I’m Sorry, But I’m Just Thinking of the Right Words to Say*

Believable sleuths can’t solve crimes by themselves. Besides the help they may need from experts such as forensics professionals and other scientists, they also need to get answers from witnesses and suspects. Oh and there’s the not-so-trivial matter of having to work with supervisors. All of this means that sleuths have to develop a certain amount of skill and diplomacy. I think a lot of readers enjoy it when sleuths speak their minds, especially when what they say is witty. But in real life, we can’t always get away with saying what we’re really thinking; life just doesn’t work that way. There are a lot of examples in crime fiction where sleuths have to use tact when they might much rather not. I’ll just have space here for a few, but I think you get the point.

In Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (AKA The Mirror Crack’d), Miss Marple has been weakened by a bout with bronchitis, and her nephew Raymond West has been kind enough to arrange for Miss Knight to help out in the house and look after his aunt. But Miss Marple is not best pleased with Miss Knight; she’s well-meaning, but she’s condescending, meddlesome and annoyingly perky. Miss Marple knows that confronting Miss Knight directly won’t get her anywhere and besides, she was not raised to be rude. So she cleverly and tactfully finds a way to get Miss Knight out of the house one afternoon so she can take a walk by herself. That’s how she meets Heather Badcock, who ends up getting poisoned at a charity fête. There’s a really humourous look in this novel at the strategies Miss Marple uses to get what she wants without being caustic about it.

Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee needs a great deal of tact in Tony Hillerman’s The Dark Wind. Among other cases, he’s investigating the disappearance of Joseph Musket. Musket may very well have been mixed up with drugs trafficking, and even if he isn’t, he could have valuable information about a plane crash that Chee witnessed since he was in the area. Chee thinks that Musket’s mother Fannie Musket may know something about her son’s whereabouts; she may even know something about the plane crash. Chee very much wants to talk to her but he also knows that barging in and insisting on answers isn’t going to get him anywhere. So he handles the situation more tactfully:

 

‘Chee and Mrs. Musket had introduced themselves, by family, by kinship, and by clan…He had told her that he hoped she would talk to him about her son.

 ‘You are hunting for him,’ she said. Navajo is a language which loads its meanings into its verbs. She used the word which means ‘to stalk,’ as a hunted animal and not the form which means, ‘to search for,’ as for someone lost. The tone was as accusing as the word.

 Chee changed the verb. ‘I search for him,’ Chee said. ‘But I know I will not find him here. I am told he is a smart man. He would not come here while we search for him, and even if he had, I would not ask his mother to tell me where to find him. I just want to learn what kind of a man he is.’’

 

Chee’s tact puts Fannie Musket somewhat more at ease, and she ends up by giving him some useful information.

We also see the real value of tact in Arnaldur Indriðason’s Jar City. In that novel, Reykjavík police inspector Erlendur and his team are called to the scene when the body of a seemingly inoffensive old man named Holberg is found in his flat. At first it looks like a burglary gone wrong, but there are cryptic signs that this was a deliberate murder. Holberg wasn’t rich though, and he didn’t have any obvious enemies. So Erlendur and the team have to dig deeper to find out who the killer is. They discover that Holberg has a dark secret hidden in his past. Many years earlier, he was accused of (‘though not arrested for) rape. What’s more, if the rumours about him are true, there were several victims. As a part of the investigation, Erlendur interviews Elín, the sister of Kolbrún, who made the first accusation of rape against Holberg. Kolbrún committed suicide, so Erlendur knows that Elín is dealing with a lot of loss and grief. What he soon learns too is that Elín is deeply distrustful of police. At the time Kolbrún made the accusation of rape, no-one believed her and in fact, she was humiliated. Elín is convinced that was part of what led to her suicide. So Erlendur knows that he will have to be extremely diplomatic and tactful if he’s going to get Elín to talk to him about her sister. Eventually she does thaw sufficiently to tell him what she knows, and despite a few more ‘bumps in the road,’ she proves to be very helpful.

There’s also Jonathan Kellerrman’s When the Bough Breaks, which introduces us to child psychologist Alex Delaware. For a few reasons Delaware has retired from his practice, but he’s called back as an expert when his friend LAPD cop Milo Sturgis is faced with an unusual case. Dr. Morton Handler and his lover Elena Gutierrez have been brutally murdered in Handler’s home. The only real witness is seven-year-old Melody Quinn, who lives in the same building. Sturgis wants Delaware to talk to the child and see whether he can get her to open up about what she may have seen or heard. Delaware agrees, but he’s soon blocked by the child’s pediatrician Dr. Lionel Towle, who argues that Delaware poses a threat to the child. It’s soon clear that some very important people do not want the murderer caught but Sturgis still has his homicides to solve and Delware has gotten curious (and concerned about Melody’s welfare). So each in his own way, the two men pursue the case. At one point, Delaware visits the home of Elena Gutierrez’ parents and asks her mother Cruz for whatever help she can give. Cruz Gutierrez is in mourning. Besides, she doesn’t really trust the police and she’s from a different culture. But Delaware is tactful and besides, he’s accompanied by Elena’s best friend Raquel Ochoa, who is close to the family. So little by little he and Raquel put Cruz at her ease. Her input turns out to be helpful.

In Angela Savage’s The Half Child, Jim Delbeck learns that his daughter Maryanne has died from a fall off the roof of the Pattaya, Thailand hotel where she was living. The official police report is that she committed suicide, but Delbeck doesn’t believe it. So he hires Bangkok PI Jayne Keeney to look into the matter. One of his reasons for hiring her is that she knows the country and the language. Keeney agrees to take the case and prepares to travel to Pattaya. She knows though that she can’t just go there and start asking people questions. In any case that approach would probably ensure that people wouldn’t talk to her. That’s particularly true in this culture, which values certain kinds of tactful ways of dong and saying things. So Keeney uses the more diplomatic strategy of contacting an acquaintance Police Major General Wichit, who heads the Tourist Police. He is powerful enough that offending him would be foolish and gaining his support could be helpful. Besides, he owes Keeney a favour. Wichit agrees to help, and it turns out that his support is useful. Throughout this novel, we see an interesting difference between the tact that Keeney needs to use on the surface, so to speak, and her real private thoughts. And in the end, that tact proves quite helpful as she slowly gets closer to the truth about Maryanne Delbeck’s death.

Lots of readers enjoy outspoken sleuths. I know I do. They say things we wish we could say and they can be witty. But in real life, there are times when it’s much more productive to be tactful. The wise sleuth knows this and the realistic crime novel makes use of it.

 

 
 

*NOTE:  The title of this post is a line from When in Rome’s The Promise.

And I’d Do Anything to Just Feel Better*

Most of us have had to face our share of sorrow, loss and sometimes real tragedy. It just seems to be a part of life. The question isn’t really, ‘Do people have to face some terrible things in their lives?’ They do. The more important (or maybe that’s just my view) question is, ‘What do people do to go on after something terrible’s happened?’ Notice I didn’t say, ‘…to get over it after something terrible’s happened.’ That’s because we don’t really ‘get over’ tragedy and sorrow. They change us. But people do go on.

This is a pretty important issue in crime fiction because a lot of what happens in crime fiction involves tragedy. After all, people get murdered. Their friends and loved ones mourn them and the sleuth has to deal with the trauma of those cases. What’s more, because we all have to deal with life’s sadness and sorrow, it’s realistic when sleuths have their own scars from which they have to heal. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of the stereotypical sleuth who drowns in a bottle to cope with life’s damage. It’s much more interesting and I think engaging when sleuths and other characters find different ways to cope.

For instance there’s the character of Henrietta Savernake, whom we meet in Agatha Christie’s The Hollow (AKA Murder After Hours). She is a talented and highly-regarded sculptor who’s having an affair with Harley Street specialist John Christow. Christow is more absorbed in his passion for his profession than he is in his relationships with either his wife Gerda or his mistress. But the triangle continues until one fateful weekend when John and Gerda Christow are invited to the country home of Sir Henry and Lady Lucy Angkatell. Henrietta is also invited as she’s a cousin of Lucy’s. On the Sunday afternoon, Christow is shot just before lunch. Hercule Poirot, who’s taken a nearby cottage as a weekend getaway, was invited for lunch and when he arrives, practically the first thing he sees is the murder scene and Christow’s apparent killer standing over the body, gun in hand. But something about the scene strikes Poirot as artificial. So when Inspector Grange begins his investigation, Poirot is not convinced that the killer is yhe most obvious person. He and Grange look into the case and slowly get to the truth. At one point, Edward Angkatell, who has also been staying at the house, tries to console Henrietta; here’s her response:

 

‘What did you think? That I’d sit gently crying into a nice little pocket handkerchief while you held my hand? That it would be a great shock but that presently I’d begin to get over it? And that you’d comfort me very nicely?’

 

In fact, that’s not what Henrietta does. Here is how she begins to move on:

 

‘‘Instead I must take my grief and make it into a figure of alabaster…’
Exhibit No. 58. ‘Grief.’ Alabaster. Miss Henrietta Savernake…’  

 

That way of coping is a very effective fit for Henrietta’s character.

Sometimes characters deal with their trauma by trying to regain some kind of control over their lives. That’s what we see in Copenhagen police detective Carl Mørck, whom we first meet in Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Mercy (AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes). As that novel begins, Mørck is recovering from a line-of-fire incident in which one of his colleagues was killed and another left paralysed. He’s physically ready for work again, but mentally still dealing with the trauma. Although he doesn’t really think about it this way, Mørck wants to regain control over his life after what happened. He goes about this in a couple of ways. One of the sub-plots in this novel is his determination to catch the man responsible for what happened and see him brought to justice. Another way in which Mørck tries to take back some control is that he becomes even less of a ‘team player’ than he normally is. In fact, he becomes so difficult to work with that he’s ‘promoted’ to a new department, ‘Department Q,’ which is set up to investigate ‘cases of special interest.’ The job itself doesn’t interest him much at first, but the chance to do what he wants, when he wants, does.

We also see that search for control if you want to call it that in Arnaldur Indriðason series featuring Reykjavík police inspector Erlendur. When Erlendur was a child, his brother Bergur was lost in a blizzard and has never been found. The boy’s loss was difficult enough for the family to cope with. But Erlendur feels an additional sense of loss and guilt because he was with his brother when the blizzard struck although they had gotten separated. Erlendur has never been able to forgive himself for not bringing Bergur back safely. He has gone on with his life though. And in an interesting story arc, Erlendur has faced his trauma and tried to regain control over that part of his life by searching for his brother. Now that he’s a cop, he tries to find out everything he can about that day so that he can either find his brother or his brother’s remains.

Some people choose to move on by making major life changes. That’s what Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon does. As we learn in Track of the Cat, she lived the New York ‘social life’ with her husband Zach, a talented actor. Then, tragically, Zach was run down and killed by a taxi. Pigeon has dealt with her grief by leaving New York and her socialite life. She’s become a National Park Service ranger and nurtured her love of nature and wildlife. She’s gotten good at her job and although there are things she misses about New York, she’s gone on with life. As we see Pigeon’s character evolve throughout the series, we see that she doesn’t really ‘get over’ Zach. At the same time, she moves on to a new chapter in her life. She even allows herself to love and marry again.

We see the same kind of choice in an earlier series by James Yaffe, featuring his investigator sleuth Dave. Dave’s a former NYPD cop whose life revolved around his work and his beloved wife Shirley. When Shirley dies, Dave finds himself unable to keep living the life he’s always had. So he makes a major change and moves to Mesa Grande, Colorado, where he takes a job as an investigator working for the Office of the Public Defender. His new job and new life don’t mean that Dave ‘gets over’ the loss of his wife. But he starts over and finds a new place for himself.

As fans of Åsa Larsson’s attorney sleuth Rebecka Martinsson know, Martinsson has had some traumatic things happen to her. As we learn in Sun Storm (AKA The Savage Altar), she grew up in Kiruna, but left for a trauma-inducing reason (no spoilers here). She returns when a former friend is accused of murder. That case leads to more trauma for Martinsson, and so does the case she investigates in The Blood Spilt. So how does Martinsson go on after the things that happen to her? After a time under psychiatric care, she makes a major life change, giving up her job in Stockholm and remaining in Kiruna. As Until Thy Wrath be Past begins she’s taken up a position as the local district prosecutor and is slowly putting the pieces of her life back together.

Some people find comfort in a new relationship when something traumatic happens. There’s an example of that in Geoffrey McGeachin’s The Digger’s Rest Hotel. It’s 1947 and Melboourne cop Charlie Berlin has recently returned from Europe where he served as a bomber pilot and was also taken as a POW. He’s seen his share of awfulness and it’s left him with what we would now call PTSD. He is sent to the town of Wodonga to investigate a series of robberies that have apparently been committed by a motorcycle gang. While he’s in the middle of working on that case the body of sixteen-year-old Jenny Lee is found in a local alley. Now Berlin has a brutal murder to solve as well as the robberies. In the course of this investigation he meets journalist Rebecca Green, who has her own share of scars. One of the sub-plots of this novel is the healing each begins to experience as they work together and later, become involved.

We don’t really ‘get over it’ when something traumatic happens. But we can go on. Sometimes we start a new life; sometimes we do other things. That’s why it’s so human and believable when characters do things to make themselves feel better and go on.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Santana’s Just Feel Better (Yes, that’s Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler on lead vocals).

I’m Just Another Statistic on a Sheet*

A lot of sleuthing is devoted to finding out the reasons for a victim’s murder, and that often involves slogging through records. And just about everyone leaves records of some kind. Some of them can be fascinating (e.g. old letters and diaries). Some of them take more perseverance (e.g. making sense of property transfers, powers of attorney, deeds, business and corporate documents). But any one of those documents could hold the key to a murder, so going through them is an important part of a murder investigation. That’s why it makes sense that we’d see plenty of record-searching in crime fiction. And as long as it’s not drawn-out so as to lose the reader’s interest, record-searching can add a realistic touch to a novel.

In Agatha Christie’s The Murder on the Links, for instance, Hercule Poirot gets a letter from Paul Renauld, who lives with his wife Eloise and son Jack in Merlinville-sur-Mer. Renauld’s letter says that his life is being threatened, and in it, he begs Poirot to come to France and investigate. Poirot and Hastings go to Merlinville but by the time they get there it’s too late; Renauld has been stabbed on the grounds of his own villa. Together with the French authorities, Poirot and Hastings investigate the murder. One thing about the murder that strikes Poirot is that it seems familiar in some way – as though it reminds him of another case. So he goes to Paris to look up old records. His search is rewarded when he comes across a case from years earlier. The older case has some of the hallmarks of this most recent case and that gives Poirot an important clue as to why anyone would want to murder Renauld. And in the end, it’s exactly that past that leads Poirot to the killer.

Records are also helpful in Arnaldur Indriðason’s Jar City. In that novel Reykjavík police detective Erlendur and his team are called in when the body of Holberg, a seemingly inoffensive elderly man who lived by himself, is discovered in his own home. At first there seems no motive for the murder. Holberg was well-enough liked at work, didn’t have quarrels with neighbours, and wasn’t involved with anyone. So at first it looks as though the murder was a robbery gone wrong. But some clues suggest that there was a very personal reason for this murder, and a little digging soon brings to light what that reason might have been. Police records show that Holberg was accused of rape years earlier. No charges were filed, but this little piece of information opens up a whole new angle in the investigation. Further digging reveals that there might have been more than one accusation against him. Other records, including business ownership records and hospital records, add pieces to this puzzle. And in the end, Erlendur and his team are able to find out who killed Holberg and why.

There’s a really effective use of records in Peter Temple’s Bad Debts, in which part time lawyer/part time investigator Jack Irish investigates the murder of Danny McKillop. McKillop was once one of Irish’s clients, so when he is murdered, Irish feels a particular sense of obligation to find out the truth. Irish soon suspects that McKillop’s murder is connected to a hit-and-run incident eight years earlier that ended in the death of activist Anne Jeppeson. McKillop was convicted of the incident, but Irish learns that he was probably innocent. So Irish works with journalist Linda Hilliard to find the real killer. To do that, they look through newspaper records and public records. They also make use of a data collection company to learn the truth about property ownership, sales and corporate connections in the area. And that information is what leads Irish to the murderer.

Family records turn out to be useful in Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo. Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham has always believed that Wordsworth left behind at least one unpublished manuscript. If she’s right, then finding that manuscript could make her career. So when she hears of the discovery of an old set of remains in a Lake District bog, she’s eager to find out if those remains belong to Fletcher Christian, as many people think. If so it would mean that Christian didn’t die on Pitcairn Island, but made it back to his Lake District home. And if that’s true, it would make perfect sense that he’d tell his longtime friend Wordsworth what really happened on the H.M.S. Bounty and that Wordsworth would write about it. So Gresham travels to the Lake District, where she herself was brought up, and begins to ask questions. Her hunt for the unpublished manuscript leads her through all sorts of records of marriages, offspring and so on and she discovers that the truth about it may lie within one family. With help from fellow scholar Dan Seabourne Gresham uses those records to try to track down the manuscript. But then one of Gresham’s interviewees dies shortly after the interview. Then there’s another death. And another. The police begin to suspect that Gresham herself may be involved in the murders so in order to clear her name and find the manuscript, Gresham tries to find the killer.

Helene Tursten’s Night Rounds is focused on a private facility, the Löwander Hospital. One night, there’s a blackout at the hospital during which one of the nurses Marianne Svärd is murdered. Then, another nurse Linda Svensson disappears. Her body is later discovered in the same place where, fifty years earlier, another nurse Tekla Olsson hung herself. Göteborg police inspector Irene Huss and her team investigate the happenings at the hospital. Part of the team’s task is to look through patient records, hospital ownership records, staff records and the like. And it’s in those records that they find an important clue as to what’s going on at the hospital.

Much of Stephen Booth’s Dying to Sin takes place at Pity Wood Farm in the Peak District. When two sets of female remains are found on the property, Hampshire police are called in to investigate. DS Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper are assigned to look into the case. The farm had been owned for years by brothers Derek and Raymond Sutton. However, Derek Sutton has died, Raymond Sutton has moved to a nursing care facility and the property’s been sold to Manchester attorney Aaron Goodwin. So one task the members of the team have to face is finding out exactly who owned the property at the time of the young women’s deaths. That requires going through sales and property ownership records. Another task is to find out exactly who the young women were and what they were doing at the farm. That too requires going through records, this time reports of missing persons. It takes a lot of time but in the end, Fry and Cooper finds out who the young women were, what they were doing at the farm and why they were killed.

Financial records, police records, and historical records provide many of the answers to the mystery in Jørn Lier Horst’s Dregs. In that novel, Stavern, Norway police inspector William Wisting and his team investigate the bizarre discovery of left feet that wash up in various places. Wisting starts the identification process by trying to link the feet to anyone who might have gone missing. Records show that most of the people who went missing at the right time to be matches for the feet were residents at the same care home. And more records searches show that the relationships among the people who’d disappeared go back to the post-World War II era. That inter-connection among the missing people proves important. So does a financial angle that is discovered in a search of banking records. In the end it’s really those searches as much as anything else that helps Wisting and the team figure out what’s behind this case.

Record searches can be a thankless task. One may search for hours or longer and not find anything. But they are important to real-life investigations and they’re an important part of the authenticity of a crime novel.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Bob Seger’s Feel Like a Number.

Sisters Are Doin’ it For Themselves*

But here’s the thing. They can’t – not entirely. Let me explain what I mean. Major social inequities and problems don’t have easy fixes. If they did, and if just one person or one group of people could solve them entirely they wouldn’t remain problems. But we can all think of horrible injustices and social problems that haven’t been fixed. They’re bigger than just one person or one group of people, so the solutions have to be bigger than just one person or one group of people. Certainly that’s true in real life, and well-written crime fiction reflects that reality.

For example, in  Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun, Hercule Poirot is staying at the Jolly Roger Hotel on Leathercombe Bay. One of his fellow guests is actress Arlena Stuart Marshall, who’s gotten quite a reputation for having ‘male friends.’ In fact while she’s there with her husband and stepdaughter she engages in a not-very-well-hidden romance with another guest Patrick Redfern. When Arlena is found strangled, the first and most likely suspect is her husband Kenneth, who very likely knew all about her affair. But he can account for his time, so Poirot and the police have to look elsewhere for the killer. One possibility is that Arlena was mixed up in or had discovered a drugs-smuggling ring that’s been operating in the area. As the sleuths discuss this, it’s clear that the drugs problem isn’t going to be solved by just one person. Several people are involved in this particular ring (which is of course one of many), and it takes insights from more than one person (including Poirot) to find out about just this one group. Solving the drugs problem is an even bigger undertaking.

There’s another interesting perspective on the drugs issue in T.J. Cooke’s Kiss and Tell. London lawyer Jill Shadow learns how complicated the issue is at first hand when she takes the case of Bella Kiss. Bella was arrested at the airport on charges of bringing drugs into the U.K. She admits she had drugs, but she won’t tell who paid or coerced her to bring them in. It’s soon clear that she’s protecting someone at very great risk to herself. What’s more, Bella seems to be afraid that she’s in danger of her life if she tells the truth about the drugs ring she’s helping. Shadow does a little of her own investigation and soon learns of a murder that may be related to this case. Then there’s another murder. And the more Shadow learns, the more some very ruthless people want to shut her up. Now Shadow has to find out who’s behind these deaths and the drugs ring before she becomes a victim herself. In this novel, Cooke shows us that solving the drugs issue is a lot more complicated then just, say, finding new ways to catch smugglers like Bella. Yes, that’s part of it, but there’s also the issue of users and dealers who are willing to pay a lot of money for drugs. There’s also the issue of growers and shippers for whom drugs represent a livelihood. And then there are the powerful people on both sides of the law who get rich because of the drugs trade. It’s not enough for one group of people to act and Cooke makes that clear.

I think we’d all agree that human trafficking and the child sex trade (I know – separate issues if you think about it, but please bear with me) are terrible social problems that need to be solved. But as we see in crime fiction, it’s not enough for just one group to do something. In Ruth Rendell’s Simisola for instance, Inspector Reg Wexford and his team investigate the disappearance of twenty-two-year-old Melanie Akande. She was last seen leaving the local Employment Bureau where she had an appointment with job counselor Annette Bystock.. When Bystock is found murdered, it’s clear that this is a more complex case than just one missing woman (as if that weren’t complex enough). Then the body of a young woman is found in a nearby wood. At first Wexford thinks the body is Melanie Akande’s but he’s wrong. In the end, all three cases turn out to be parts of a series of events relating to the Employment Bureau. One thread of this case is related to human trafficking and Rendell looks at the factors that support it. Yes of course it’s important that victims be rescued if they can be and that those who ‘employ’ those victims face the consequences. But it’s not that simple. The culture that protects certain people needs to be examined. The economic inequities that lead to young people being lured or sold into being trafficked has to be examined. The network of wealth that allows some people to become extremely rich because of human trafficking also needs to be examined. No one person or group can do it all alone.

We also see that clearly in Angela Savage’s Behind the Night Bazaar. PI Jayne Keeney is visiting her friend Didier ‘Didi’ de Montasse in Chaing Mai in northern Thailand when de Montpasse’s partner Nou is murdered. Shortly after that de Montpasse himself is murdered. The official explanation is that de Montpasse killed his partner and then violently resisted arrest when the police came for him. Keeney doesn’t believe that though and looks more deeply into the case. She finds that these deaths are related to human trafficking and the Thai sex trade. What Savage shows quite starkly in this novel is that this is a complex social problem that can’t be solved by just one person or group. The police (assuming an honest set of police) can’t do the job alone by just arresting ‘clients.’ That won’t stop the problem. It’s part of the solution, but there’s more to it than that. There’s the issue of those who are so desperately poor and so lured by the offer of money that they give up their children to the trade. There’s the issue of those in power who get rich from the trade. There’s the issue of locals who look the other way because they benefit in some way or they are afraid. It’s too big a problem for just one group.

And then there’s the issue of rape. It happens all over the world and when we read about it we’re appalled. But it still goes on. As Arnaldur Indriðason shows us in Jar City, righting that societal wrong is more than just a matter of arresting rapists, as important as that is. In that novel, Inspector Erlendur and his team investigate the murder of Holberg, a seemingly inoffensive elderly man who lived alone and didn’t seem to have any enemies. He had no fortune to leave either so there aren’t greedy beneficiaries to consider. But as the team looks more closely at this case they discover that there was more to Holberg than a lot of people knew. He’d been accused years earlier of rape, although he was never arrested or convicted. And as the team follows up on that lead the members find that Holberg may have had more than one victim and that may be the key to his murder. This story makes it clear that stopping rape is more than just a matter of arresting suspected rapists and punishing those who are guilty. Rape victims need to speak up. The law enforcement culture needs to support them in every way without sacrificing the civil rights of those accused. The larger culture needs to empower survivors of rape so that they can put their lives back together. And that’s just the beginning.

It’s just as true in real life as it is in crime fiction. Like everyone else, I was sickened and heartbroken and a lot more by the terrible gang rapes that have occurred in recent months in India. I have no appropriate words to describe that horror and I cannot imagine what the victims and their families have been through. But here’s the thing. That sort of thing doesn’t just happen in India. And it’s not only those two women although even one incident is one too many. The question isn’t whether this happens. It clearly does. The question is what are we supposed to do? Yes, those responsible need to be brought to swift and appropriate justice. But there’s more. Women need to speak up. Loudly. We need to insist on equity and be satisfied with absolutely nothing less. And we need to be clear about that. But we can’t do it alone. Men need to speak out too. Loudly. And women need to welcome men’s support. We need to refuse to condone a popular culture that makes light of sexual conquest and we need to speak with our feet and our wallets. Those in political, law enforcement and military power need to use that authority and power to ensure that this kind of horrible thing is not encouraged, ‘covered up’ or left alone, no matter who perpetrates it. Parents and educators need to teach children from the beginning that nothing justifies the abuse of another human being in any way. There’s more too of course. This problem goes too deep and it’s much too big for anyone to manage alone or even for one group to manage alone. We all have a part to play in solving the problem.

 

ps.  The ‘photo is of the frame for the daybed that I’m putting in my home office. I’ll show you the full thing when I’ve gotten linen and pillows and things for it. Guess what? I built this. That’s me with the drill driver. But I didn’t do it myself. It was too bulky and heavy for me to do that. I couldn’t have taken it on without Mr. Confessions…. . See what I mean?
 
 
 

*NOTE;  The title of this post is the title of a song by The Eurythmics and recorded as a duet with Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox and the one and only Aretha Franklin.

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.