Guest post by Don’t Look Close author Jaima Fixsen
Jaima Fixsen is a USA Today and International best-selling author living and writing in Edmonton, Alberta. Her novel, The Specimen, was a finalist for the 2025 Crime Writer’s of Canada Best Novel Award. Jaima studied occupational therapy at the University of Alberta, and her experiences dissecting cadavers launched a fascination with medical history, which often features in her books, including the historical novels she co-writes under the pen name, Audrey Blake. Jaima loves reading, snow, mountains, snow, history and snow. And her dog.
About Don’t Look Close: From USA Today bestselling author Jaima Fixsen, comes a gripping crime novel perfect for fans of William Kent Kruger, following one man who would do anything for his sister, even if it means catching a serial killer… Releases August 18th 2026.
One of the first things I noticed writing a mystery set in 1955 is how much harder it was for my characters to find anything out. Today, if someone gives you a name, you can Google them and find their social media. Almost immediately, you know where they work, what they wore last Tuesday, and how they take their coffee. You can search news archives, find addresses on a map, check a company’s website, and send texts to half a dozen people all at once right from your phone. In 1955, none of that was possible.
This might sound like a nightmare for today’s mystery writers (and readers) but I think the inconveniences of the past make the hunt even more suspenseful. With limited technology and communication tools at their fingertips, sleuths must work harder and walk even farther into the dark, alone.
My new thriller, Don’t Look Close, about a woman who swears she’s innocent—and a brother who’s not so sure—is set in Alberta in 1955. Writing in the past, I had to figure out how to uncover a crime right alongside the characters, Peter and Edie, without the technological shortcuts available today. That’s where things got interesting.
1. Start with the telephone
The telephone existed, of course. But it wasn’t the private, portable wonder we carry around in our pockets today. Houses in rural Alberta communities shared lines (you knew which house the call was for depending on the number of rings). If your neighbors wanted to, they could listen in on everything. Back then, you could take your phone off the hook, which made you totally inaccessible to anyone not on your front doorstep—with no option to leave a text or a voice mail.
These difficulties are surprisingly useful when you’re writing a thriller. What do you do, when you stumble on information that’s practically dynamite, but nobody will answer the damn phone?
2. Go to the library
If I want to know something obscure today, I can usually find the answer in under thirty seconds. (Like how to divorce in 1950’s Alberta, how to treat a narcotics overdose without Narcan, or handbag styles). In 1955, research required considerably more effort.
Newspapers were an important source of information, and if you were searching through older material, you’d hunt through pages and pages of records using something called a microfiche machine (aren’t you glad you can Google that?). Books, directories and other printed records were helpful, but there were no online indexes. You went to the library and talked to a librarian. Or if you knew what you were doing, you searched through the card catalogue (that one’s worth a search too).
This changes the pace of an investigation. Peter can’t simply type a suspicious neighbor’s name into a search bar. He has to talk to someone who might remember that an old newspaper article existed. Then he’ll have to find the right newspaper and physically read through it until he finds out or gives up. Information becomes something you have to earn.
3. Ask a person
In 1955, people were information networks. If you wanted to know something about someone, you asked someone who knew them. In a small Alberta community, that could mean almost anyone: the neighbour who saw the car arrive (or eavesdropped over the phone), the guy from the tight knit group of buddies who drink together at the local bar, or the shopkeeper who remembers who was buying what.
Unfortunately, people are unreliable sources of information. They gossip, exaggerate, forget and misunderstand. They lie.
They also protect people. Sometimes the person who knows the most about a situation has the strongest reason not to tell you anything. Humans are more interesting—and more dangerous than a database.
4. Look for paper
One of the things I loved about writing a mid-century mystery was thinking about all the physical evidence that surrounded ordinary life: handwritten messages left by the household phone, photographs, paper medical records (that could be misread or misfiled), receipts and tell-tale product packaging.
There is no digital trail in 1955. Instead, there are bits of paper scattered through every moment of people’s lives, and paper has a physical presence. A photograph can be hidden, forgotten or torn. A receipt can slip behind the cushions of a couch or be discarded into a wastepaper basket. When you’re writing a contemporary thriller, a character can toss their phone and destroy the SIM card. They can delete a text or a photo and wipe a hard drive. In 1955, even if you thought you burned everything, a scrap of evidence could be dropped or left behind. You might find paper evidence almost anywhere, if you took the time to look.
5. If you want to know where someone went, follow them
Today, we have an astonishing number of ways to establish where someone has been.
GPS. DNA swabbing. CCTV. Credit card transactions. Phone records. Location sharing. In 1955?
If you wanted to know where someone went, you might have to follow them, which is considerably more dangerous. There is something wonderfully chilling about a character sitting in a parked car, watching a house, waiting for someone. And it isn’t just an atmospheric detail—physical surveillance creates opportunities for things to go wrong. Just what does Edie do when she’s spotted, or loses the person she’s trying to tail? Or when she realizes the person she’s watching knows what she’s been doing?
6. The mystery has to happen in the real world
Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned while writing Don’t Look Close is that the lack of technology doesn’t just make investigation more difficult. It makes it deadlier.
Characters can’t sit in a coffee shop and Google someone or instantly verify a rumor. They can’t warn each other that danger is coming, let alone share complex information through the air.
They have to go somewhere. They have to knock on doors, make telephone calls and search physical spaces. They have to ask questions face to face.
Every search and every interview becomes an opportunity for danger, because the closer you get to the truth, the closer you are to the person who doesn’t want you to find it.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m incredibly, enthusiastically grateful for technology that helps me write books (transcribing voice to text, summoning answers to my most bizarre searches) and navigate to that new coffee shop. But when I’m choosing when and where a story happens, I’ll pick 1955 over 2026—with a locked door and a drawer full of papers, a suspicious neighbor, an unanswered phone, and a woman who knows more than she’s saying.
Don’t Look Close. Because sometimes looking closely is exactly what gets you into trouble.
