Brains, looks, and the ability to successfully plot a few murders? Jumata Emill is almost too good to be true. His latest book, I Don’t Wish You Well (Delacorte, Jan. 20), peels back the veneer of a small Southern town, unearthing the truth behind a series of murders. Kirkus’ starred review calls it a “tense, thrilling mystery.” Our conversation, held over Zoom, has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve lamented that there aren’t enough diverse voices in the suspense genre. Tell us about your jump from journalism to writing mysteries.

I went into journalism because I could write and pay the bills, but I’ve wanted to be a novelist since I was a kid. I loved Encyclopedia Brown, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, but I used to imagine what those characters would be like if they were Black or gay or queer. In elementary school, I read books like [Mildred D. Taylor’s] Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and they were impactful. Black struggle is important for children to read, but I also thought, Can’t we solve mysteries, too? Why are we just in this one box? A teacher, Ms. Fleming, stoked my love for writing. I asked her, “Where are the books with kids like me?” She said, “You have to write them one day.” These books are the realization of my childhood dream.

Like Agatha Christie, you play fair, giving readers the opportunity to solve the mystery alongside your protagonists.

That’s Mystery Writing 101. Like Christie, you have to give the reader everything. Some writers may be concerned that readers will figure it out, but that doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, [readers] should be entertained by the story. A true mystery writer is going to know that. I’m not too heavy-handed with the foreshadowing, but I want the clues. The biggest payoff is when you get to the reveal—the reader can go back and say, “I missed this! I missed that!”

When you say “true mystery writer,” it brings to mind Ronald Knox’s Ten Commandments of detective fiction. Do you have your own commandments that you follow?

Loosely. You have to know the rules in order to break them. The killer needs to be in the reader’s face. You can’t bring them out from behind a curtain at the end and say, “Surprise! Evil twin!” The murderer has to be a believable villain, and readers need to feel that the story is plausible. The rest happens subconsciously—it comes from being an avid reader of the genre.

Where do you begin when you’re plotting a mystery?

It varies, but most times, I start with the murder. However, there have been times where I’ll see a vision of something and think, What’s going on with that? The Black Queen is a perfect example. The story came from a conversation with a former colleague who attended a school that would elect a Black girl for prom queen and a white girl for homecoming queen one year, and then switch. With Wander in the Dark, and I Don’t Wish You Well, I worked from the murders backwards.

I was gobsmacked to learn that The Black Queen was based on a true (relatively contemporary!) situation. You do a masterful job weaving the racial biases of America’s education system into your works.

When you’re writing for teens, you don’t know how some plot elements are going to land, and you want to ensure they get what you’re trying to say. But it’s important for me to acknowledge that I don’t have all the answers. I know what I think is right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am right. My thoughts and opinions are based on my experiences, and I want young people to have these discussions. When we’re talking about things honestly, we have the opportunity for progressive forward movement.

My journalism background is on display here. I covered a lot of small towns, I covered education systems, I saw this firsthand. With The Black Queen, I took scenarios from different school systems. And then there’s the Hurricane Katrina element. I spent a lot of time in southern Mississippi, and I saw for myself the effects of Katrina on school systems. While I talk about the disparities in education, I also have to acknowledge that there are some members of the Black community that want to be left alone. They’re fine with separation as long as Black communities have the same opportunities. I want to show all of those different elements because conversations about race, classism, et cetera, are nuanced. And they have become more nuanced because of upward mobility for people of color.

You reference pop culture in your books. Do you worry about the references becoming dated?

Acknowledging contemporary elements gives readers a sense of place. I want my readers to feel like these characters are their friends. When I was a teenager, I took cues from pop culture and music—I use that to ground the characters, so readers think, “He knows what we’re doing, what we’re talking and thinking about.”

Kelly Clarkson’s “Never Again” was released in 2007. What drew you to that reference?

I was in the gym and “Never Again” came on. Clarkson has the lyric “I would never wish bad things, but I don’t wish you well.” I thought, That’s a great title for a book, so I wrote it down. When I was working on Wander in the Dark, I reread the lyric and thought, What would this book be about?

My first two books had gay characters with supportive parents and who lived in worlds where they were accepted—that’s a sign of the times. However, there are pockets of homophobia, of toxic masculinity, especially in the South, where I am. A lot of that is tied to football. I wanted to address those things and what it’s like for queer kids in these pockets.

The coming-out conversation that Pryce, the protagonist, has with his parents is a fantastic how-to guide for caregivers.

I wanted to [depict] parents who may be struggling. I’ve told teens I’ve met on book tours to give their parents a little grace. Parents have to divorce the idea of what they thought their children were going to be. But one thing that doesn’t change is a parent’s need to protect their child. When they hear that something is going to make you different, fear kicks in, and sometimes parents don’t react the way that we want them to. My parents have shown me that if your parents truly love you, they’re probably gonna come around.

I told my parents, “You helped me write this.” Some of those conversations in the book came from us. It was important for me to display how Black boys can have Black fathers who love their sons more than they are worried about some toxic culture that has been ingrained in them.

When the novel ends, Pryce has finished a season of his podcast. Will it have a second season—and will we get to read about it?

I’m not actively working on anything, but he’s the character that I’m most curious about. What does his success look like? Are people asking him to solve other mysteries? And so…I’ll never say never.

Christopher A. Biss-Brown is the curator of the Children’s Literature Research Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia.