And Soon in the Gym With a Determined Chin*

One of the interesting things about crime fiction is the way in which it reveals and mirrors our values, assumptions and even lifestyles. As times and attitudes change, crime fiction reflects this and that lets us take a look at our society. Just as an example, consider the mushrooming gym and health club industry. Research has shown that regular exercise has a lot of health benefits and is associated with longer lifespans. While fitness clubs have been around for a long time, the fitness industry has grown considerably in the last three or so decades. We see that change in attitude in crime fiction. Today there’s an almost bewildering variety of fitness club options, and they’ve become more than just places for serious athletes to train. That setting brings all sorts of disparate people together simply because so many people are now aware of and interested in getting and staying fit. So not only do we see sleuths who practice physical fitness, but we also see the gym or health club as a setting for a murder.

Although there were health clubs in Agatha Christie’s day, her work doesn’t really include a lot of attention to physical fitness. Hercule Poirot, for instance, is more likely to take a walk to, as he would put it, reduce the figure than he is to consider a fitness regimen. In fact, he’s chided about it a little in Evil  Under the Sun in which he investigates the strangling murder of actress Arlena Stuart Marshall. The setting for that novel is the Jolly Roger Hotel, which is situated on Leathercombe Bay in Devonshire. One of the other guests at the hotel is Emily Brewster, a vigourous and athletic woman who goes out for a row every morning. She tells Poirot that if he rowed every day, he’d soon get rid of “a certain protuberance in his middle.”  Needless to say, Poirot doesn’t adopt her suggestion. It’s not a major plot point in this novel but it does serve to show a certain attitude about exercise: it’s something one does outdoors. Rowing, walking, swimming and tennis, for instance are ways that people keep fit at this time.

Today the fitness industry is an ever-present part of a lot of people’s lives. That’s as true in crime fiction as it is in real life. For instance, in Robin Cook’s Marker, we meet medical examiner Chet McGovern. He isn’t what you would call a “gym rat” but he does belong to Sports LA, a successful fitness club. His connection to the club proves to be critical when his office-mate Jack Stapleton and Jack’s wife Laurie Montgomery get involved in a series of unexpected deaths at Manhattan General Hospital that follow what are supposed to be routine surgeries. When they discover what’s behind the deaths, they also discover that the danger is a lot closer to home than they thought. McGovern doesn’t turn out to be the killer but Cook uses the gym effectively both as a setting in itself and as a believable way for Montgomery and Stapleton to find the truth behind the deaths.

There’s also an effective use of a fitness club in Rita Mae Brown’s Hiss of Death. In that novel, Mary Minor “Harry” Haristeen has a frightening health crisis that sends her to Central Virginia Hospital. Paula Benton, a nurse who works at the hospital, proves both helpful and supportive to Harry so when she’s killed, Harry has a strong motivation to find out what happened and how and why Paula died. Then there’s another death. It’s now clear that something is going on at the hospital. Meanwhile, as a part of Harry’s plan to return to good health, she goes to the Heavy Metal Gym and embarks on a training routine. As she begins to return to health, she learns quite a lot and gets an important set of clues as to what’s behind the two murders.

A gym proves to be very helpful to Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Myrtle Clover too in Progressive Dinner Deadly. In that novel, what starts out as a book club morphs into a progressive dinner club. The idea is that members will visit each other’s homes, with each host offering a different dinner course (appetizer, salad, main dish, dessert and so on). Clover herself isn’t happy about this change since she is not famous for her gourmet cooking. But she grumpily goes along with the idea. Then on the night of the first progressive dinner, club member Jill Caulfield is murdered. There are a number of suspects too. Jill made a living cleaning houses and found out several people’s secrets that way. Clover discovers that one of the suspects in the murder is a member of Fit Life, a local gym. That gives her enough motivation to do what her doctor has been telling her to do – get regular exercise. So she joins the gym and ends up getting some important clues there. She also discovers that getting into the habit of going to the gym is actually not as onerous as she’d feared.

Sometimes a gym is even a murder scene. That’s what happens in Ann Cleeves’ Silent Voices. DI Vera Stanhope’s doctor has made it clear that she needs to lose weight and get into better physical shape. Stanhope knows she ought to be in better health, but at the same time, she’s somewhat self-conscious about her appearance, especially when she compares herself to the fit, slender young women who frequent health clubs. Besides, she doesn’t want her work colleagues to know what she’s doing. So she joins an out-of-town health club and begins to go there to swim. Early one morning, she goes to the steam room after her swim when she discovers the body of social worker Jenny Lister, who’s been strangled. At first no-one even knows who the woman is but when her identity is discovered, Stanhope and her team begin their investigation. Lister seems to have lived “a perfect life” and there seems no motive for the murder. But of course, things are not exactly what they seem and the gossip that always swirls around clubs helps Stanhope get to the truth about the murder.

Even when a gym or fitness club isn’t the focus of a murder, we often see sleuths who use gyms and incorporate them into their lives. Helene Tursten’s Irene Huss for instance is a judo expert. She runs to keep in shape but she also visits the local dojo where she practices and leads a judo class. And Anthony Bidulka’s Russell Quant likes to use the gym to keep in shape too. He’s not what you’d call obsessed with fitness but he does feel it when he hasn’t worked out.

It’s always interesting to see how phenomena like fitness clubs and gyms work their way into crime fiction. As much as a set of mystery stories and puzzles to solve, crime fiction shows us ourselves, and that includes our attitudes towards staying in shape. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my workout.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Richard O’Brien’s I Can Make You a Man.

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch

The 2012 Crime Fiction Alphabet meme has gotten well underway. Many thanks to our tour guide Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise for the excellent leadership; I know we’ll be safe the whole way through.

My choice for this week’s stop – the letter “B” – is Michael Connelly’s Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. Bosch is one of the best known fictional detectives of the last two decades and it’s easy to see why he has gained such a following.

One of the real appeals of Harry Bosch is that he’s a normal, “regular” guy. He’s not a superhero, he’s not particularly wealthy or drop-dead gorgeous. He’s a person with whom we can identify in part because he is a normal person. For most of the series, Bosch is a cop with the L.A.P.D. So he solves cases by making sense of evidence, interviewing witnesses, suspects and informants and putting all of those clues together. In other words, he solves cases by simply doing his job well.

But Bosch’s appeal goes far beyond the fact that he’s a “regular guy.”  Bosch works hard to solve every case, and gives each one everything he has. Here’s what Bosch has to say about his attitude towards his job in The Last Coyote:

 

“‘But in homicide there is one rule that I have when it comes to the cases I get.’ [Bosch]
‘What is that rule?’  
‘Everybody counts or nobody counts.’
‘Explain it.’
‘Just what I said. Everybody counts or nobody counts. That’s it. It means I bust my a** to make a case whether it’s a prostitute or the mayor’s wife. That’s my rule.’”

 

It is indeed and Bosch follows it.

That rule is in part the reason for which Bosch is no respecter of position, power or money. If he is on the case, he’s not afraid to go right to the top of the proverbial tree to solve a murder. For example, in Angels Flight, we learn that Michael Harris was convicted and imprisoned for the rape and murder of twelve-year-old Stacey Kincaid. When Harris claims that he was the victim of police brutality and that his confession was coerced, prominent attorney Howard Elias takes Harris’ case and prepares to go up against the L.A.P.D. in a trial. But then Elias is murdered. Bosch begins to investigate the murder and discovers that Harris may very well be innocent and that the evidence was (quite possibly deliberately) mishandled. In this novel, Bosch goes up against some very powerful forces both in the community and the L.A.P.D. That power and privilege doesn’t stop him though and in the end he discovers the truth about Elias’ death as well as that of Stacey Kincaid.

Angels Flight also highlights another of Bosch’s appealing traits. He is dogged. He simply does not give up. In this particular case he has to investigate some of his own, so to speak, and he’s in conflict with some of the top members of the L.A.P.D. But he doesn’t give up. The case is too important to him. We also see that doggedness in The Black Ice, in which he’s quite frankly told to leave alone the death of fellow cop Calexico “Cal” Moore. Moore’s death is put down to suicide, but Bosch doesn’t think that’s true. So despite what he’s told to do, he follows leads on that case – even to the point of traveling to Mexico – until he knows the truth. As it turns out, this wasn’t a suicide and Bosch finds some very ugly truths underneath the proverbial rocks he turns over.

Bosch also has a very interesting, if not particularly happy, backstory.  Raised by his mother Marjorie Lowe, he’s been more or less on his own since she was murdered when he was eleven. In fact he returns to that very murder in The Last Coyote when he is sidelined from his regular cases. His mother’s murder was never solved, partly because no-one was particularly interested in the death of a prostitute. But Bosch picks up the case when he is put on indefinite leave after a violent fight with his supervisor. We learn in The Black Ice that Bosch’s father is prominent attorney J. Michael Haller, who defended Bosch’s mother in several cases related to her fight to keep custody of him. That’s how he learns that Haller is his father. He also learns that he has a half-brother and we see quite a lot of that half-brother Mickey Haller in several Connelly novels. In some, Haller takes the lead himself; in others he and Bosch work together.

In The Black Echo we learn that Bosch served in the military as a “tunnel rat” during the Vietnam War. His job was to find and destroy the Viet Cong’s network of underground bunkers. When the body of Billy Meadows, a fellow “tunnel rat,” is found in a drainpipe, the police want to put it down to a simple case of an overdose by a junkie. But Bosch suspects otherwise and in the end, he and his partner in this case Jerry Edgar are able to connect Meadows’ death to a major bank robbery. Bosch’s war service has affected him deeply and it’s referred to more than once in this series. But at the same time, it has not left him debilitated.

Bosch has a lot of good qualities, but he’s by no means perfect, and that’s appealing too. He’s passionate about his work, but has a lot of trouble in his personal life. More than once, his job or the complications from one of his cases have gotten in the way of a personal relationship. His great love seems to be former FBI agent Eleanor Wish, who comes in and out of the series. At one point, they marry, but their relationship ends in divorce. He and Wish have a teenage daughter Maddie who at first lives with her mother in Hong Kong, but who moves in with Bosch after the events of 9 Dragons. Bosch loves Maddie very much and does his best to be a good father. They have their moments but Maddie loves and respects her father too. And that’s the kind of thing that separates Harry Bosch from the all-too-common character of the cop with a broken marriage and a drinking problem who fights personal demons. Bosch has his share of personal problems. But he doesn’t let them overtake his life. He does his job well, he doesn’t give up on life and despite the ugliness he sees, he doesn’t fall apart.

If my demise was untimely and – er – not by accident, I would want Harry Bosch to investigate it. He would never give up and he would get to the truth no matter what. Little wonder so many people like this guy!

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Broadcast to Bring You the Following!

There’s a lot of excitement here at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist…!!!! June is just about upon us and that means… it’s Crime Fiction Month! This year, as a special way of celebrating the occasion, I am truly honoured to join Rhian Davies of It’s a Crime! (…or a Mystery) in co-hosting a month-long celebration of the life and work of Reginald Hill. As crime fiction fans know, Hill was a powerful force within the genre. Among many other things, he created the Dalziel and Pascoe series, which remains one of the most popular of crime fiction series. He also wrote many standalones.

 

All month long, Rhian and I will be hosting a terrific set of contributors (My sincere thanks to all of you!) who have provided their book reviews, personal recollections, discussions of Hill’s impact on the genre, and lots more. Oh, and did I mention there’ll be competitions? Yup. There will be. Want to join the party? Ya know ya do! Come and visit during June at Celebrating Reginald Hill!!! Pass it on, too – the more, the merrier
 

Hey! What are you still doing here when you could be partying with us! See you there

In The Spotlight: Camilla Läckberg’s The Ice Princess

Hello, All,

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. The small town has been a very popular setting for murder mysteries for a long time. That makes sense too as small towns have their share of secrets and everyone knows everyone. Those two facts can make for tension, suspense and a solid context for a believable crime fiction plot. Let’s take a closer look at one such novel today and turn the spotlight on Camilla Läckberg’s The Ice Princess.

The novel begins in the small Swedish fishing village of Fjällbacka when Eilert Berg goes to the house owned by Alexandra “Alex” Wijkner to check on it. She’s only there on weekends and he’s agreed to keep an eye on it and start up the heat on Fridays so it’s ready for her weekend visits. When Berg gets to the house, he’s shocked to discover Alex’s body in the bathtub. He stumbles out of the house and tells the first person he sees, Erica Falck. Erica has returned to her home in Fjällbacka to sort through her parents’ things after their deaths. She also wants to make progress on a biography she’s writing. She’s especially shocked to hear of Alex’s death because the two women were best friends as little children. She alerts the police, and they begin their investigation. Erica finds herself drawn to the memory of Alex whom she hadn’t really seen for twenty-five years and decides to write a book about her – to begin to get to know Alex as an adult.

In the meantime, police officer Patrik Hedström and his team begin asking official questions about Alex’s death.  At first it looks like a suicide but very quickly it’s proven that she was murdered. So Hedström starts to look among Alex’s family members, friends and colleagues tot find out who would want to kill her. At the same time, Erica is asking questions, too. Both of them come to the same conclusion: Alex was a very enigmatic person who never really got close to anyone, not even her husband Henrik. She was an intensely private person but more and more, Patrik and Erica begin to believe that Alex was keeping some dark secrets from the past and that those secrets may be the reason she was killed.

Erica’s life is complicated by two other things going on at the same time as the investigation. One is that she’s worried about her sister Anna. Anna is married to Lucas, a controlling abuser who wants to dictate her every action. She refuses to admit it though and instead of leaving him, she stays with him, hoping things will improve. In another development, as Erica and Patrik have more and more contact about Alex’s murder, they are more drawn to each other. Each has always liked the other but they haven’t done anything about it. They’re just beginning the awkward but joyful beginning of their relationship when there’s another death. Now Patrik and Erica, each in a different way, work to connect the two deaths. They discover that Alex’s death had everything to do with events many years earlier and with the network of small-town relationships among the residents of Fjällbacka.

That setting – the small fishing village and its culture – plays a major role in this novel. There’s a strong dose of “What will people think?” throughout the novel. For instance, that’s part of the reason for which Anna doesn’t leave Lucas. In small towns such as Fjällbacka, everyone knows everyone’s business and that fact is key to the story.

The physical setting is also an important element in this novel. Läckberg places the reader unmistakeably in the location and that adds to the story:

 

“The town was deserted and at Ingrid Bergmann Square there was no trace of the thriving commerce of the summer months. Visibility was good, without mist or haze, and Erica could see all the way to the outer point of the island of Valö, which was silhouetted against the horizon. Together with Kråkholmen it bordered a narrow passage to the outer archipelago.”

 

It’s also worth noting that the time of year – winter – is another element in this novel. The cold, the long dark nights and the snow add to the story’s mood.

This being a small-town crime novel, the characters in the novel also form a strong element. Both Patrik and Erica are intelligent, interesting people. Neither is perfect, but both are believable and have depths. Erica, for instance, is grieving the loss of her parents and worried about her sister and she deals with those problems in an authentic way. Patrik is dealing with the recent breakup of his marriage and the awkwardness of being “in the market” again. And then there are the other characters. For instance, there’s Patrik’s insufferable boss Bertil Mellberg, who just wants to be transferred back “up the pole” to Göteborg, and Alex’s parents Birgit and Karl-Erik Carlgren, who have to deal with the loss of their daughter as well as their own family history. These characters add an element of interest to the story as well as some realism.

The most interesting and enigmatic character in the novel is Alex herself. Through the perspectives of various other characters, we get to know some things about her. We do learn some of her secrets and we learn a lot about why she is the way she is. But we never get to see her as a complete, three-dimensional person. Rather, we see her as through the prism of others’ perspectives.

The mystery itself and the reason for the two deaths make sense when we know the truth. But this is a sad, sad story. Readers who like light murder mysteries will be disappointed as the truth in this story is tragic. We find out what that truth is so that the “whodunit” and “whydunit” questions are answered, but that doesn’t mean the story has a happy ending for all involved. Several lives are permanently scarred, and there are some aspects to this novel that will not be resolved. For several characters in this novel, it’s much more a matter of, “How do we go on?” than it is, “How do we make it all right again?”

That said, though, there are some warm, even funny moments. For example, at one point Patrik ‘phones Erica asking if he can stop over. Erica’s been busy writing all morning and is unshowered and certainly not in the shape to have a visitor in whom she’s romantically interested. It’s funny to see how she frantically showers, throws on something to wear and rushes desperately to look decent. When Patrik arrives, he wonders at her ability to look so beautiful without any effort! There are other light moments too.

We can also see how some of the characters really do care about each other and support one another. That too adds a bright thread through an otherwise very, very sad story. For instance, there’s Annika Jansson, secretary at the police station where Patrik works. She’s a warm, friendly competent colleague who’s established a friendship with Patrik. They care about each other and it shows. And there’s the love we see under the strain in the relationship between Erica and her sister Anna. They’re very different people and they do have their conflicts. At the same time though it’s just as clear that they care about each other and they have a bond.

The Ice Princess has a touch of the police procedural as it’s evidence-gathering, interviews and so on that lead to the truth more than anything else. It also has a strong element of setting and context. It’s a sad story of the way the past affects the present, made lighter by some funny moments and some solid characters. But what’s your view? Have you read The Ice Princess? If you have, what elements do you see in it?

 

 
 
Coming Up On In The Spotlight
 

Monday 4 June/Tuesday 5 June – The Legal Limit – Martin Clark

Monday 11 June/Tuesday 12 June – A Cotswold Killing -  Rebecca Tope

Monday 18 June/Tuesday 19 June – Dust Devils – Roger Smith

Yes, I’ve Got to Begin Again And It’s Hard*

As I’ve mentioned before here on Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, there are plenty of crime-fictional sleuths who have also served in the military. Many of those sleuths have seen their fellow soldiers lose their lives. Members of the military trust each other with their lives; they become closer than many families are and when you have that close a bond with someone, the loss of that someone is especially hard. I haven’t had that experience myself, but just a quick look at a few examples from crime fiction is enough to show how devastating it can be. It makes sense too that it would be a particularly horrible loss.

We get a hint of that sense of loss in Agatha Christie’s The Murder on the Links. That novel begins when Captain Hastings is traveling by train from Paris to London. En route he meets a young woman who calls herself Cinderella. They’re talking about other things, but as they pass through Amiens, Hastings’ companion notices his preoccupation.

 

“Thinking about the War?”

 

she asks. When Hastings says that he is, they talk for a bit about what it was like.  We don’t ever learn a lot about Hastings’ experiences in the Great War (although they’re mentioned also in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but we can see they’ve deeply affected him.

We also see this in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch. As fans of Connelly’s work know, Bosch was a “tunnel rat” during the war in Vietnam. His job was to work with other “tunnel rats” to find and destroy the Viet Cong’s underground bunkers and equipment. Bosch has seen more than his share of death and it’s affected him deeply. In fact in The Black Echo, Bosch has to come face to face with those demons. He’s been demoted to the Hollywood Homicide Division of the L.A.P.D. In that capacity, he works with his partner Jerry Edgar to solve the murder of Billy Meadows, whose body was found in a drainpipe. Meadows is a former “tunnel rat” himself, so Bosch feels a special connection with him and a deep sense of loss at his death. Although Meadows’ death looks at first like the accidental overdose of a junkie, Bosch suspects something else is going on and he and Edgar connect the murder with a large-scale bank robbery.

James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux is also a Vietnam veteran who’s seen more than his share of sickening death. It still gives him nightmares too as we read in several novels that feature him. And in A Morning for Flamingos, it gives him a special connection to New Orleans crime boss Tony Cardo, whom Robicheaux is working to bring down. Robicheaux is trying to heal from wounds he received when he was shot and left for dead while transporting two prison inmates to Louisiana’s State Penitentiary at Angola. His time away is interrupted by a visit from a former friend Minos Dautrieve, who’s now working for the U.S. Federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Dautrieve wants Robicheaux to go undercover as a “dirty” cop to get close to Cardo, and Robicheux reluctantly agrees. At one point, he finds out that Cardo too is a Vietnam veteran whose experience has scarred him. That connection helps him to understand Cardo better and to negotiate their relationship. They’ve both seen unimaginable horrors and watched their friends die.

There’s also William Ryan’s Alexei Korolev, a veteran of the Great War (he calls it the German War). He is also a veteran of the Civil War that resulted in the Soviet Union. As a member of the Moscow CID, his job is to investigate crime, but he also has to negotiate the treacherous landscape of pre-World War II Stalinist Moscow. Korolev has seen some horrible things during both wars, which is one reason he’s not particularly eager for another confrontation although he admits to himself that it will probably happen. He’s had to commit murder as a part of the war and that fact upsets him deeply. Although he doesn’t have what you’d call a mental breakdown because of what he’s seen, it’s obvious that his experiences have deeply affected him. In The Darkening Field, for instance, Korolev investigates the murder of an up-and-coming actress who’s also a Party loyalist. Her death looks at first like a suicide, but forensic evidence soon shows that she was strangled. Here’s the thought that occurs to Korolev:

 

“He’d once throttled a German during the war, not a memory he liked bringing to mind..”

 

Korolev’s seen plenty of death in the wars he’s fought, and he knows because of that that sometimes people do what they have to do to stay alive. He still struggles with it though.

So do thousands of other members of the military who’ve had to watch their fellow soldiers die. Today (or tomorrow, depending on when you read this), we’re observing Memorial Day in the U.S. It’s a time when we remember those who gave their lives in service to their country, and it’s also become a time when we think of those who’ve had to deal with that loss. Because of those people, I am able to post to this blog. Words aren’t enough to express my gratitude, but there are other ways. Here are just a few:

 

AMVETS (American Veterans) is an advocacy and service organisation that supports veterans and their families. You can donate, volunteer, help spread the word and otherwise get involved in their work to support veterans.

 

Wounded Warriers is a project that provides funds, family support and other services to veterans who’ve been wounded in action. You can offer your time, your donation or your donated books and supplies to this organisation, too.

 

There’s also the Veterans and Families Foundation. This organisation provides a social and community resource “safety net” for veterans and their families, and for families of veterans who never came home. There are opportunities here for advocacy, financial support and more.

Don’t want to contribute to those particular groups? That’s OK. Find a veterans support group with which you’re comfortable. Then find a way to further its work. That’s the kind of “Thank You” that can have real meaning. Dare ya!

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Got to Begin Again.

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For*

One of the qualities that just about every sleuth needs is a certain dogged determination. It’s not easy to uncover the truth about a murder, especially if the case has “gone cold,” but the most successful sleuths don’t give up. While they’re working a case, sleuths may run into all sorts of obstacles (and I’m not even referring here to the physical dangers), but a successful sleuth perseveres. In fact that doggedness seems to be common to nearly all of the best fictional sleuths.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Sleeping Murder, we meet newlyweds Gwenda and Giles Reed. They’re looking for just the right home and Gwenda thinks she’s found exactly what she’s looking for in a house in Dilmouth. The Reeds make the purchase and at first all’s well. But then Gwenda begins to have a disturbing sense of déjà vu about the house. She has frightening visions of a dead woman lying on the floor in the hallway of the house. What’s more, she seems to know things about the house that she couldn’t know if she hadn’t been there before. Gwenda begins to think she may be having a mental breakdown so she’s glad to get away for a bit and accept an invitation from her distant relation Miss Marple. She tells Miss Marple what’s been happening and Miss Marple is sympathetic. Then one night, they attend a theatre performance and Gwenda has a bizarre reaction to one of the scenes in the play. Now Miss Marple is absolutely sure that something is going on at Dilmouth and that Gwenda isn’t losing touch with reality. So she and Gwenda begin to ask questions. Gwenda also begins to look more deeply into her own memories. There’s nothing much to go on at first, only Gwenda’s somewhat fuzzy memory. But she and Miss Marple don’t give up and they uncover some ugly secrets from the past, including murder. As it turns out, a murder was committed in the Reed’s home and Gwenda actually witnessed it. Once Miss Marple puts the clues together, Gwenda learns what actually happened and is able to get some peace of mind.

Agatha Christie actually takes up this theme of crimes from the past in other novels too, such as Murder on the Orient Express, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, Ordeal by Innocence, A Caribbean Mystery and Five Little Pigs (AKA Murder in Retrospect). In all of those cases there’s a lot of pressure to leave the past alone, but that doesn’t stop the sleuth from finding out the truth.

One of the most dogged of crime fictional detectives is Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch. He takes on whatever challenges he has to take on in order to solve cases. In his view, “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” We see that in a lot of the novels featuring him. One of those is Echo Park. That’s in part the story of the disappearance of Marie Gesto. One day, she walked out of a Hollywood supermarket and never got home. Bosch was assigned this case and actually had a suspect in mind. But he couldn’t get the evidence he needed so the case wasn’t pursued. At the time there was a clue that led to the person responsible for Marie Gesto’s disappearance. Bosch missed it though and couldn’t track down the real criminal. Now, several years later, Raynard Waits is in custody for two other brutal murders. Clear evidence has been found in his car so there’s not much chance of him getting away with those murders. He wants to make a deal with the police in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. His offer is to trade information on other cases, including the Gesto case, for his life. Since Bosch handled the Gesto case, he wants to work with Waits to resolve that case and give himself and her family some peace. Despite his having to face the fact that he made mistakes in the original investigation, and his having to work with Waits, Bosch follows through and finds out the truth.

Arnaldur Indriðason’s Inspector Erlendur has to muster that same determination in Hypothermia. In that novel, he gets interested in the case of María, who apparently hung herself in a fit of despondency after the death of her mother Leonóra, with whom she’d been very close. Erlendur doesn’t think this case is quite as simple as a straightforward suicide though (if there is such thing) and begins to ask questions. Straight away he runs into a proverbial wall of resistance since most people assume that she killed herself and aren’t willing to think beyond that. At the same time Erlendur re-opens another set of cases. Years earlier a young man Davíd disappeared and was never found. His father has been visiting the police station annually since his son’s disappearance but the police have never found hard evidence as to what happened. Now, that father tells Erlendur that he hasn’t much longer to live so Erlendur decides to give the case another examination. That’s when he discovers that a young university student named Gudrún disappeared at the same time, again with no body being found nor any clues as to what happened to her. In both of these cases, there’s very little evidence, and it’s hard going at first. But Erlendur is nothing if not determined so bit by bit he gets to the truth about what happened to these two young people. In the end he’s able to get some resolution and give the families involved some peace.

In Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s My Soul to Take, Reykjavík attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir is hired by upmarket spa owner Jónas Júlíusson to take a very odd case. He claims that the land on which his spa is built is haunted and that its former owners knew that and never told him.  Thóra doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she does want the fee and the idea of a stay at a spa is appealing. So she travels to the spa and begins looking into the case. She’s not there very long when the body of fellow spa guest Birna Hálldorsdóttir is found on a beach not far from the spa. When it turns out that Thóra’s client was having an affair with the victim, he becomes the prime suspect and asks Thóra to defend him. In the process of finding out who really killed the victim, Thóra and her lover Matthew Reich discover some very old secrets, including a missing child, that several people want to keep hidden. In the end, they discover who the murderer is and how that death relates to a long-ago disappearance. That discovery finally gives some peace to the people involved.

Doggedness serves Paddy Richardson’s Stephanie Anderson very well in Hunting Blind. Anderson is finishing her program in psychiatry in Dunedin when one of her patients Elizabeth Clark tells her a haunting story. Clark’s younger sister Gracie was abducted years ago and no trace of her – not even a body – has ever been found. Since that time Clark has had a number of psychological and other problems that culminated in a mental breakdown. When Anderson hears this story, it triggers a particularly eerie memory of her own. Seventeen years earlier Anderson’s own younger sister Gemma was abducted and no trace of her was ever found either. That disappearance devastated Anderson’s family and since that time they haven’t really had any peace although they’ve more or less moved on with their lives. So Anderson decides to track down the person who abducted Gemma and Gracie. Along the way, she encounters resistance from her family members, who want her to just leave the case alone. She also faces the challenge of dealing with her own personal demons. And of course, the person who abducted the girls doesn’t want to be caught, so she also faces the challenge of connecting that person to the crimes. She doesn’t give up though and in the end, she is able to find the person responsible and in the process, brings herself and her family some of the peace they desperately need.

Doggedness and determination really are important qualities for a sleuth, especially when there’s little evidence or a case has “gone cold.” Those qualities pay off, you might say, in terms of giving the sleuth and those affected by a crime some peace.

 

In Memoriam

 

This post is dedicated to the memory of Etan Patz, who disappeared on 25 May 1979 when he was six years old. It appears that now, after 33 years, his abductor may have been caught. Whatever the outcome of this latest development, I am glad that people didn’t give up on it and I wish his parents the peace they deserve.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a U2 song.

Catch Us If You Can*

In real life, there’s a limit to what the police and private investigators can do to catch criminals. Even if the detectives on a case know who committed a crime, they may not be able to get the evidence to prove it. That can lead to a lot of frustration, since it means that a guilty person goes free. And in most cases the law limits what can be used against an accused person. “I know s/he’s guilty” is not enough evidence to pursue a conviction. We see that in crime fiction too. On one level it can be annoying for the reader; a lot of readers like the catharsis of seeing the “bad guy” brought to justice. On the other, it’s realistic. It also can add a layer of suspense to a novel.

For example, in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Hercule Poirot is traveling on the famous Orient Express from Istanbul to London. On the second night of the journey, fellow passenger Samuel Ratchett is stabbed to death. Poirot’s friend M. Bouc, a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lit, asks him to investigate and he agrees. Not long after he begins the investigation Poirot learns that Ratchett has another identity that he has kept secret for a very good reason. It turns out that in that other identity he was responsible for a terrible crime of which he was never convicted. Once Poirot finds out the details of what happened he is able to determine who among the other passengers killed Ratchett. In this case, Ratchett wasn’t brought to justice because his wealth and power kept the prosecution from making a conviction stick. Even though the police knew he was guilty, they couldn’t do anything about it.

Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent also includes an interesting look at evidence and what the police can and can’t do with it. In that novel, successful prosecuting attorney Rožan ”Rusty” Sabich is assigned to investigate when a colleague Carolyn Polhemus is murdered. What Sabich hasn’t told anyone is that he has a personal stake in this case since he was involved with Polhemus. When Sabich’s boss Raymond Horgan finds out about this relationship, he pulls Sabich from the case and replaces him with another prosecutor Tommy Molto. Then, little by little, the evidence begins to implicate Sabich and in fact he’s arrested for the crime. He asks attorney Alejandro “Sandy” Stern to defend him and Stern agrees. Together they re-examine the evidence and it soon seems that someone is trying to frame Sabich for the crime. There are several suspects too. Carolyn Polhemus had a complicated personal life and she’d made professional enemies too, so more than one person might have wanted to kill her. What’s more, Sabich has rivals of his own who could want him framed for murder. In the end we find out who killed Carolyn Polhemus and why. But it’s just as clear that that person will not be convicted of the crime. The police simply won’t be able to get the clear evidence they need for that purpose.

We also see a case of lack of evidence in Camilla Läckberg’s The Ice Princess. Writer Erica Falck has returned from Stockholm to her family home in Fjällbacka to sort through her parents’ things after their deaths. She’s also hoping to get some writing done. Instead, she discovers that her former friend Alexandra “Alex” Wijkner has been murdered. In fact, Falck is one of the first to see the body and it leaves an indelible impression on her. Because she is a witness, she’s also part of the investigation, which is how she re-unites with a former friend Patrik Hedström. The two of them slowly begin a relationship and at the same time, they each investigate Alex’s death and another related death that follows it. For Hedström, it’s part of his job. For Falck, it’s partly to get to know the real Alex, whom she hadn’t seen in twenty-five years. The two of them work sometimes together, sometimes separately, and bit by bit they put the pieces of the puzzle together. They do find out who the killer was and in that sense, that person will face justice. But what’s fascinating and more than a little eerie is that there is another aspect to this case – an event that will not be prosecuted because there will simply never be the evidence necessary to do anything about it.

We also see that in Martin Edwards’ The Hanging Wood. In that novel, DCI Hannah Scarlett is drawn into investigating the twenty-year-old disappearance of Callum Payne. His sister Orla is convinced that Callum was murdered and she wants Scarlett to investigate. But Orla Payne is unstable and when she calls, she’s been drinking. So Scarlett doesn’t do much about the case. Then Orla Payne dies, an apparent suicide. Scarlett feels guilty that she didn’t investigate Orla’s allegations sooner so she takes up both investigations now. Oxford historian Daniel Kind is doing research at the residential library where Orla Payne worked at the time of her death. He’s found out quite a bit about the history of the area, so he’s able to be helpful and provide his own perspective on the case as Scarlett and her team investigate. It turns out that what happened to both Orla and Callum Payne is related to the history of the relationships among the various families in the area. Once those relationships are untangled Scarlett can get to the truth. In one sense, there is resolution. We learn what happened to both Paynes and why and we learn who is responsible. But there is an aspect to this case that is not so neatly resolved. For that aspect, Scarlett and Kind know that there won’t be an arrest or conviction because there is no clear evidence. You can’t arrest someone on the basis of a feeling even if that feeling is accurate.

Inspector John Carlyle finds much the same thing in James Craig’s Never Apologise, Never Explain. He and his assistant Joe Szyskowski  are called to the scene of the murder of Agatha Mills, a seemingly inoffensive elderly woman who lived quietly with her husband Henry near the British Museum. Henry Mills is the first and most obvious suspect but he claims he’s innocent. His explanation for the crime is that his wife was killed by political enemies who were out to get her. That explanation doesn’t satisfy either officer and Henry Mills is duly arrested. But then Carlyle finds a very important clue that suggests that Mills was actually telling the truth about his wife’s murder. That opens up a whole new field of investigation and Carlyle sets about finding out who the killer is. Slowly he discovers what really happened to Agatha Mills and why someone thought it necessary to kill her. And what’s interesting is that at several points throughout the novel the reader knows more than Carlyle does. In the end, Carlyle finds out exactly what happened. So in that sense we get satisfaction. We know who the killer is and Carlyle does too. But at the same time and for a few reasons, there will not be a conviction. One of the reasons is that there isn’t going to be any real evidence to show what actually happened.

There are plenty of real-life cases like that, where the police know exactly who committed a crime but they simply can’t get the evidence to prove it. That outcome can be frustrating for a crime fiction reader, especially one who likes the sense of resolution that comes when the criminal’s caught. But it doesn’t always happen that way…

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by The Dave Clark Five.