Well, You Say That I’m an Outlaw*

In crime fiction, we usually think of the protagonist as ‘the good guy’ – the one who catches ‘the bad guy.’ But people who break the law can also be really interesting protagonists and even sleuths. Having a criminal as a protagonist gives a really interesting perspective on a crime. It also allows for some solid depth of character.

One of G.K. Chesterton’s well-drawn characters is Hercule Flambeau, who is a master jewel thief and criminal. He’s usually able to outwit the police, but when he encounters Father Paul Brown in The Blue Cross, Flambeau finds he’s met his match. In that story, Father Brown is en route to a large gathering of priests. With him he’s brought a silver cross set with turquoise – a very attractive prize to a thief such as Flambeau. The story of how the two men interact and of how Father Brown deals with Flambeau is interesting and certainly from Flambeau’s perspective, unusual. We meet Flambeau in other stories too where he is at least the co-protagonist and although he has a criminal past, he’s painted quite sympathetically.

Agatha Christie takes an interesting look at the criminal-as-protagonist in And Then There Were None (AKA Ten Little Indians). Ten very different people receive invitations to stay as guests at a house on Indian Island, off the Devon coast. For different reasons, each accepts. On the night of their arrival, the guests are shocked when each is accused of being a criminal, specifically of causing the death of at least one other person. Then, one of the guests dies of what turns out to be poison. Later that night there’s another death. It’s soon clear that they are trapped on the island with a murderer. As more guests begin to die, the survivors have to find out who the killer is while at the same time staying alive themselves. As we learn the backstory of each person on the island, we also learn why their un-named host considers them criminals. But they’re not entirely unsympathetic people and we can feel for them as they try to decide who can be trusted and who not.

Robert Pollock’s Loophole: Or, How to Rob a Bank is the story of a group of criminals led by professional thief Mike Daniels. The team decides to try for a very big prize: a theft from the City Savings Bank. Their bold plan is to use the sewer system to tunnel under the bank. For that though they’ll need the help of an architect. They find their man in the person of Stephen Booker, an unemployed architect who’s taken to driving a night cab to put food on the table. He’s desperate for money so against his better judgement he falls in with the thieves. The group makes elaborate preparations and as they do, Pollock shows the thieves in a sympathetic light. Here for instance is Daniels’ description of thieves:

 

‘Thieves. You might just as well say salesmen or clerks in an office. It’s their business. It’s what they do. There’s nothing strange about it, not to them anyway…They do what everybody does. They have girlfriends or wives and children and hobbies. They build shelves in the kitchen and clean their cars on Sundays.’
 

The day of the robbery arrives and at first everything goes well. Then a storm moves in, bringing a lot of rain with it. Now the thieves face a literal life-or-death struggle as they try to go for their prize.

In Tony Broadbent’s The Smoke, we meet Jethro, a professional cat burglar living in post-World War II London’s West End.  He tries to convince the world that he’s ‘gone straight,’ so he takes a job in the theatre district. His real goal though is easy access to the wealthy homes in nearby Mayfair and Belgravia. At first, he’s able to go fairly un-noticed even though most people in the criminal world are convinced that he has no intention of living an ‘upright’ life. Then Jethro decides on a real coup: emeralds belonging to the wife of the Russian Ambassador. That break-in gets the interest of MI5 and Jethro soon finds himself facing off against them, the police and fellow criminals. While it’s quite clear that Jethro’s a criminal, it’s easy to feel sympathy for him.

In Jeffrey Stone’s historical novel Play Him Again we are introduced to Matt ‘Hud’ Hudson. Hud has dreams of becoming a film-maker in the growing world of Hollywood. But at the moment he’s a ‘rum-runner’ – a smuggler of then-illegal alcohol (the novel takes place in the 1920’s). Hud is devastated when his friend Danny is murdered, Hud wants to find out who killed him and get revenge. There are plenty of suspects too. For one thing, a very nasty criminal gang has moved into the area and wants to take over Hud and Danny’s operation. There are rival smuggling groups too whose members would be all too happy to have the field cleared as the saying goes. As Hud searches for answers, it’s clear that he and several of the people he deals with are criminals – thieves, con men and smugglers. But Stone presents a lot of them sympathetically and it’s not hard to wish Hud well as he tries to find out what happened to his friend.

Even when criminals aren’t ‘official’ protagonists, they can play important roles in novels and be depicted sympathetically. For example, Andrea Camilleri’s series featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano includes a very interesting ‘regular’ character Gegè Gullotta. He’s a drug dealer and local criminal leader who runs a notorious area of the town of Vigàta. This area, called The Pasture, is a meeting place for prostitutes and their clients and for small-time marijuana and other drug deals. Gullotta and Montalbano went to school together and they’ve maintained a cordial relationship since then, although both of them find it more expedient to keep their friendship discreet. Gullotta wants to run a trouble-free operation; as he sees it he’s a businessman, nothing more. In his way Montalbano helps Gullotta by not making public examples of the people involved in Gullotta’s ‘enterprises.’ Gullotta appreciates being able to run a peaceful trade and he does his part by not letting things in The Pasture get out of control or trouble people who don’t want to be involved in what goes on there. He’s also quite tuned in to the Vigàta criminal community so he hears a lot of what goes on. More than once Montalbano benefits from what Gullotta finds out.

It’s always interesting to see stories from different points of view. When criminals are portrayed as protagonists, it’s important for authors to acknowledge that they’re lawbreakers. But at the same time, a criminal with a sympathetic character can make for an effective perspective in a crime novel. Which ones have you enjoyed?

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Woody Guthrie’s Pretty Boy Floyd.

There Was Fifty-Seven Channels and Nothin’ On*

An interesting comment exchange with Bill Selnes at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan has got me thinking about television. Bill did a very interesting post about the fact that fictional sleuths don’t really watch a lot of TV. Actually, all of Bill’s posts are really interesting. If you’re a crime fiction fan, you really should be following his blog if you’re not already doing so. And he’s right about TV, too; it doesn’t seem to be a major part of life for most fictional sleuths. They’re either too busy or quite frankly not interested. And yet TV is a pervasive presence in our lives. Even if you’re not a TV watcher, chances are that something on TV is going to be discussed at work, family gatherings and so on. So it seems to me only natural that there’d be plenty of TV in crime fiction, even crime fiction that features sleuths who really don’t watch much of it.

A television news story is part of what gets Sergeant Barbara Havers involved in a murder case in Elizabeth George’s Deception on His Mind. Haytham Querashi has recently emigrated from Pakistan to the British seaside town of Balford-le-Nez. There’s already an immigrant community there and Querashi’s plan is to marry Salah Malik, whose family has already gotten established. When Querashi is found dead on a beach near the town, the case makes the television news, mostly because of the already-simmering rift between the immigrant community and the locals. Havers happens to see a news broadcast about the case and learns that DI Emily Barlow, who is one of Havers’ idols, is leading the investigation. Havers arranges to be assigned to the case in part so that she can work with Barlow. Havers hardly spends all day sitting in front of the television, but in this case she happens to be watching at the right time.

So does Emma le Roux in Deon Meyer’s Blood Safari. She is watching a news story about a man named Cobie de Villiers who is wanted in connection with the murder of a traditional healer and three other men when she notices that one of the men looks exactly like her brother Jacobus. Jacobus le Roux disappeared twenty years earlier from South Africa’s Kruger National Park. At the time, everyone assumed he’d been killed in a skirmish with poachers, but if that’s not true, Emma wants to find out where he is. Shortly after she contacts the police about the news broadcast, Emma is attacked in her home. Now she knows that there’s more to her brother’s disappearance than everyone thinks, and she hires bodyguard Martin Lemmer to go with her from Cape Town to the Lowveld to get some answers. What they find is that the murders and Jacobus le Roux’s disappearance are all connected to greed, international business intrigue and politics.

Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Salvo Montalbano is not an avid TV-watcher. But he knows the value of TV in getting and passing on information. One of his good friends is Nicolò Zito, who works for Vigatà’s Free Channel. The two men often co-operate on cases and with Montalbano’s access to exclusive and valuable information, and Zito’s connections, each benefits the other. In The Wings of the Sphinx for instance, the body of an unidentified young woman is found near a local landfill. The only distinguishing mark on her is a tattoo. Montalbano knows that it will be very hard to find out what happened to the woman and who would have killed her if she can’t be identified. So he has Zito broadcast a picture of her and a picture of the tattoo. It turns out to be a very good thing that he did, because that’s how Montalbano learns that the victim was a member of a group of Eastern European girls who had come to Italy to find work. It’s through that thread that he’s able to find out who killed the girl and why.

In Gail Bowen’s A Colder Kind of Death, political scientist and television commentator Joanne Kilbourn has to revisit the tragedy of her husband Ian’s murder when his killer Kevin Tarpley is shot in the prison yard. When Tarpley’s wife Maureen, who was with him on the night of Ian Kilbourn’s murder, is killed too, Kilbourn needs to clear her own name. She also wants some resolution. So she looks into the circumstances of both murders. In one thread of the story, Kilbourn’s son Angus, who’s fifteen at the time of this novel, finds out that Tarpley’s been killed and asks his mother for more details about that murder and about his father’s death. She reluctantly agrees and the two go to the local offices of Nationtv where Kilbourn works. It’s through recorded television broadcasts that Angus learns more about his father’s death, the trial of Kevin Tarpley and the impact Ian Kilbourn had. The recordings also give Kilbourn a hint as to the truth about the murders of Tarpley and his wife.

In Catherine O’Flynn’s The News Where You Are, we meet regional television presenter Frank Allcroft. He’s happily married and has a strong bond with his eight-year-old daughter Mo. But he’s at a crossroads in his life and he’s dealing with the loss of his mentor and predecessor at the network Phil Smethway. Smethway was killed in a hit-and-run incident while he was out jogging. When Allcroft is drawn to the scene of the death one day he sees that the road is straight and clear. It should have been easy to see Smethway and avoid him. Although the driver was never located, Allcroft begins to suspect that this death is more than a simple case of tragic miscalculation or drink driving. So he begins to ask questions about Smethway’s life and finds out there were sides to his friend that he never knew. As Allcroft searches for answers, readers get a look at the power of TV. Viewers feel they know Smethway and Allcroft and speak and write as though both men were close acquaintances instead of strangers who simply present on TV. And some viewers’ reactions and suggestions really are funny.  We also see how being on TV has affected both Smethway and Allcroft.

Paddy Richardson’s Traces of Red features TV journalist Rebecca Thorne. A successful presenter, her show Saturday Night has been a popular New Zealand show for some time. But it’s hit a proverbial plateau and Thorne knows that in the TV business, there’s always someone new coming up who can easily supplant the people ‘on top.’ So she’s eager for the story that will cement her position. She thinks she’s found it in the case of Connor Bligh. Bligh is in prison for the murders of his sister Angela Dickson, her husband Rowan and their son Sam. Only their daughter Katy survived because she wasn’t at home at the time of the killings. New hints have come up though suggesting that Connor Bligh may be innocent. If he is, then this is a really important case of justice gone wrong. So Thorne eagerly pursues the case. As she searches for the truth, we see the impact of TV in the way people react to her, in the way viewer ratings matter, and in the public reaction to this new investigation.

There are also novels in which TV ‘personalities’ are murdered. Lynda Wilcox’s Strictly Murder and Liza Marklund’s Prime Time are just two examples. And there are fictional sleuths such as Elizabeth Spann Craig’s  Myrtle Clover who do watch TV (her never-miss-it show is called Tomorrow’s Promise).

TV is woven throughout a lot of other crime fiction too – much, much more than I have space for here. Love it, hate it or don’t care about it, TV is a big part of life. Bill Selnes is right that fictional sleuths don’t usually watch a lot of it – they can’t if they’re going to investigate crime. But the rest of us seem to…

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Bruce Springsteen’s 57 Channels (and Nothin’ On).

Pack Up, Let’s Fly Away*

One of the best things about blogging is the ideas and inspiration I get from folks who are kind enough to read and comment on what I write. Just as an example, I’ve recently gotten inspiration from two separate sources. One was an excellent book review on Fair Dinkum Crime, which is the place to go for all things related to Australian crime fiction. In this case I was inspired by Bernadette at Reactions to Reading. You really need to be following that superb crime fiction review blog if you’re not. The other source that got me thinking was an interesting comment exchange with Moira at Clothes in Books, which is the most interesting and informative place I know of for discussions of clothes, style, fashion, and what they’ve meant in novels, including lots of good crime fiction. Now, I’ll be glad to wait a moment while you go ahead and stop by those blogs to follow them if you’re not already doing so. They’re all excellent blogs and more than worth being on your blog roll if you’re a crime fiction fan.

Back now? Thanks. So what did these top-notch bloggers get me thinking about? Escaping the weather. Right now, it’s blistering hot in many parts of the Southern Hemisphere. It’s cold, dark and damp in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere. That’s January for you. And many people like to escape those weather extremes through what they read. So I thought it might be interesting (OK, fun, too) to look at some novels that people might use to escape that January weather.

 

Beat the Heat

 

Tired of the mid-summer January heat? One novel that comes to my mind is Arnaldur Indriðason’s Arctic Chill. In that novel, the frozen body of a young Thai boy called Elías is found near the building where he lived. There’s no question that the boy was murdered, so Reykjavík Inspector Erlendur and his team begin to investigate the case. They find an ugly and unexpected undercurrent of anti-immigration feeling that may have been behind the murder. At the same time, there are stories of a paedophile who may be in the area. If that’s true it too could have something to do with the murder. As the team is working on these cases, Erlendur also has to face another long-ago tragedy. When he was a boy, his younger brother Bergur was lost in a blizzard. He was never found and Erlendur’s had to cope with that since then. Now his daughter Eva Lind brings up the topic and forces him to confront that sorrow. There’s plenty of snow, ice and plunging temperatures in this novel.

Stan Jones’ Nathan Active series takes place in and around Chukchi, Alaska. Active, who is Inupiaq, is an Alaska State Trooper who was born near the Arctic Circle but raised in Anchorage. Now he’s returned to the Far North and the mysteries featuring him include lots of snow, ice and cold weather. For instance, in White Sky, Black Ice, Active investigates two suspicious deaths, both supposed suicides. One is of George Clinton, whose body is discovered near a local bar. The other is of Aaron Stone, who went on a hunting trip and never returned. In both cases, Active suspects that these deaths are not suicides at all and he searches for the connection between them. His suspicions seem even more logical when he finds out that the two men knew each other. Bit by bit he uncovers the truth about what happened to the two victims. A big part of this series is the look it takes at Inupiaq life, and of course for most of the year that life includes frigid weather and snow.

And then there’s Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow (AKA Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow). Smilla Jaspersen is a half-Inuit, half Danish Greenlander and not really at home in Copenhagen, where she lives. She’s more or less a loner, but she does befriend Isaiah Christiansen, a young boy who lives in her building. Isaiah too is a Greenlander who’s never quite fit in, so the two form a kind of friendship. Then one day Isaiah is killed in what looks like a tragic but accidental fall from the room of the building where they live. Jaspersen isn’t sure that’s what happened though. As a Greenlander, she has a real sense of snow (hence, the title of the novel) and what she learns from the snow on the roof gives her the first clue that this death was not accidental. So she begins to ask questions. The trail leads to an expedition that Isaiah and his father made to Greenland, and what happened there. When Jaspersen learns that, she follows the trail to Greenland where she finds the answers she’s been seeking. Snow, ice, glaciers, all of them play a role in this novel, so it’s definitely one for cooling down a hot day.

 

Warming Up

 

Ready for a break from snow and slush, ice, plunging temperatures and heavy winter coats and boots?  Here are just a few examples of novels with plenty of ‘tropical heat’ that may help take the chill off.

You may want to start with a tropical cruise like the one Agatha Christie describes in Death on the Nile. Linnet Doyle and her new husband Simon are on their honeymoon trip, which includes a cruise of the Nile. On the second night of the journey she’s shot, and Hercule Poirot and Colonel Race, who are on the same cruise, work together to investigate. The most likely suspect is Linnet’s former best friend Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ de Bellefort. They were on bad terms and Jackie had even threatened to kill Linnet. But it’s conclusively proved that she couldn’t have committed the murder so Poirot and Race have to look elsewhere for the killer. There’s plenty of warm weather and several tropical drinks to be had in this novel.

There’s also Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza’s December Heat. In that novel, Inspector Espinosa of the Rio de Janeiro police has to face a particularly challenging case. His former colleague retired police officer Vieira is suspected of murdering his girlfriend Lucimar, who calls herself Magali. Vieira went out with her on the night of her murder, but he got very drunk and can’t remember much of what happened. His belt has been found in her apartment though, and it is possible that he killed her. Espinosa begins to look into the case and soon concludes that it’s not the kind of murder that Vieira would have committed. At the same time as he’s investigating Magali’s murder, he’s also dealing with what looks like a drugs ring and the police corruption that allows the ring to operate. The two cases might or might not be connected. Either way Espinosa deals with the underside of Rio as he searches for the truth. Rio de Janeiro is warm – even tropical – no matter what time of year it is. Trust me. So there’s plenty of hot weather and tropical drinks to warm you up.

And of course, no discussion of warm-weather ‘escape’ novels would be complete without a mention of Andrea Camilleri’s series featuring Sicily police inspector Salvo Montalbano. He lives and works in the fictional town of Vigàta, where the weather never gets truly cold. He spends plenty of time in outdoor cafés and restaurants and swims most mornings. We get a real sense of the heat in Sicily in August Heat, when Montalbano has to stay in Vigàta for the summer instead of escape the heat as he’d planned to do. His lover Livia Burlando joins him, but things don’t work out at all as they had planned. Livia had planned to stay with some friends and their son at their beach house rental but that turns into a disaster. First, the house is infested with rats. Then, a body of young girl is discovered in the basement. She is identified as Catarina “Rina” Morreale, who was reported missing some time earlier. Now, Montalbano has to negotiate the always tricky business of his relationship with Livia as well as find out who killed Rina Morreale and why.

So there you have it: just a few suggestions for escaping from whatever temperature extremes you’re facing. But I’ll bet you have your own suggestions. Which books have you read to beat the cold or the heat?

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn’s Come Fly With Me, made popular by Frank Sinatrra.

Put Our Service to the Test*

For the most part the days are long past when people had households consisting of maids, butlers, valets and so on. And yet, lots of people still hire others to cook or clean, mind children, look after elderly parents and so on. Even if those folks don’t live in, they still have keys and lots of access. If you think about it they are vulnerable too so hiring someone to work in one’s home entails quite a lot of mutual trust. There’s an odd sort of intimacy too between employer and employee. All of those factors mean a rich source of characters and plot lines for crime fiction.

One of the most powerful examples of what I mean is in Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone. Wealthy and well-educated George and Jacqueline Coverdale hire Eunice Parchman as their housekeeper. In a tragic lapse, a too-trusting Jacqueline doesn’t check into her new housekeeper’s background carefully enough. Still, all goes well at first. Then little incidents suggest that something about this housekeeper isn’t what it seems. From Eunice Parchman’s perspective, her new employers are getting far, far too close to finding out a secret she’s keeping. Then, George Coverdale’s daughter Melinda discovers what the housekeeper has been so desperate not to reveal. And that seals the family’s fate one awful Valentine’s Day. In this novel, we know what happens right from the beginning of the novel. The real suspense is in the backstory and the buildup to the story’s climax. And one of the themes in the novel is the way the Coverdales and their housekeeper see each other.

In Elizabeth George’s A Traitor to Memory, the focus is on the Davies family. Twenty-eight-year-old Gideon Davies is a particularly gifted world-class violinist. Then one night he finds that he can’t play at all. He’s terrified by the incident and decides to get psychological help to understand why he’s had this block of his skill. The process of psychotherapy leads Davies to understand that his past has a lot to do with what’s happened. In the meantime Davies’ mother Eugenie is killed one night in what looks like a terrible accident – a hit-and-run incident. Inspector Thomas ‘Tommy’ Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers investigate Eugenie Davies’ death, and that trail leads them to a horrible event in the family’s past. Twenty years earlier, Eugenie Davies’ two-year-old daughter Sonia was drowned in what appeared at first to be a horrible accident. When it began to look as though more was involved their nanny Katja Wolff was arrested and imprisoned. She’s recently been released from prison and as the story unfolds, we see how the drowning and the nanny’s imprisonment and release are all tied in with what’s happened to Gideon Davies and to his mother.

There’s a very appealing relationship between Lilian Jackson Braun’s James ‘Qwill’ Qwilleran and his housekeeper Iris Cobb. One of the appealing things about it is that the relationship develops over several books in the series. When the two first meet, Qwill is a feature-writer for a large city’s newspaper. When he uncovers corruption and murder in the city’s antiques business, he encounters Cobb, whose husband is an antiques dealer. As it turns out, she is not only quite knowledgeable about antiques, but she is a gifted cook as well. When circumstances leave her alone in life Cobb moves to Pickax, a small town in Moose County, ‘400 miles north of nowhere.’ There she goes into business with a local art/antiques dealer and also becomes Qwill’s housekeeper. She and Qwill really do look out for each other and Braun is to be credited for making their relationship a solid friendship and a case of mutual respect rather than the all-too-easy blossoming romance.

A cleaning lady turns out to be an important source of information in Helene Tursten’s Detective Inspector Huss. In that novel, Göteborg homicide detective Irene Huss and her team investigate the death of Richard von Knecht, who apparently committed suicide by jumping off the balcony of his penthouse. When forensics evidence suggests that von Knecht was murdered, the team pursues the case. One of the people they want to interview is von Knecht’s cleaning lady Pirjo Larsson. The only problem is that she seems to have disappeared. The explanation becomes tragically clear when her body is later discovered in the charred remains of an apartment von Knecht used as a business office. It turns out that Larsson had some key information about the von Knectht case and was killed because of what she knew.

And then there’s Magdalena, whom we meet in Alice LaPlante’s Turn of Mind. Magdalena works as housekeeper and caregiver for Dr. Jennifer White. White is a former surgeon who’s has been diagnosed with dementia and has been forced to retire. Although she has plenty of lucid moments as the novel begins, those moments become fewer and farther between as the novel goes on. Then White’s seventy-eight-year-old neighbour Amanda O’Toole is found murdered. Although there’s no direct proof, there are suggestions that only a surgeon with White’s skill would have been able to leave some of the forensic evidence that was found. What’s more, we learn that White and O’Toole had a long relationship that wasn’t always warm and friendly. In fact they had a terrible argument shortly before she was murdered. The story is told from White’s increasingly scattered and incoherent point of view, so we don’t know for a very long time exactly what happened on the night of the murder, nor whether White really is a murderer. But we get the sense all along that Magdalena knows more than she is saying. We also learn that she has her own secrets to keep. She’s an interesting character and in her interactions with White and White’s children Fiona and Mark, we see the unique relationship that develops between caregivers and family. They aren’t really family but they aren’t really not family either.

And of course no crime-fictional post about modern domestic employees would be complete without a mention of Adelina Cirrinciò, housekeeper, cook and cleaning staff for Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano. She feels she owes him a debt for the help he’s given her; her son’s been in legal trouble and Montalbano has been not just supportive but also of practical assistance. For Montalbano’s part he is quite dependent on Adelina and he knows it. She is a superb cook and more than efficient at her other tasks too and Montalbano will go very far to keep her happy and mend fences when she gets angry. Adelina feels quite proprietary about her boss too, and is not at all happy with his choice of lover Livia Burlando. And Adelina makes it quite obvious how she feels about Livia. She also is quite forthright in her way when she’s worried about Montalbano, or when she thinks he’s making a mistake. Camilleri has made of her an interesting and shrewd character while at the same time using her character to weave some domesticity and sometimes comic relief through the series.

Today’s house cleaners, child minders, caregivers and other domestic employees play important roles in family life. Their stories are integrated with those of family members so it makes sense that we’d meet them in crime fiction too. Which ones have stuck with you?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s Be Our Guest.

If We Weren’t All Crazy We Would go Insane*

Sometimes life gets cold and sad. We see a lot of that in crime fiction because of course it so often deals with murder and loss and the sadness that goes with them. So every once in a while it’s good to lighten things up and refresh ourselves. One way authors of crime fiction do that is by including zany characters in their novels. Of course that’s a little risky. Too much zaniness and the character won’t be believable. But a little craziness now and again adds a refreshing dose of humour to a story and can add individuality to a character if it’s done well.

In Agatha Christie’s The Clocks for instance, special agent Colin Lamb goes to the town of Crowdean in search of a clue that may lead him to a major espionage ring. He’s passing by one of the houses in the development where he thinks the clue may lie when a young woman rushes out the front door screaming that there’s a dead man inside. Lamb does his best to help the young woman calm down. Then he goes into the house. He finds that she’s absolutely right; there’s an unidentified dead man in the living room. The owner of the house Millicent Pebmarsh claims not to know the man and the only identification he has with him is a fake business card. So Lamb and DI Richard Hardcastle begin door-to-door interviews with the families in the development. One of the first people they visit is Mrs. Hemming, who lives next door to Miss Pebmarsh and so could have seen what happened. Mrs. Hemming though was far too preoccupied with her seventeen cats to notice anything. She’s extremely eccentric, absent-minded and oblivious to just about anything not related to her cats. She does give Lamb and Hardcastle a clue though, and Poirot helps them use that clue.

Ngaio Marsh’s A Surfeit of Lampreys (AKA Death of a Peer) introduces us to a number of zany characters. In that novel, the Lamprey family makes a visit to New Zealand, where they meet Roberta Grey, who can’t help but be charmed by them. And the fact that they’re eccentric only adds to that appeal. Then, Roberta’s own parents die and she moves to London to live with an aunt. That’s when she meets the Lampreys again. Delighted to see her, the family virtually adopts her. Then tragedy strikes. The Lampreys are not good financial planners and are constantly on the brink of financial ruin. When Lord Charles Lamprey asks his wealthy brother Gabriel ‘Uncle G’ for financial help, the unpleasant Uncle G refuses. Shortly afterwards he’s murdered. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn investigates the murder and all of the Lampreys come under suspicion. Roberta doesn’t want any of them to be arrested and she does her best to see that that doesn’t happen. And that’s the thing about the way Marsh paints these characters. We don’t want them to be guilty either. They’re goofy and eccentric and that’s part of what makes them so sympathetic.

Carl Hiaasen has created a number of zany characters, and that’s part of what makes his work so appealing (well, at least to me). In Skinny Dip for instance, we are introduced to Charles ‘Chaz’ Perrone, a marine biologist in name only who’s always looking for a new angle as the saying goes. He gets a job working for agribusiness executive Samual Johnson ‘Red’ Hammernut, who needs Perrone to prove that his business is not a threat to the local Everglades environment. Perrone has developed a way to do just that by falsifying water samples, so the two enter into a business arrangement. Then Perrone’s wife Joey begins to suspect what her husband’s doing and threatens to reveal it. So on the pretense of taking her on a cruise to celebrate their anniversary, he pushes her overboard. The only problem is, Joey is a champion-level swimmer and survives. Then she decides to find out why her husband tried to kill her and take revenge in her own way. In the course of this novel we meet Medea, Chaz’ Perrone’s sometimes girlfriend. She’s a ‘new age’ reflexologist with some unusual beliefs and an eccentric way of dressing. And then there’s Broward County, Florida detective Karl Rolvaag, who investigates Joey’s disappearance and suspects her husband almost from the first. Rolvaag keeps pet pythons, much to the dismay of those who share his apartment building. There are other goofy characters too but what makes them most effective is that they have enough depth and personality to be realistic.

And then there’s Riley Adams’ (AKA Elizabeth Spann Craig’s) Cherry Hayes.  She works as a volunteer docent at Elvis Presley’s Memphis home Graceland, and is of course a Presley fanatic. In fact, she has a crash helmet with a picture of Presley on it. And part of what makes her zany is that she firmly believes that danger can come from anywhere and that it’s best to be prepared, so she wears her helmet everywhere. She wears somewhat flamboyant clothes and she’s outspoken. Her quirks and zaniness make her very appealing. But they don’t take away from her depth as a character. In Hickory Smoked Homicide for instance, Cherry’s good friend Lulu Taylor gets involved in a case of murder when Lulu’s daughter-in-law Sara is suspected of murdering local beauty pageant coach Tristan Pembroke. Lulu is sure that Sara is innocent and begins to investigate the murder. Cherry, for all of her goofiness, is smart and observant as well as a loyal friend. So she helps in the investigation and in the end, she shows up just at the right moment to help Lulu at a critical moment.

Andrea Camilleri’s Sergeant Catarella is also goofy. He’s sometimes hilariously incompetent, especially when it comes to pronouncing people’s names. And he is so determined to do his job well, and so anxious to ‘get it right’ that he gets a lot of things wrong. Because of his eccentricities he drives his boss Inspector Salvo Montalbano to distraction. Montalbano especially hates it when Catarella disturbs him early in the morning – which always seems to happen. And yet, he’s not completely a mindlessly comical character. Catarella does his job, passes along messages, and so on. And one can’t help liking him for trying so very hard. As an aside, in my opinion (so please feel free to differ with me if you do), Angelo Russo is brilliantly cast as Catarella in the Montalbano television series. I recommend the series, folks.

Of course, sometimes the main sleuth is a little zany too. Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole is. He has a Mickey Mouse clock on the wall of his office and likes to wear Hawai’ian shirts. Even to formal meetings with clients. He is a sort of geeky character too. But that’s a big part of his appeal. He’s so goofy it’s cool. And Crais lets readers see beneath the surface of Cole’s character, so that we know he’s more than just a goofball who wears Disney-themed sweatshirts. He’s smart, resourceful and interesting. And zany.

So go ahead. Wear a silly paper hat. Burst into song in public. Why not? A little zaniness can do a lot to clear away some of life’s sadness.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Jimmy Buffett’s Changes in Latitudes.