We all know how important tact can be in negotiating life. Being diplomatic has an awful lot of advantages and it’s amazing how far tact can get a person. But on the other hand, diplomacy can have its limits. If you’ve ever watched someone who speaks very plainly tell off a rude person and thought, “I wish I’d said that,” you know what I mean. There can definitely be times and places for “taking the gloves off.” Even if you tend to be a very diplomatic person yourself, it can be fun, too, to read what happens when people who are less tactful have their say. A quick look at crime fiction should show what I mean.
Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot is usually able to be quite tactful. He needs to be that way because he often has to work with members of police force and besides, tact often gets witnesses to speak their minds. But every once in a while even Poirot gets pushed to his limit. For instance, in The Murder on the Links, he and Captain Hastings investigate the stabbing death of Paul Renauld, a Canadian émigré to France. Also assigned to the case is M. Giraud of the Sûreté. Giraud is rude, condescending, insulting and worst of all stubborn. Poirot finds it nearly impossible to work with him but for quite a time he tries. Then one day Giraud pushes him too far and insults him once to often. Here is Poirot’s response:
“‘M. Giraud, throughout the case your manner to me has been deliberately insulting! You need teaching a lesson. I am prepared to wager you 500 francs that I can find the murderer of M. Renauld before you do. Is it agreed?’…
‘I have no wish to take your money from you.’
‘Make your mind easy – you will not!’
‘Oh, well, then, I agree! You speak of my manner to you being insulting. Eh, bien, once or twice your manner has annoyed me!’
‘I am enchanted to hear it,’ said Poirot. ‘Good morning, M. Giraud. Come, Hastings.’”
Even Poirot can be quite plain-spoken when the occasion calls for it.
So can Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse. He’s certainly not one to spare another’s feelings, especially when he’s trying to solve a case. For example, in The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, Morse and Sergeant Lewis investigate the poisoning death of Nicholas Quinn, the only Deaf member of the Oxford Foreign Examinations Syndicate. That group oversees exams given in other countries with a British education connection. There are several suspects among the members of the group, since Quinn’s nomination to it was not universal. Besides, Quinn had found out some secrets that some of the group members were only too eager to keep hidden. Then there’s another murder. Now Morse and Lewis have to find out what connects the two deaths. At one point, Morse is interviewing Syndicate member Donald Martin, whom he’s recently discovered lied to him during their first conversation:
“Morse said nothing to enlighten him [Martin]. ‘Let’s come back to last Friday afternoon.’
‘Not again, surely! I’ve told you what happened. All right, I lied for a start, but – ’
‘You’re lying now! And if you’re not careful you’ll be down in the cells until you do tell me the truth!’”
The conversation continues in this vein until Martin explains himself to Morse’s satisfaction – not an easy thing.
Another character who’s not at all afraid of being tactless is Reginald Hill’s Superintendent Andy Dalziel. There are a lot of examples of him saying exactly what he thinks, and many of them are really funny. In Recalled to Life, for instance, Dalziel and Sergeant Peter Pascoe are drawn into the investigation of an old crime. Cissy Kohler has recently been released from prison for involvement in the 1963 murder of Pamela Westrop. At the time, Ralph Mickeldore was arrested, charged and convicted, mostly based on evidence gathered by Dalziel’s mentor Wally Tallentire. Now, new evidence suggests that Kohler wasn’t guilty and there’s gossip that Tallentire knew that and hid what he knew. Dalziel doesn’t believe it and furthermore he resents the implication for his former mentor. At one point, Dalziel is visiting Tallantire’s widow Maudie when she gets two other visitors. One is Deputy Chief Constable Geoff Hiller, who knew Tallantire at the time of the Westrop murder. With him is DI Stubbs. Stubbs makes the mistake of greeting Dalziel this way:
“‘Hi. Glad to meet you, supe.’
‘Supe?’ echoed Dalziel. ‘Up here we drink supe. Or if it’s home made we chew it. Will you be staying in West Yorkshire long enough to learn our little ways?’”
It doesn’t help matters that Dalziel finds out that Hiller and Stubbs have been assigned to re-open the Kohler case. That’s enough for Dalziel and, in his own way, Pascoe, to look into the case themselves.
Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest is also not known for her tact and diplomacy. In fact even she admits that she’s too quick sometimes to say what’s on her mind. But she is refreshingly honest, and one can’t help thinking, “I wish I’d said that!” when she speaks her mind. For instance, in Gunshot Road, she’s just begun her work as an Aboriginal Community Police Officer (ACPO) when she and her team are called to Green Swamp Well. Prospector Albert “Doc” Ozolins has just been killed in what looks like a drunken quarrel gone terribly wrong. But Tempest doesn’t think it’s quite that simple. Her boss Bruce Cockburn though insists that the team has the right culprit and orders Tempest to leave it alone. As it is she’s riled by his officious and overbearing manner and at one point she’s had enough:
“‘You’re complicating a perfectly straightforward homicide investigation.’ [Cockburn]
‘Bunch of blokes flashing a video round a cabin? There hasn’t been a homicide investigation.’…
‘Are you questioning my competence?’
‘I’m sure has hell questioning something – reckon that’d be a reasonable place to start.’”
Needless to say, Tempest’s forthright way of speaking does not exactly endear her to Cockburn. Neither does her insistence on looking into the matter. In the end though, it turns out that Ozolins was killed for a much bigger reason than a drunken quarrel.
And then there’s Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Carl Mørck. He’s a Copenhagen homicide detective who’s not known for being overly tactful and polite, especially since the line-of-duty shooting incident from which he’s recovering in Mercy (AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes). In fact Mørck has become so difficult to work with that no-one is willing to team up with him. So he’s “promoted” to a newly created department – Department Q – that’s assigned to look into cases of “special interest.” One of those is the five-year-old disappearance of promising politician Merete Lynggaard. It was originally thought that she fell overboard in a tragic ferry accident, but little hints begin to suggest that she might still be alive. When Mørck and his assistant Hafez al-Assad discover how the original investigation was mishandled, Mørck is only too eager to tell the original investigator Børge Bak exactly what he thinks of him:
“‘So,Bak! That was a hell of a job you lot did on the Lynggaard case. You were up to your necks in signs that everything wasn’t as it should be. Had the whole team caught sleeping sickness or what?…So now I want to know if there’s anything else in the case that you’re keeping to yourself…Was there someone or something that put the brakes on your excellent investigation, Børge?”
We might agree that Mørck isn’t exactly the most tactful and diplomatic of sleuths but at the same time, it’s easy to cheer for him.
And that’s the thing about sleuths who speak their minds. Sometimes they reflect exactly what others are thinking, and we can’t help but respect their frankness. There are a lot of examples of them, too – more than I have space for here. Which are your favourites?
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Kiki Dee’s I’ve Got the Music in Me.
Many of the detectives in the novels I read always have a snappy comeback, and so do I. The problem is that I think of that comeback in the middle of the night, hours after I wanted to say something. I’ve just read Stalin’s Ghost in which Inspector Arkady Renko has some very choice words for the Detective his lover has run off with, and other people as well.
Barbara – Oh, I’m the Queen of the Late Comebacks, too. It’s nice when one can think of them right at the perfect time. And thanks for reminding me of Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko. I find him an interesting detective.
L’esprit d’escalier was the bane of my life when I was an awkward kid (it still is but now I don’t care). We are in good company though. Rousseau used to say that he was a better “conversationalist by mail” because he could never think up the right reply when pressed for time.
Peter – It is nice to know isn’t it that we aren’t the only ones who don’t always think of the perfect thing to say when under pressure. That’s what’s nice about being a writer
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Margot – Of course, it all makes sense now. I never thought of it that way but I feel someone should do a study on this.
Peter – That’s a very interesting point! I could see a very good study coming out of this…
As I get older, I find myself resisting diplomacy and tact from time to time. Perhaps that’s why I love the older characters in many mystery novels, the ones who tell it like it is. There’s a secondary male character in Mike Befeler’s “Retirement Homes are Murder” who’s my idol…I think his name was Meyer. And then there’s Cindy Keen Reynders’ Aunt Gladys character, and Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Myrtle Clover. There are many more, and the sassier they are, the better I like them.
Pat – I know what you mean. I really like Mike Befeler’s Meyer and Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Myrtle Clover too. As you say, they say exactly what they think. And perhaps it is a function of getting older. Elderly characters have less to lose, so to speak, by speaking their minds. That’s a very interesting point.
I think we all are quite fond of Merck. He’s right in his anger and frustration at the Lyngaard investigation; people suffered due to the lukewarm job done originally. We are so glad he got righteously upset and pursued the case to its conclusion.
Harry Hole is not always tactful. He does what he has to do. And I believe, though I haven’t read these books, that Kurt Wallender loses his cool many times in his series, and that’s why he is benched for awhile.
Salvo Montalbano, one of our favorite detectives, also can lose his cool. He does it with his team members frequently, and sometimes in an investigation with others, when he thinks those who’d have evidence are hiding it or not being truthful. He does get pushy and annoyed.
A lot of detectives, private and government, get annoyed and lose tact when they are intent on solving a murder, but are meeting with obstructionism or being told lies.
Mma Precious Ramotswe seems to be diplomatic always. Guido Brunetti tries to be tactful, but he’s used violence a few times out of frustration, thus shocking his readers.
I have friends who are so diplomatic they could charm the birds out of the trees. We all aspire to that, but aren’t always that way.
In the crunch, when it’s life or death, many detectives do what they have to do, regardless of tact, including Poirot. When he’s zooming in for the kill, he’s not always tactful, turning up family secrets, accusing people of all sorts of things, even before he gets to the coup de grace.
Kathy – You’re right about Carl Mørck. Readers can feel his frustration as he uncovers problem after problem with the Merete Lynggaard investigation and it’s not surprising at all when he snaps out. Add to that that he is recovering from trauma and it’s easy to see why he behaves as he does. And I’m glad you brought up Harry Hole. There’s never room in any one blog post to mention all of the examples there are, so I’m always happy when folks add to what I’ve written. Hole certainly isn’t the most diplomatic of characters and you’re right; neither is Kurt Wallander. And there are dozens of examples aren’t there of how Andreia Camilleri’s Salvo Montalbano says exactly what’s on his mind, whether it’s to friends, colleagues or suspects.
Like you, I’ve got some very charming friends, too, and tact is of course a very useful thing to have. But sometimes, speaking one’s mind can be very cathartic. And it can get the job done.
We would all like to sometimes be able to be as rude as our favourite characters. Unfortunately in real life Harry Hole, Andy Dalziel, Carl Morck etc would be demoted to traffic cops downtown Malmo or Tower Hamlets. Mind you some of the most diplomatic and “charming” people I have ever met turned out to be a cross between Vice Questore Patta [Brunetti's boss] and Tom Waaler [from the Oslo trilogy].
Norman – You’re quite right that in real life, a cop who spoke out like Carl Mørck, Harry Hole or Andy Dalziel would not stay an Inspector for very wrong. I think that’s one reason why most of us learn some tact; that’s how you get on in the work world. As you say though, diplomacy isn’t everything. It can cover up a very treacherous personality. I’ve known people like that too and they can be very dangerous.
You know, speaking your mind shows that you can cut through all the bullcrap and get to the heart of the problem, which is very good characteristic for a detective to have. Great post, and as always, it made me think.
Peter – Why, thank you
You’ve a well-taken point too that being able to get to the heart of a problem is an important trait for sleuths. It can be helpful in a lot of other contexts, too. So it makes sense that a good sleuth would also sometimes be very plain-spoken.
I think most detectives in fiction are tactful because of the sensitive nature of their assignment. They can’t be too loudmouthed or aggressive lest they “give away” their secret agenda — investigating a case without drawing too much attention upon themselves. That, of course, does not include Poirot whose investigations are there for the world to see, only no one knows what’s going on in that bald head of his. I have come across instances where fictional police detectives use ploys and sting operations to ferret out information from suspects more effectively than shooting from the hip, so to say, and getting nowhere.
Prashant – Now, that’s an interesting point. It does benefit detectives if they know how to be tactful because as you say, they can’t very well share their investigation plan with everyone. And drawing too much attention to themselves is not the best way to pursue that agenda. It’s true what you say of Poirot, too; rarely do we know what he is really thinking until the end of a novel…