Girl' and Pushing the Edges of the Detective Genre

How do you create a compelling series character?

The detective genre is 184 years old, if you count “Murders in the Rue Morgue” as its date of inception; that’s also seven generations’ worth of mystery and detective writers, if you want to put it that way. That’s a lot of time for cliché to assert itself, for tropes to solidify, for plots to run the same way again and again.

That’s why it’s always welcome when you see a writer who’s riffing on the format, trying to break it down to create something unique. Libby Cudmore’s “Negative Girl,” which was published by Datura a few months ago, is one of those books, following rocker-turned-detective Martin Wade and his resourceful assistant Valerie as they attempt to… well, there are spoilers there, but suffice to say Wade’s latest case has its share of death and regret. (Full disclosure, we share a publisher.)

I wanted to chat with Cudmore about her approach to the detective novel, the role music plays in it, how to build out and sustain a series character and more.

Q: ’Negative Girl’ is infu…