I Need Attendance From My Nurse Around the Clock*

Within the last fifty years, the nursing profession has become a highly skilled and demanding field. Today’s nursing is far more than just checking blood pressure and giving medicines that the doctor orders. And yet, most people pay a lot more attention to the doctor than they do to the nursing staff. In part that’s because of the way society has traditionally viewed physicians. But the fact is, nurses are vital members of the health care team. Among other things, they get to know their patients very well and have a better idea of their health and their responses to treatment than a doctor might. And a wise detective, whether real or fictional, knows that nurses often have valuable insights that can help solve a case. Just a quick look at crime fiction should show you what I mean. Oh, and you’ll notice that I’m not going to mention novels that are considered ‘medical thrillers’ (e.g. the work of Michael Palmer). That would be too easy…

In Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia, Hercule Poirot gets quite a lot of information from Amy Leatheran, a nurse who is engaged to help look after Louise Leidner. Louise is the wife of noted archaeologist Eric Leidner, and goes with him to an excavation a few hours from Baghdad. One afternoon, Louise is murdered in her bedroom. At first, everyone thinks that a stranger must have committed the crime, but it’s soon shown that no strangers were at the house where the dig team is staying. So Poirot has to look among the members of the team to find the killer. One of the first people Poirot interviews is Amy Leatheran, who tells him that Louise had been fearful and had seen faces at her window, heard hands tapping and so on. It turns out that Louise was afraid because she’d gotten threatening letters from her first husband, whom she thought long dead. She was convinced her former husband had returned to kill her. This angle to the case gives Poirot some important information and he’s able to use it to find out who really killed the victim. What’s very interesting about this story too is that Poirot pays close attention to what Amy Leatheran tells him, but not in the way she (or first-time readers) may think.

Nurses also feature in Christie’s Sad Cypress. When Elinor Carlisle receives an anonymous letter about her wealthy Laura Welman, she and her fiancé Roderick ‘Roddy’ Welman travel to the family home Hunterbury. When they get there they discover that Aunt Laura has had a stroke. District nurse Jessie Hopkins and private nurse Eileen O’Brien take charge of the patient under the supervision of Dr. Peter Lord. While Elinor and Roddy are at Hunterbury, they renew their acquaintance with a childhood friend Mary Gerrard, the lodgekeeper’s daughter. Roddy soon finds himself besotted by her and almost before Elinor knows what’s happened, he’s in love with Mary. Then Aunt Laura dies without having made a will and as her next of kin, Elinor stands to inherit a fortune. One afternoon, Mary Gerrard is poisoned while having lunch at Hunterbury. Elinor becomes the prime suspect. She’s arrested for the crime and is about to go on trial. But Peter Lord wants her name cleared, so he visits Hercule Poirot and asks him to look into the case. Poirot discovers that there were several things about Mary Gerrard that weren’t generally known, and that her past is the reason she was killed. The two nurses turn out to have valuable information about the case, and we can see from their interactions with each other and with Poirot how being closely involved with a patient gives them a lot of ‘inside information.’

That’s also true in Barbara Vine (AKA Ruth Rendell’s) The Minotaur. Swedish nurse Kerstin Kvist is hired by the Cosway family to look after thirty-nine-year-old John Cosway, who is said to be schizophrenic. She’s eager to take the position because it will allow her to be closer to her lover Mark Douglas. Soon after arriving at the family home Lydstep Old Hall, Kerstin gets the feeling that something is very, very wrong. For one thing, the family seems to live and behave as though it were still the Victorian Era, which is strange enough. Kerstin also finds that her patient is kept under heavy sedation by order of his mother, the family matriarch. Kerstin is convinced that he doesn’t need such heavy medication so, concerned for his health she begins to withhold the dugs without telling his mother. Her decision leads to real tragedy and we learn about that tragedy and about the inner workings of this family through a diary that she keeps.

In P.D. James’ The Private Patient, we meet investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn, who makes arrangements with noted cosmetic surgeon George Chandler-Powell to have a facial scar removed. For that, she’ll be treated at his private Dorset Clinic Cheverell Manor. Soon after her arrival though, Rhoda is brutally murdered. Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are named to investigate the murder and they begin to look into both the victim’s life and what goes on at the clinic. Then there’s another murder. Now the team has to try to find out what might connect the two victims. It turns out that part of the truth can be found in the past, and that one person who knows more than she is saying is a nurse. Giving her name would give away part of the plot, but it’s an interesting example of the way nurses can know things that other people might not get to know.

Nurses play pivotal roles in Helene Tursten’s Night Rounds. One night there’s a blackout at Löwander Hospital, a private facility. During the blackout, a nurse Marianne Svärd is murdered. Göteborg detective Irene Huss and her team are just beginning their investigation when another nurse Linda Svensson disappears. Her body is later found in an unused hospital attic, hung in the same place where fifty years earlier, another nurse Tekla Olsson committed suicide. It’s soon clear that something is going on at the hospital, so the investigation team looks into the history of the facility and the people who work there. In doing that they get some valuable information from another nurse Siv Persson, who’s been at the hospital for a long time and who knows its history.

Wendy James’ The Mistake shows exactly how observant and alert nurses can be. In that novel, Jodie Evans Garrow goes to a Sydney hospital in a panic when she gets word that her daughter Hannah has been admitted there. Hannah’s been in an accident and although it’s not life-threatening, she needs medical care. While Jodie’s there, she has a reunion of sorts. Debbie West, a nurse-midwife at the hospital, remembers Jodie from a visit she made there years ago. At that time, Jodie gave birth to a girl Ella Mary whom she’s never told anyone about – not even her husband Angus. Debbie asks Jodie about the baby, and Jodie says she gave the child up for adoption. But then Debbie takes it on herself to do some searching and finds that there are no records of such an adoption. Now questions are raised, first privately and then very publicly, about what happened to Jodie’s first baby. There is even a strong possibility that she might have killed the baby. As the questions continue Jodie becomes a social pariah. Little by little, we learn what really happened when Ella Mary was born and we learn that things are not as simple as they seem.

And then there’s Andrea Camilleri’s Dance of the Seagull. That novel begins with the disappearance of Vigatà police sergeant Giuseppe Fazio. His boss Salvo Montalbano is eager to find out what’s happened to one of his best team members, so he begins to look into what happened just before Fazio went missing. It turns out that Fazio was working on a major case involving illegal trafficking, a vicious murder and some highly-placed Mafia people. Montalbano and his team know they’ll have to go up against some dangerous enemies, so when they find a wounded Fazio, they arrange for him to be transported to Fiacca Hospital where it’s hoped he’ll be kept safe. That’s where Montalbano meets Angela, a hospital nurse who ends up proving to be very important to this case.

Nurses are smart, educated and observant professionals; they are integral to good medical care. Little wonder they have so much knowledge about what goes on around them. Little wonder too that they are so often central to a crime fiction case. Now it’s your turn. What gaps have I left?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Gregory Isaacs’ Night Nurse.

Make Me Respectable, Man*

An interesting post on Patti Abbott’s terrific blog has got me thinking about respectability. Patti’s post focused on respectability in the lower-middle class, but really it’s an interesting question for just about any class. Patti’s blog is a treasure trove of interesting questions, great music and film clips, short stories and more, so please, do yourself a favour and follow it if you aren’t already. What counts as ‘respectable’ has changed a lot over the years, but the question I started thinking about was: Do people care about being respectable? Is the whole concept of respectability still relevant? Of course we can give a lot of examples of people who don’t care what others think of them. But honestly, I think the desire to be considered respectable still matters to some people. Certainly it’s a factor in a lot of crime fiction.

As Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell deals with the theme of respectability in A Dark-Adapted Eye. The Longley family has always prided itself on its middle-class respectability, but what a lot of people don’t know is that the family has a dark secret in its past. Years ago, Vera Longley Hilliard was arrested, tried and hanged for murder. Since then the Longley family has buried that fact as best they could, mostly because of this desire to be seen as respectable. Then journalist Daniel Stewart digs up the past for a story he’s doing on the Hilliard trial. He approaches Vera’s niece Faith Longley Severn and asks her to help him put together the family’s history. In doing so, she has to face her family’s past and pull away the veneer of respectability that the family valued so much.

Colin Dexter’s Death is Now My Neighbour takes an interesting look at respectability. In that novel, Sir Clixby Bream, Master of Lonsdale College, Oxford, is preparing to retire.  He’s faced with the question of who will succeed him and narrows his choice down to two candidates: Julian Storrs and Denis Cornford. Both men are equally qualified and have good reputations. Both also have the air of respectability that can make a big difference in a choice like this. Then, journalist Geoffrey Owens begins to dig around a bit into the past and discovers that one of the characters in this novel is not quite as respectable as it seems. He decides to confront that character with what he knows and see if he can earn a profit for keeping quiet on the matter. When Owens is murdered, Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis investigate to find out whose desire to be thought of as respectable made it worth committing murder.

In Camilla Läckberg’s The Ice Princess, writer Erica Falck returns from Stockholm to her family’s home in Fjällbacka to sort out her parents’ things after their deaths. She’s not been there long when a neighbour discovers the body of Alexandra ‘Alex’ Wijkner, who appears to have committed suicide. Falck is especially shocked by this death because she and Alex were best friends as children. She and Alex hadn’t really been in touch for twenty-five years and it occurs to her that she didn’t really know her former friend. So she decides to try to get to know the woman Alex became and write a biography of her. As local police officer Patrik Hedström investigates officially, Falck begins to ask more informal questions about the death. Each in a different way, they learn that Alex’s death was murder not suicide. And behind it all is the strong desire for being considered ‘respectable.’

Anthony Bidulka’s Flight of Aquavit introduces us to successful accountant Daniel Guest, who is ‘respectably’ married and has a good reputation in business. But he’s also had some secret relationships with men. He is shocked when someone who seems to know about his trysts blackmails him. Guest is very concerned about being considered ‘respectable’ so he hires Saskatoon PI Russell Quant to find the blackmailer and get that person to stop. He’s even willing to pay the blackmailer just to make the whole thing go away. Quant suggests that it would all be a lot easier if Guest simply ‘came out,’ but Guest refuses. He is determined to maintain his veneer of ‘respectable married life.’ So Quant begins to investigate the matter. The trail leads to New York, a murder, and eventually right back to Saskatoon. The urge to be considered respectable isn’t the reason for the murder, but it’s a fascinating theme that runs through this novel.

Respectability is a very important theme in Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Missing Servant. Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri’s business comes mostly from families who want to ‘vet’ potential spouses for their children. They hire Puri to do background checks and find out anything he can so that they can ensure their children marry respectable people. Puri gets a very different kind of case though when successful attorney Ajay Kasliwal hires him. Kasliwal has been accused of raping and murdering a family servant Mary Murmu who disappeared a few months ago. He swears that he is innocent and wants Puri to find out the truth and clear his name. So Puri and his team start asking questions. They run into obstacles right away because the police are determined to prove that they do not look the other way when wealthy and successful people commit crimes, so they’re making an example of Kasliwal. Still, Puri manages to get the information he needs and together with his team, he finds out the truth about Mary Murmu. It turns out that a lot of what happens is because of wanting to preserve the air of honour and respectability.

In Wendy James’ The Mistake, we meet Jodie Evans Garrow. She lives what just about anyone would call a respectable life. She’s married to a successful lawyer, she has two healthy children who more or less stay out of trouble, and she herself behaves circumspectly. Everything starts to unravel though when Jodie’s daughter Hannah has an accident and is taken to hospital. It turns out that it’s the same hospital in which Jodie herself gave birth to a daughter years earlier – a daughter she’s never told anyone about, not even her husband. A nurse who is still working at the hospital remembers Jodie and asks about the child. Jodie claims she gave the baby up for adoption but when the overzealous nurse looks into the matter, she finds that there are no records of the adoption. Soon there are murmurs and then very public questions. What happened to the baby? If the baby died, is Jodie somehow responsible? It’s not long before Jodie becomes a pariah. Even her husband Angus distances himself from her. Not only is it possible that she is not the woman he thought she was, but his name is being mentioned as the next mayor. To win that office, he’s going to need the most respectable reputation he has, and this matter with Jodie isn’t helping. As we learn the truth about what happened to Jodie’s first baby, and as we see what happens to her as this story grows and grows, it’s clear that respectability is still important to a lot of people.

Respectability isn’t important to everyone of course. There’ve always been lots of cases of people who simply don’t care what their reputations are. But I honestly think it’s still a factor. In fact, as I planned this post I kept thinking of other modern novels where the desire to be considered respectable plays a big part. There just wasn’t room for them all. What’s your view on this? Do you think respectability still matters? Which novels have you enjoyed that treat this theme?

Thanks, Patti, for the inspiration.

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Styx’s Blue Collar Man (Long Nights).

Baby Lead Me On*

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. OK, perhaps it’s not such a secret after all. Crime writers are out to manipulate readers. It’s true. Oh, I don’t mean in the negative sense of exploiting readers; that isn’t ‘playing fair’ (I’ll get back to that point in a bit). But crime writers do want readers to ‘buy into’ a story. That sort of manipulation is an important skill too. If it’s a ‘whodunit’ the author has to distract the reader from the real killer. If it’s a ‘whydunit’ the author has to get the reader to believe someone would kill for a given motive. If it’s a psychological thriller the author has to make the reader question just about everyone’s motives and trustworthiness. And all of that requires some manipulation.

Most crime fiction fans don’t mind that. If the story is well-written and there’s payoff if I can put it that way, readers are willing to let the author work some magic. When there is no payoff, or when the manipulation seems unfair or contrived, then readers tend to get cross. I know I do. The line between the manipulation that authors need to do to tell a good story and unfair manipulation is a fuzzy one. That’s not helped by the fact that every reader has a different line. But when that manipulation is both deft and fair, it can be an effective tool to draw readers into a story.

One of my favourite examples of that kind of deft manipulation is in Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In that novel, Hercule Poirot has retired to the small village of King’s Abbot (or so he thinks). He’s soon drawn back into active investigation when wealthy retired manufacturing magnate Roger Ackroyd is stabbed. Ackroyd’s niece Flora is very much afraid her fiancé Captain Ralph Paton will be arrested for the crime since he is the most likely suspect. So she begs Poirot to find out the truth about the crime and clear Paton’s name. Christie manipulated readers’ assumptions about what clues mean and how the story is ‘supposed to’ progress so that the dénouement took readers utterly by surprise when the story was first published. In fact Christie took a lot of criticism for that. But careful readers will note that she ‘plays fair’ throughout the story. It’s a really powerful example of how manipulation can be handled brilliantly.

Anthony Berkeley’s Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery is another case where the author manipulates unwary readers straight towards the wrong solution. Roger Sheringham is a correspondent for the Daily Courier. His plans for a holiday are upended when his employer sends him to Ludmouth Bay in Hampshire. Elise Vane was killed in a fall over a cliff and there are hints that the death may be murder. Sheringham’s assignment is to follow the case and submit articles on it. When he arrives in Hampshire Sheringham begins by talking to the various people in the victim’s life. As it turns out, Elise Vane was an unpleasant person and very few people are upset at her death. Sheringham also connects with Inspector Moresby, who’s in charge of the investigation. Sheringham and Moresby don’t team up but they do share information and in the end we learn the truth about who killed Elise Vane and why. Throughout this novel, Berkeley manipulates readers by calling attention to all of the little pieces of evidence that point to one or another suspect and disguising the real evidence.

Some authors manipulate readers by making it unclear exactly whom one can trust. There’s a brilliant example of that in Paddy Richardson’s Traces of Red.  Wellington TV journalist Rebecca Thorne has reached a plateau in her career. She’s well-regarded and has a popular television show, but she’s keenly aware that there are ‘hungry’ younger journalists coming up behind her. What Thorne needs is the story that will establish her at the top of national broadcasts. She thinks she finds that story 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 murders. Everyone assumes that Bligh is guilty. But then little hints surface that suggest he may be innocent. If he is, then he’s been wrongly imprisoned and that will be a sensational story. Thorne begins to look into the case and talk to the various people involved. She also interviews Bligh himself and encourages him to tell her his side of the story. There is certainly evidence of Bligh’s guilt, but Thorne also finds evidence that someone else is responsible. Is Bligh guilty? Is he manipulating Thorne? Are the people who want him in prison manipulating the system? Those questions of whom to trust keep the reader (well, this one anyway) deeply involved in the story.

T.J. Cooke does a similar kind of manipulation in his Kiss and Tell. London lawyer Jill Shadow is a single mother who’s worked hard to put a life together for herself and her daughter Hannah. All’s going well enough until she agrees to take the case of Bella Kiss, who’s been arrested for drugs smuggling. Bella admits she brought illegal drugs into the country, but she won’t tell who paid or coerced her to do so. She’s obviously covering up for someone and afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t. Because she isn’t very helpful in her own case, Shadow drops her as a client, but then changes her mind when she sees just how vulnerable Bella is. Bit by bit, Shadow uncovers a network that involves some very powerful and ruthless people. Then there’s a murder. That murder is connected to an earlier death and to Shadow’s client. Now, some very dangerous people are determined that Shadow won’t take her investigation any further. As the novel goes on, Cooke makes it clear that some people are not what they seem. That strategy is a very effective way to manipulate the reader into one kind of solution to the case when Cooke really has something else in mind.

Another way crime writers manipulate readers is with the use of secrets that characters keep. Readers want to know those secrets; they want to find out the truth. Slowly revealing those secrets not only adds to the tension in a novel, but also can lead the reader to care about characters. Readers often get invested in characters when they know their secrets.  Barbara Vine’s (AKA Ruth Rendell) A Dark-Adapted Eye for instance is the story of long-held secrets in the Longley family. Years ago, Vera Longley Hilliard was executed for murder. The family has done all it could to erase that part of the past and live a very respectable, middle-class life. Then journalist Daniel Stewart gets interested in the Hilliard case and wants to know more about the case and the family. So he asks Vera Hilliard’s niece Faith Longley Severn to help him put the pieces of the puzzle together. As the two interact, Severn has to come face to face with her family’s past – and with several secrets. It’s one of those secrets that actually inspired this post. We don’t know the truth about one member of the Longley family until the end of the book and that secret keeps readers invested all the way through.

Most crime fiction fans know they’re being manipulated as they read. That’s part of the game. And if that manipulation means a terrific surprise ending, interesting revelations about characters or a good match of wits between author and reader, that can add to a novel. And crime fiction fans like that. When it’s done unfairly though, so that readers don’t get important information they need, or if there’s no payoff for that manipulation, then readers get pulled out of the story.

What about you? If you’re a reader, do you mind having your thinking manipulated? What’s your line between ‘it’s all part of the game’ and ‘this is not fair?’ If you’re a writer, how do you keep on the ‘playing fair’ part of that balance?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Eric Clapton’s Lead Me On.

Our House is a Very, Very, Very Fine House*

One of the more popular kinds of murder mysteries is what’s often called the country-house or country-manor story. A group of disparate people is brought together for a short stay and one or more of them don’t survive the visit. Why are we drawn to these stories? One reason could be that country-house murders often take place in houses that almost seem to have personalities of their own. The setting isn’t always creepy (at first, anyway) but we feel a sense of history or of foreboding and that adds to a story. So do the different characters who are drawn together in these mysteries. The clash of personalities, the histories that can come out and the secrets that characters often hide can really bring suspense to the story. There are many, many country-house mysteries out there, and space in this post is limited. So I won’t be able to mention all of them by any means. But a quick look should give you a sense of what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Captain Arthur Hastings pays a visit to an old friend John Cavendish and his wife Mary at their family home Styles Court, in Essex. The home belongs to Cavendish’s stepmother Emily Inglethorp, whom Hastings remembers fondly, so he’d prepared for a pleasant stay. One night shortly after his arrival though, Emily Inglethrop is poisoned. The most likely suspect is her husband Alfred, whom everyone else thinks married her only for her money. As it happens, another of Hastings’ friends Hercule Poirot is living in the nearby village of Styles St. Mary, and when Hastings asks Poirot to look into the case, he agrees. As Poirot begins to investigate, we gradually find out that each one of the people in the house had a motive for murder.

Christie wrote several other novels too that you’d probably count as country-house murders. So did Ngaio Marsh. The country house setting is the basis, for instance, of A Man Lay Dead, the first of Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn series. In that novel, Nigel Bathgate and his cousin Charles Rankin have been invited to a house party hosted by Sir Hubert Handesley. The main event of the party will be a Murder Hunt, in which one guest will be tagged as ‘the murderer.’ That person will choose a ‘victim.’ The rest of the guests will be tasked with finding out who the ‘murderer’ is. The game starts off well enough but ends tragically when Rankin is actually murdered. Alleyn is called in and soon finds that just about everyone in the house, including the staff, had a good reason to want Charles Rankin dead. There’ve been all sorts of country-house type mysteries since, but in my opinion (so feel free to differ with me if you do) it’s hard to beat Ngaio Marsh’s skill with this premise.

M.C. Beaton’s Death of a Cad is the story of an ill-fated house party at the country home of Colonel and Mary Halburton-Smythe. They’ve invited several people to join them at a gathering to meet up-and-coming playwright Henry Withering. The Halburton-Smythes’ daughter Priscilla has just become engaged to Withering, so this is also in the manner of a ‘welcome to the family’ party. Early one morning, one of the guests Captain Peter Bartlett goes out hunting; he’s made a bet with another guest Jeremy Pomfret that he can bring in a trace of grouse before Pomfret can and he leaves the house early to hedge his bet. He’s shot on the way back in what looks like a tragic hunting accident. Local constable Hamish Macbeth goes to the Halburton-Smythe’s home to visit Priscilla, in whom he’s interested himself, and comes upon the scene. He is soon convinced that Bartlett was murdered and begins to investigate, despite the Halburton-Smythes’ insistence that Bartlett died by accident.

As Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell takes readers to Lydstep Old Hall, which is owned by the Cosway family, in The Minotaur. Swedish nurse Kerstin Kvist meets the Cosways when she is hired to look after thirty-nine-year-old John Cosway, who is said to have schizophrenia. Kvist is glad to get this position since it will allow her to be closer to her lover Mark Douglas. But soon after she takes up her duties, Kvist begins to notice several things about the house and family that make her uneasy. First, both house and family seem to have been preserved rather eerily from Victorian days. The family is dysfunctional too. Then Kvist discovers that her patient is kept under heavy drugs by his mother the family matriarch. She’s quite certain that Cosway doesn’t need that much medication and begins to deliberately withhold those drugs without mentioning it to Cosway’s mother. Kvist’s decision to involve herself in the family leads to tragedy when one of the family members is murdered. It turns out though that a diary she keeps provides major insights and clues as to who the murderer is.

And then there’s Louise Penny’s The Cruelest Month, the third in her Armand Gamache series. In this novel it’s the old Hadley home that serves as the setting for a murder. Fans of these novels will know that the Hadley place has a dark history of its own (no spoilers). A well-known Hungarian psychic, Madame Blavatsky, is staying at the local Bed and Breakfast in the small Québec town of Three Pines. She is persuaded to hold a séance but soon, it’s discovered that she is neither Hungarian nor really psychic. Still, it’s agreed to go ahead with the event. When that first séance isn’t successful, another is planned on Easter night at the now-unused Hadley house. During the séance, Madeleine Favreau, who’s recently returned to the area after a difficult battle with illness, is killed. At first she seems to have been frightened to death. But as Gamache and his team learn, she’s been given a lethal dose of a diet drug. Now the team has to learn which of the other guests at this séance had reason enough to commit murder. This novel doesn’t feature the traditional upper-crust family that’s been associated with most country-house mysteries. But the gathering of disparate personalities, the unexpected death, the discovery of dark secrets and hidden agendas, and the house with a personality of its own are definitely reflective of the country-house premise.

As I mentioned, there are many, many country-house mysteries. I’ve probably not brought up the ones you like best, so it’s time for you to fill in the gaps I’ve left. Come and join me at the family home. It’ll be a very pleasant stay. Wait… what was that sound??? 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Crosby Stills, Nash & Young’s Our House.

 

Follow Me Now to the Vault Down Below*

Today would have been Bram Stoker’s 165^th birthday. Interesting enough factoid, but why bring it up on this crime-fictional blog? After all his most famous novel Dracula isn’t, strictly speaking, crime fiction. And no, I’m not going to mention novels with vampires in them. Promise. The fact is, Dracula is a very well-known example of the Gothic tradition in literature, and it’s interesting to see how elements of that tradition have found their way into crime fiction. People disagree about what counts as the Gothic tradition, but a quick look at crime fiction will show I think that it’s a definite presence in the genre.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, for instance, is the story of the Baskerville family. Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead one day in the park of the family manor. Family friend Mr. Mortimer believes that Baskerville fell victim to an old family curse: a demon in the shape of a hound. The curse is said to have been brought on the family by an ancestor Sir Hugo Baskerville, who sold his soul to the Powers of Evil in exchange for a young woman with whom he’d become infatuated. Mr. Mortimer is afraid that the curse will claim another victim when Sir Henry Baskerville comes from Canada to claim his title. Mortimer asks Sherlock Holmes to look into the curse and the family history, and he agrees. At Holmes’ request, Dr. Watson travels to Baskerville Hall to do the ‘legwork’ on the case, and later, Holmes himself goes there. In the end, Holmes discovers that Sir Charles’ death had nothing to do with a family curse. In this novel, we have the family history, the dark atmosphere and so on that we see in a lot of Gothic novels. And the family home Baskerville Hall is, in my opinion anyway, a Gothic setting:

 

‘The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare and there where a window or a coat-of-arms broke through the dark veil.’

 

While Conan Doyle’s work isn’t always thought of as Gothic, there are certainly some elements of that tradition in this novel and in some of his other stories too.

John Dickson Carr’s Hag’s Nook also has elements of the Gothic in it. That’s the story of Tad Rampole, an American who’s just finished his university studies. On the advice of his mentor, he travels to England to meet famous lexicographer Dr. Gideon Fell, who welcomes him warmly. When Rampole arrives, Fell tells him the story of the Starberth family. Beginning many years earlier, two generations of Starberth men were governors of Chatterham Prison until it fell into disuse. It’s now a crumbling ruin, and of course the Starberths haven’t worked at the prison for a very long time. But they are still associated with it through a ritual that each Starberth heir goes through on the night of his twenty-fifth birthday. Each heir must spend that night in the Governor’s Room at the old prison, open the safe in that room, and follow the instructions he finds there. A few Starberths have died mysteriously, and there is talk that the family is cursed. Now it’s the turn of Martin Starberth and Rampole takes a special interest in this ritual because he’s fallen in love with Martin’s sister Dorothy. When Martin dies tragically during his night at the old prison, Rampole works with Fell to find out how and why he died. There’s no real curse involved in this novel, but there are elements of the Gothic novel here. There’s the crumbling building, the hint of romance, the family history and the dark atmosphere.

Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca isn’t really thought of as crime fiction, but if you think about it, it has so many elements of mystery fiction that I think it ‘counts.’ And it’s definitely got elements of the Gothic novel in it.  Maxim de Winter marries for the second time and brings his new bride to his home at Manderley, where both are hoping to be happy. It’s not long though before the new Mrs. de Winter is made to feel very unwelcome. Housekeeper Mrs. Danvers was fanatically devoted to de Winter’s first wife Rebecca, now deceased, and does everything in her power to undermine the new lady of the house. Even Manderley itself seems haunted by the ghost of Rebecca. De Winter’s second wife, whose name we aren’t told in the novel, begins to wonder if she’s imagining things or if she really is unwelcome in the house. Although she begins to doubt herself and her husband’s love for her, we find that there was more to Rebecca’s life and death than it seems. Manderley has the brooding, dark presence that we see in many Gothic novels. There are also the elements of family history, troubled romance and horror, too.

Agatha Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence has several elements of the Gothic novel about it too. In that novel, we meet the Argyle family. Two years before the events in the novel, matriarch Rachel Argyle was murdered. Her adopted son Jacko was arrested for and convicted of the crime and has since died in prison. At first, the family thinks the matter is settled. But then they get a visit from Dr. Arthur Calgary, who’s recently recovered from a bout with amnesia. He alone can prove that Jacko Argyle was innocent, and when he arrives at the family home Sunny Point (an ironic name, really) he plans to do just that. But as it turns out, no-one in the family wants him to re-open the case. Only Rachel Argyle’s son-in-law Philip Durrant seems to have any interest in pursuing the matter, so he and Calgary work together to find out who really killed Rachel Argyle. This novel has the atmosphere and the setting we often associate with Gothic novels. There’s the family history element too, and a touch of the question of one’s own motives and sanity that we sometimes find in Gothic novels. There’s a hint of romance too.

You might not think of ‘hardboiled’ PI novels as having Gothic novel elements, but they can. One example that comes to my mind is Ross Macdonald’s The Far Side of the Dollar. PI Lew Archer is hired by Dr. Sponti, head of the Laguna Perdida boarding school. Sponti is concerned because one of the school’s pupils Tom Hillman has run away. Tom’s parents Ralph and Elaine are wealthy and influential and are going to make Sponti’s life miserable and possibly ruin his school if their son’s not found. Archer is just about to leave to begin his investigation when Ralph Hillman bursts in, claiming that Tom’s been kidnapped and that his abductors have contacted the Hillmans. Archer returns to the Hillman home and begins to work with them – or try to – to find out where Tom is and return him safely. The truth isn’t as simple as a kidnapping for money, though. For one thing, the Hillmans are not as co-operative as you’d expect frantic parents to be. For another, hints come up that suggest that Tom may have joined the kidnappers of his own free will. Then one of the people Tom’s with is killed. Then there’s another death. Now Archer is looking into not just the disappearance of a teenager, but two murders. The element of family history figures strongly in this novel. So does the element of brooding and atmosphere that’s been associated with Gothic novels. The Hillman house is not the crumbling castle or mansion of traditional Gothic novels, but it’s no less forbidding for that.

In her own name and under the name of Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell has written a number of novels that have strong Gothic elements. One that stands out (at least to me) is A Dark Adapted Eye, Rendell’s first novel as Barbara Vine. Investigative journalist Daniel Stewart wants to do a story on the long-ago execution of Vera Longley Hilliard for murder. He wants to know about the history of the Longley family and what led to the murder for which Vera Hilliard was hanged. Stewart approaches Faith Longley Severn, Vera’s niece, and asks for her help with the family history. As the two work together, we learn of what the Longley family was like, the secrets hidden beneath the family’s oh-so-respectable exterior, and the story of Vera Longley Hilliard. This Longley family home isn’t a castle but it is full of brooding, of family secrets and of atmosphere. There’s a strong Gothic element here of psychological suspense too.

Not everyone enjoys Gothic novels but there’s no denying the effect of the Gothic tradition on crime fiction, from the days of Edgar Allan Poe to now. What do you think? Where do you see Gothic elements in today’s crime fiction? If you’re a writer do you include those elements in your stories?

 

See? Told ya. No vampires

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from The Alan Parsons Project’s The Cask of Amontillado. Yes, it’s a tribute to Poe’s short story.