All I Wanna Do is Have Some Fun*

It’s not easy to write a novel. Any writer will tell you that creating characters, developing the plot, providing closure and all of the other elements of storytelling can be challenging. And that’s not to mention things like editing and revising. But don’t let any writer (including this one) fool you into thinking there’s no enjoyment in it. There are some scenes, characters and events that are fun, or at least enjoyable to write. And that enjoyment can definitely come through in a story.

For instance, of all of the books and plays she wrote, Agatha Christie is said to have most enjoyed writing Crooked House. As she put it,

 

‘Writing Crooked House was pure pleasure…’

 

It’s clear from the novel too that she took special enjoyment in creating the story. In this novel, wealthy patriarch Aristide Leonides and his much-younger wife Brenda live with several members of their family in Three Gables, the family home. When Leonides’ grand-daughter Sophie returns to Three Gables after World War II, she finds that her grandfather has been poisoned with his own eye drops. Sophie’s fiancé Charles Hayward knows that she will not marry him until the matter of who killed Leonides is settled. So Hayward is strongly motivated to do some sleuthing. As he gets to know the various members of the family, he discovers that several of them had a good reason to want Leonides dead. This novel (in my opinion, so do feel free to differ with me if you do) has all of the ingredients that made Christie’s work so well-regarded. It’s easy to see how much she enjoyed writing it.

In Michael Connolly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, we are introduced to attorney Mickey Haller, who works out of his automobile and travels to visit his clients. In this case, the client is Hollywood playboy and real estate dealer Louis Roulet, who’s been arrested for rape and murder. On the surface of it, the case looks clear-cut, but the more Haller digs into it, the more possibility there is that, as unlikeable as he is, Roulet is not guilty. Connelly has said that he enjoyed writing Haller’s two ex-wives. One is deputy district attorney Maggie ‘McFierce’ McPherson. The other is Lorna Taylor, who works as Haller’s assistant. According to Connelly, the fact that these two women still like Haller, maybe even love him, shows that he’s got some redeeming qualities. And it’s clear that Haller respects them too. The marriages may not have been successful, but the relationships have, and it’s obvious from the way Connelly has developed these characters that he likes them.

In Patricia Stoltey’s The Desert Hedge Murders, retired circuit court judge Sylvia Thorn is reluctantly persuaded to go on a sightseeing/gambling trip with her mother Kristina’s travel group the Florida Flippers. The group has plans to visit Laughlin, Nevada, and all goes well enough at first. Then, the dead body of an unknown man is found in the bathtub of the hotel room shared by two of the Flippers. Shortly afterwards, another member of the group disappears and is later found dead in an abandoned gold mine. Partly to protect her mother and the rest of the Flippers, Thorn looks into the case and together with her brother Willie, she finds out how the two deaths are connected and what’s behind them. In one scene in the novel, Thorn, her mother and the Flippers have arrived at the Oatman Hotel in Oatman, a famous ghost town near the gold mine. They’re getting off the tour bus from Laughlin when Thorn suddenly finds herself surrounded by a group of the burros that make Oatman their home. She has another encounter with the burros later in the novel. No, the burros don’t attack, and they don’t have anything to do with the murders, but they add to the story, and I’m pretty certain it was fun to write about them.

In Anthony Bidulka’s Flight of Aquavit, Saskatoon PI Russell Quant gets a new client Daniel Guest. Guest is being blackmailed because of some secret relationships he’s had with other men. He hires Quant to find and stop the blackmailer and Quant begins to look into the case. The trail leads to New York, where Quant crosses paths with another PI Jane Cross, who lives and works in Regina. Neither is particularly enamoured of the other but as it turns out, the cases they are working on are related. So like it or not, Quant has to interact with Cross. In the end, and after a murder, Quant works out who blackmailed his client, who killed the murder victim and how Jane Cross fits in. Here is what Bidulka had to say about Jane Cross:

 

‘I enjoyed writing her character, especially as a foil for Russell.’

 

And that’s clear from the novels in which she appears. Cross is smart, interesting and absolutely unafraid. The interactions between her and Quant are sometimes tense and unpleasant, but they are engaging and sometimes really witty.

And then there’s Angela Savage’s The Half Child. That’s the second in her series featuring  PI Jayne Keeney, who lives and works in Bangkok. In that novel, Keeney investigates the death of Maryanne Delbeck, who jumped (or fell, or was pushed) from the roof of the Pattaya hotel where she was living. The official police report is that Maryanne was suffering from depression and committed suicide. But her father doesn’t believe it and wants Keeney to look into the matter. Keeney travels to Pattaya and goes undercover at the orphanage/child care home where Maryanne volunteered to try to get some answers. Along with finding out what really happened to Maryanne, Keeney also finds out some very ugly truths about the child care facility. In her personal life, Keeney has begun a relationship with Rajiv Patel, who manages his uncle’s Bangkok bookshop. Throughout this case, Patel proves to be very helpful, so much so that Keeney re-thinks her relationship with him as well as her view of her work. At the end of this novel, Patel finds a way to surprise Keeney. That scene is not just fun, it’s moving, too, and I have it on very good authority that it was

 

‘…great fun to write…’

 

And that’s clear when one reads it.

Part of the reason that writers keep doing what they do is that despite the challenges, it can be a lot of fun. And when an author enjoys particular characters, scenes and so on, that comes through clearly in the story. Do you see that too? Can you tell when an author is enjoying himself or herself? If you’re a writer, which scenes or characters have you had the most fun writing?

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Sheryl Crow’s All I Wanna Do.

Some Fairly Safe Bets…

An interesting comment exchange with Moira at Clothes in Books and another with Sarah at Crimepieces have got me thinking about the way savvy crime fiction fans pick up on clues and patterns in crime fiction. Oh, and one other thing savvy crime fiction fans do is follow both Clothes in Books and Crimepieces. If you’re not familiar with those excellent blogs, do go pay ‘em a visit. G’head, I’ll wait.

Right. Patterns. When you read enough crime fiction, you get to the point where you can often make some fairly accurate predictions about what sort of thing will happen in a story. Some things just become fairly safe bets. Part of the reason for this is of course that crime fiction fans are intelligent and observant people. Part of it is also that certain things just seem to lead logically to certain consequences in crime fiction. If you see that pattern often enough, you get to know it and be ready for it. In a well-written story it’s not generally a problem if the reader recognises a pattern. A strong plot and well-written characters draw a reader in even if s/he can make accurate predictions about what’s going to happen.

 

Blunt Force Trauma and ID

 

This is the pattern that Moira mentioned. Her point was that when you have a novel where the victim’s had blunt force trauma to the face, there’s a pretty good chance that there’s going to be a question of the real ID of the victim. She’s right. That’s especially true in classic and Golden Age crime fiction, where DNA and other forensic evidence weren’t accessible.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (AKA The Patriotic Murders and An Overdose of Death), Hercule Poirot investigates the shooting murder of his dentist Henry Morley. The Home Office takes a special interest in this case since one of Morley’s other patients is well-known powerful banker Alistair Blunt, who has plenty of enemies. So it may be that Morley’s murder was an attempt to get to Blunt. But then another of Morley’s patients disappears. And another dies of an overdose of adrenaline and Novocain. Time goes on and Poirot and Chief Inspector Japp are not much closer to solving this mystery. Then, the body of a woman is discovered. Her face has been so disfigured by a bludgeon that any savvy crime fiction fan will know that ID is going to be at issue. Is it the missing patient? Is it the body of her friend, whom she visited shortly before her death? Is it someone else? The question of ID proves very important in this case.

Identity also proves very important in Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors. In that novel, Lord Peter Wimsey and his valet Mervyn Bunter are stranded on New Year’s Eve near the East Anglia village of Fenchurch St. Paul. They are rescued by Rector Theodore Venables, who takes them back to the rectory and arranges for them to stay there while their car is being repaired. While they’re in the village, the local squire’s wife Lady Thorpe dies of influenza. Wimsey and Bunter attend her funeral and then go on their way when their car is ready. A few months later Venables writes to Wimsey. Lady Thorpe’s husband Sir Henry has died, and preparations are being made for his burial next to his wife. But when the gravediggers opened the grave to prepare it, they found another corpse – an unknown man. The face of the corpse has been battered beyond recognition and the hands removed, so it’s impossible to tell who the dead man is. Venables asks Wimsey to return to Fenchurch and find out who the victim is and why the body has been buried in the Thorpe grave. Wimsey acquiesces and he and Bunter make the trip. It turns out that the unknown man’s death is related to a long-ago robbery and a stolen necklace, and that his identity was deliberately disguised.

 

The Fate of the Blackmailer

 

This was Sarah’s idea. She reminded me of an episode of Midsomer Murders in which a girl attempts to blackmail a killer when she’s seen a murder and as Sarah wisely said, we all know what happens to fictional blackmailers when they try to profit from what they know. Any crime fiction fan knows that a person who sees a murder and tries to blackmail the murderer is marked. That’s a fairly safe bet.

There’s a deliciously eerie instance of this pattern in Matthew Gant’s short story The Uses of Intelligence. Eleven-year-old twins Patty and Danny Perkins are particularly gifted intellectually and quite arrogant about it. That’s part of what makes them not exactly popular. One of the few people who like them is the local banana peddler Aristos Depopoulos. When he is killed one day by a brick, the Perkins twins decide to find out for themselves who is responsible. They trace the crime back to the culprit with very little difficulty and then decide to blackmail the killer. Well….you can figure out what happens next, I’ll bet.

A blackmailer also pays a heavy price for greed in Caroline Graham’s A Place of Safety. Charlie Leathers is out one night walking his dog when he witnesses a dramatic scene. Carlotta Ryan, a troubled teen staying with the local curate and his wife, runs out onto a stone bridge over the Misbourne. Running after her is her hostess, curate’s wife Ann Lawrence. For a short time it seems that Ann is trying to convince the girl not to jump off the bridge. Then, Charlie hears the girl tell her hostess not to push, and before he knows what’s happened, Tanya has gone over the bridge and disappeared. When she doesn’t turn up, it seems as though Ann Lawrence has committed a murder, however unintentionally. Charlie Leathers is not a nice person and it occurs to him that he could make a good living by blackmailing Ann. As you can guess, it’s not long before he’s murdered – in this case garroted. Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby and his assistant Gavin Troy investigate and find out the truth about Carlotta Ryan, Ann Lawrence and her husband, and the murder of Charlie Leathers.

 

Danger For the Sleuth

 

‘Bad guys’ are generally not stupid. And they usually don’t want to be caught. So it’s a pretty safe bet that if a sleuth goes anywhere alone during an investigation, she or he is bound to get into trouble. Smart sleuths know this and take precautions, but the safe money’s still on trouble for the sleuth.

For instance, in Donna Malane’s Surrender, missing person’s expert Diane Rowe has just learned that James ‘Snow’ Wilson has been murdered. This death has a real impact on Rowe because Snow was responsible for murdering her sister Niki a year earlier. Before his murder, Snow admitted – boasted even – that he’d been paid to kill Niki. Rowe believes that if she can find out who paid Snow, she can find out the truth about her sister’s death. So she begins to ask questions. Once word gets out that she’s looking into this case, you know that she’s going to run into trouble. And she does. But in the end (and honestly, with none of the traditional ‘damsel in distress’ stereotype), Rowe finds out who wanted her sister dead and why. And fans of Sara Paretsky’s V.I Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone will know that those two sleuths frequently get into trouble.

This kind of danger doesn’t just happen to female sleuths. In Anthony Bidulka’s Flight of Aquavit, Saskatoon PI Russell Quant gets into trouble almost from the start when he takes the case of Daniel Guest. Guest is being blackmailed by someone who knows about his secret relationships with other men. He wants Quant to find the blackmailer and stop that person. In the course of his investigation, Quant runs into all sorts of dangers including a near-car crash, an abduction and a too-close-for-comfort encounter with a gun.

The funny thing is, in well-written crime fiction, it doesn’t really matter so much that you can make those bets. The stories are still good and they still draw the reader in. What about you? Which predictions have you learned are pretty safe bets? Thanks, Moira and Sarah for the inspiration!

It’s Just My Job, Five Days a Week*

One of the things that make PI sleuths different to cops or amateur sleuths is that PIs are in business for themselves. Cops of course are paid to be cops. They’re assigned to cases; sometimes they ask to be put on a case. But they don’t need a client base. Neither do amateur sleuths, who often have full-time jobs. But PIs have to consider the ‘business’ aspects of what they do as well as solve cases. And most PIs are not wealthy people. Their client base grows very slowly and often by word of mouth. Even if they advertise and begin to build a reputation, it’s usually local and it doesn’t mean they’ve got a world-class list of wealthy and generous clients. So it’s always interesting to see how authors of PI crime novels handle the very real fact that private investigation is as much as anything else, self-employment.

As we learn in The Musgrave Ritual, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes began to build his client base while he was a university student. His fellow students learned about him and his methods and a few hired him. Here is what Holmes says about the matter:

 

‘The third of these cases was that of the Musgrave Ritual, and it is to the interest which was aroused by that singular chain of events, and the large issues which proved to be at stake, that I trace my first stride towards the position which I now hold.

 

Reginald Musgrave is a ‘blueblood’ and he’s well-connected, so when Holmes successfully solves the mystery of two missing household staff members and a cryptic ritual, word spreads quickly. Since that time, people in all sorts of powerful positions consult Holmes.

Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot has also built his client base through word of mouth. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, he solves the murder of his benefactor Emily Inglethorp and word spreads. In The Murder on the Links, he has already built a reputation. In fact, that’s in part why Paul Renauld hires him. Renauld and his family live in Merlinville-sur-Mer in France, so when Renauld writes to Poirot, asking for help, Poirot and Captain hastings travel to Merlinville. By the time they get there Renauld has been murdered, so Poirot and Hastings investigate the death. In that novel there’s talk of newspaper stories of the earlier case (the Inglethorp murder) and although Christie isn’t specific, it’s clear that that case ‘made’ Poirot’s reputation.

Most PIs don’t have such a wealthy and well-placed client base as Poirot does. For instance, Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski builds her client base little by little, and because she has a passion for putting things right – for social justice – she hasn’t exactly won the hearts of Chicago’s richest and most powerful. What’s more, since fans will know that this series takes place before recent developments such as the Internet, Warshawski is limited in the advertising she can do. So at first, her client list isn’t long and her career isn’t lucrative. In fact, in Indemnity Only, we learn that
 

‘I usually only pay bills the third time they come around. If they want the money badly, they won’t forget you.’

 

She lives in a modest apartment and her office is hardly deluxe. But that makes sense for a PI who is just starting to build her business. As the series goes on, she gets more of a reputation but it’s interesting to see how she starts out.

John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee has an innovative way of building his business. He doesn’t really call himself an ‘official’ PI. He considers himself a ‘salvage consultant.’ He generally gets cases not from advertising or even being listed in a telephone directory but often through people he knows. For instance, in The Deep Blue Goodbye he’s approached by a friend, dancer/choreographer Chookie McCall, who is concerned about one of the members of her dance troupe Catherine Kerr. Kerr has had something stolen from her and is in real need, so she wants it back. The odd thing is, she’s not even sure exactly what was stolen.  More as a favour than for any other reason, McGee starts to investigate. He finds out what exactly was stolen and when it’s recovered, he arranges to take half of its value in payment. Kerr agrees and that sets a precedent for this series. McGee’s rather low-key about the business end of what he does, but his wants are few and he has real compassion for the people he helps.

And then there’s Jill Edmondson’s Toronto PI Sasha Jackson. She knows that overcharging isn’t exactly going to get her a long client list. So she keeps her fees reasonable. And that’s exactly the reason for which Christine Arvisais hires her in Blood and Groom. Arvisais’ former fiancé Gordon Hanes (with whom she broke up shortly before their planned wedding) has been shot. Although she hasn’t been charged with the crime, Arvisais says that there’s a lot of gossip that she’s guilty and she wants to quell the rumours. So she hires Jackson and tells her bluntly that she’s hired her because Jackson is

 

‘…all I can afford.’
 

It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it’s honest, and it shows that PIs really do have to think about such things as what they’ll charge.

And it’s realistic and refreshing to have a PI who’s comfortable with that aspect of the job. For example, as we learn in Amuse Bouche, Anthony Bidulka’s Saskatoon PI Russell Quant is

 

‘…not a dawdler when it comes to business.’

 

He’s not at all what you’d call money-hungry. But he’s a businessperson who does what he does to earn a living. So when successful entrepreneur Harold Chavell hires him to find Chavell’s missing fiancé Tom Osborn, Quant is quite forthright about his fees and expectations. At first, Quant thinks this case is a matter of a trip to France, where Chavell believes Osborn has gone. When Osborn later turns up dead, right in Saskatoon, the case takes on a whole new dimension and Quant ends up having to clear his client’s name of the suspicion of murder.

Dealing with the business end of being a PI isn’t exactly the most exciting part of the job. But any real-life PI will tell you that it matters. So it adds a realistic dimension to a PI story when there’s a little business mixed in with the…business.

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Elton John’s Rocket Man.

Wonderful Food, Marvellous Food, Glorious Food*

An interesting comment exchange with Jan Morrison has got me thinking about food. Now, while I heat up something to eat, go check out Jan’s excellent writing blog. I always get a better perspective on my writing when I visit.

OK, so, back to the table… Eating is such an essential part of life that it resonates with us even if we don’t think much about food, or care much what we eat. One of the interesting things about food is how culturally contextual it can be. Of course you don’t have to be from Thailand to enjoy Thai food and you don’t have to be Pennsylvania German to enjoy shoo-fly pie. But our attitudes towards food, the kind of food we eat and the way we eat do say a lot about us. Just a peek at crime fiction should be enough to show you want I mean.

Agatha Christie’s Chief Inspector Japp comes from a working-class English background. Not for him the gourmet food his friend Hercule Poirot prefers. That’s too ‘Frenchified’ for Japp’s taste. He’s a steak, potatoes and beer kind of person. And that taste in food fits his character as well. He’s practical, down-to-earth and gets to the point. He doesn’t use flowery language or dress in expensive clothes either. His taste in food not only suits his personality, but actually shows us what he’s like without wasting words. It’s an interesting contrast too to Poirot’s preferences. Poirot is from a different culture and background entirely. So it makes complete sense that he’d have different tastes in food.

There’s an interesting look at food, culture and eating in Riley Adams’ (AKA Elizabeth Spann Craig) Memphis Barbecue series. This series features Lulu Taylor, who owns and runs Aunt Pat’s Barbecue, a popular Memphis restaurant. Aunt Pat’s specialises in traditional Southern U.S. food and drink such as spicy corn muffins, pulled pork, sweet tea and red beans and rice. And of course, fine barbecue. Oh, and there are recipes at the end of the novels; in what I consider an excellent choice of title, the section is called ‘Put Some South in Your Mouth.’ The food at the restaurant is an important part of placing the reader in the American South. This series works in part because the food, people’s eating preferences and so on all reflect the setting and culture.

Anthony Bidulka’s series featuring his Saskatoon PI Russell Quant also shows clearly the way that food, culture and people’s eating choices are related. Quant’s mother Kay is Ukrainian, and cooks in the traditional Ukrainian way. Quant grew up with this kind of food so for him, it’s ‘comfort food’ (a separate topic in itself). Kay also has traditional ideas about how much to cook and the role that food should play in life. So it makes for a very interesting situation when she temporarily moves in with her son over the Christmas holidays in Flight of Aquavit. Quant has become accustomed to a very different kind of diet and his lifestyle doesn’t give him a lot of time for eating. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate well-cooked food, but it’s not the focal point of his life. So when his mother joins him there’s an interesting difference about food and eating that they have to resolve.

Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Salvo Montalbano lives and works in a seaside town in Sicily. So what could be more natural than his love of properly-cooked seafood? Of course he enjoys other food too, but if you read this series, you’ll notice quite a lot of seafood mentioned in the series. It’s no surprise when you think about his culture. Another thing that’s interesting about Montalbano when it comes to food and eating is that he doesn’t eat fast food. Part of this of course is Montalbano’s own personal taste. But the ‘fast food culture’ that’s so popular in parts of the U.S. and other places is not a big part of life everywhere. For many people, food is more than just what you put in your mouth. It’s the experience of stopping the rest of one’s life to enjoy a meal. It’s the ritual that goes with choosing food, eating it and taking the time to savour what you eat. And we see that clearly in this series.

We also see that culture of taking time for food in Teresa Solana’s series featuring Barcelona PI brothers Eduard and Josep ‘Borja’ Martínez. In those novels, meals might be eaten at home or they might be eaten at a restaurant. But they’re not generally bought through a drive-through window and eaten in the car. That’s not the way the people tend to feel about food in that culture. In fact, Solana refers to a funny ritual about eating lunch with a friend in A Not So Perfect Crime. The Martínez brothers are following the wife of a client because he thinks she’s being unfaithful. At one point, she has lunch with a female friend but before that, she makes sure to go shopping. Why? So that she can show up at the lunch with the right kind of designer-label shopping bags. In this particular case, the food matters, but the cultural ritual of showing one’s social status during a meal matters more.

What about all of those fictional cops and PI sleuths – and they are legion – whose food and eating habits consist mainly of going to fast food places or heating up frozen meals? And what’s interesting about that phenomenon is that it seems to cross borders. You see that kind of eating whether a sleuth is American, English, Norwegian, Australian, or from somewhere else. The type of food may vary but the habit of eating on the go, with little attention paid to the food’s quality, doesn’t seem to vary much. My guess (and mind, I’m not a sociologist) is that there is arguably a ‘cop culture.’ That culture places emphasis on long hours and the kind of work that simply doesn’t usually allow a person to stop for a few hours to eat. It does happen in some cases but not in many of them. That kind of schedule, together with emphasis on the job, is tailor made for a lot of fast-food wrappers and pizza boxes. Even Helene Tursten’s Irene Huss, who is married to a chef, takes part in her team’s pizza-fueled evening meetings.

It’s easy to see the connections between food, culture and people’s lifestyles. And it makes sense too. What, when and how we eat reflect our backgrounds, attitudes and a lot more. So it makes sense that it would do the same for crime fictional characters.

 

ps   The ‘photo is of a Seder plate used during the Passover ritual meal. The plate has a place for each of the special foods that are eaten and it’s an important part of Jewish culture and eating customs.

 

On Another Note…

 

If you’ve been celebrating Passover this week, I hope you’re having a special time with family, friends, good food, the old stories and that special feeling of connectedness.

If you’re celebrating Easter, have a joyous Easter holiday. May it give you a sense of renewal and purpose.

Even if you’re not celebrating anything in particular, I wish you good food and good people at your table.

 

Thanks, Jan, for the inspiration!

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from  Lionel Bart’s Food, Glorious Food.

Lively Up Yourself*

An excellent review from Sarah at Crimepieces has got me thinking about the blend of light and dark in crime fiction. Now, I’ll just wait here for a moment and have a sip of my coffee while you go visit Sarah’s top-notch blog and follow it if you’re not already doing so. Trust me; if you’re a crime fiction fan, you want Crimepieces on your blogroll.

Right. On to this whole question of the mix of light and dark in the genre. Some crime fiction fans prefer utter bleakness and darkness in their reading; there’s lots of very fine noir out there for that taste or mood. Other crime fiction fans like their crime fiction to be very lighthearted and funny, and not to delve too much into the dark. For those readers and that mood, there’s a lot of excellent light cosy mystery fiction available. But not everyone enjoys either bleak crime novels or lighthearted ones. What about readers who are looking for a novel or series that has an edge – where is real seriousness – but at the same time has a solid streak of lightness?  There are some series out there that defy easy categorisation but that do mix dark and light in an effective way.

Sarah’s post focused on Catriona McPherson’s Dandelion ‘Dandy’ Gilver series, and that’s a very clear example of an interesting mix of light and dark. The series takes place in the years just after the end of World War I and features socialite and amateur sleuth Dandy Gilver, who begins sleuthing because it’s an interesting sort of hobby. But in After the Armistice Ball, she finds out that it’s more than that. In that novel, Gilver’s Daisy Esslemont asks her to look into the theft of diamonds belonging to the Duffy family. The diamonds were discovered to be fakes during a visit to the Esslemonts and Daisy wants the matter solved, so as to clear the names of her family members and her staff. Her view is that if Dandy asks questions, the investigation will be quiet and no-one will really notice. Dandy agrees and starts to look into the matter. Then, a fire and the discovery of a body in a lonely cottage turn this case into something much darker and more serious. Dandy and Cara Duffy’s fiancé Alec Osborne investigate and find out that there is a tie between the jewels, the murder and the fire, and that it all has to do with some dark family secrets. This novel does have an edge in that it discusses some dark themes and shows without sugarcoating what life was like in the years just after the Armistice. But at the same time, there’s lightness and wit in it as well, and Dandy Gilver doesn’t take herself overly seriously.

Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman series also has an effective (well, to me anyway) mix of light and dark. Chapman is a Melbourne baker who lives and works in a Roman-style building called Insula. There is lightness and humour in this series. There are several eccentric characters in the building, some funny incidents and real wit. So in that sense the series is lighthearted. But it’s got an edge too. For instance, in Earthly Delights, the first in the series, one of the mysteries that Chapman deals with is the deaths of several local junkies. In Devil’s Food, Chapman’s father disappears and her mother asks for Chapman’s help in finding him. The trail leads through some of Melbourne’s bad neighbourhoods and Greenwood doesn’t gloss over what life is like for Melbourne’s poor and disenfranchised.

Chris Grabenstein’s Ceepak and Boyle series is also a solid blend of light and dark. John Ceepak is a military veteran, formerly with the U.S. Army Military Police. In Tilt-a Whirl, the first novel in the series, he’s still dealing with the trauma of his experiences in Iraq. In the story, Ceepak is partnered with summer cop Danny Boyle, who’s more laid-back and much less ‘battle scarred’ than Ceepak is. Together they investigate the murder of billionaire Reginald Hart, who’s killed on a carnival ride at a seaside amusement park. On the one hand, there is a realistic and not at all funny look at the murder and its investigation. Ceepak and Boyle learn of the murder from Hart’s young daughter Alex, who was with him on the ride when he was shot – a harrowing experience for anyone. And as the cops begin to look into the matter, they find that Hart was involved in some real ugliness as he used any means necessary to get residents in some local apartment buildings to move out so he could buy the properties. Grabenstein does not gloss over some of the realities of Hart’s life or of the murder investigation. At the same time though, there’s wit, there’s liveliness and some quirky characters too. Oh, and if you’re from the northeast U.S. coast, you’ll feel a real connection to the seaside ‘down the shore’ setting.

Anthony Bidulka’s Russell Quant series is another that doesn’t fall easily into just one sub-genre. Quant is a Saskatoon PI who makes his debut in Amuse Bouche, in which he is hired to search for a missing fiancé who later turns up dead. On the one hand, this isn’t what you’d really call a lighthearted series. Bidulka addresses some very difficult issues (e.g. childhood trauma and the drug culture in Sundowner Ubuntu and real personal trauma in Stain of the Berry), and the stories don’t all end ‘happily ever after.’ In fact, one way in which the stories are linked together is in the unsettled issues to which there aren’t easy, ‘happy’ answers. On the other hand, there’s wit, there are light and funny moments, and there are some interesting and (here’s that word again) quirky characters. Oh, and there are Quant’s wonderpants. Read the series and you’ll know why they’re funny. Trust me. These novels weave light and dark together effectively so that the light moments in the novels are set off and given an edge by the grim reality that Bidulka also depicts.

And then there’s Jill Edmondson’s Sasha Jackson series. Jackson is a Toronto PI who in a past life was a rock singer. In fact she still goes singing gigs from time to time. When we meet her in Blood and Groom, she’s hired by Christine Arvisais, who’s been accused of (‘though not arrested for) the murder of her former fiancé Gordon Hanes, who was shot on the day they were supposed to marry. Arivisais says that she’s not guilty, but has already been convicted by the ‘court of public opinion.’ Jackson takes the case and soon finds out that Christine Arvisais is not the only one who might have wanted to kill Hanes. Just as Jackson is starting to get a picture of what Hanes was like, there’s another, very similar murder. If that murder is related to Hanes’ murder, that puts an entirely new perspective on the case. In the end Jackson finds out the relationships among the murders and what she finds out about the people in Gordon Hanes’ life. This series deals with some topics that are definitely not lighthearted. For instance, in Dead Light District Edmondson explores prostitution and human trafficking. In The Lies Have it, she takes a look at bondage/fetish clubs and some of the darkness that goes on ‘behind the scenes.’ This series isn’t what you’d call a romp. But there are funny moments and some real wit woven through the series. And although the stories don’t end with everything all perfect again, they do end on a hopeful note.

It takes talent to create a series that adds a dose of liveliness and lightheartedness to the novels without taking away from their ‘edge.’ And of course everyone’s got a different definition of what counts as ‘too lighthearted.’ That said though, there are some series that have a solid blend of those elements. What do you think? How much lightheartedness works for you? What about ‘edge?’ If you’re a writer, how do you combine those elements?

Thanks, Sarah, for the inspiration.

 
 
 

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