If you’re writing detective fiction, your hero should have a special capability.  Call it a power.  Kung Fu.  Lockpicking.  Photographic memory.  This is true in a lot of plot oriented genres:  MacGyver can make anything out of chewing gum and a paperclip…and the case is closed.

Nobody tires of a special power.  Didn’t we all want to be superheroes?

So here’s the catch:  you need to plant this early.  And then it can be used later.  And everybody will go:  wow, that guy sure knows how to put together a yarn.  Ernest Hemingway does this in The Sun Also Rises, which early on states:  “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.”

Well guess who gets his ass kicked a whole lot later.  That’s right:  the narrator.  By Robert Cohn.  Beat that!

My hero doesn’t have a special capability.  But I know he wants one.  So far, the closest thing to this is his declaration that he is invisible to most people.  He’s a delivery guy.  All delivery guys are basically invisible.  And they can get in and out.  Is this enough?

I know:  maybe he has a pornographic memory—instant recall of any and all smut his eyes have run across…and this will allow him to recognize the serial killer’s victims as former centerfolds from obscure glossy magazines.  God, if I could just give him a special power, it would be like giving him new shoes—ruby slippers, seven league boots.  He would be so happy.  Fancy that.