Raise Up a Multiplex and We Will Make a Sacrifice*

An interesting comment exchange with Col at Col’s Criminal Library has got me thinking about land development. As the population increases and becomes ever more mobile, there are more and more land development projects. In a way, it makes sense, since bringing new people and new industries to an area means a stronger local economy. But a lot of people believe that too often, that economy grows at a devastating price: the loss of the land, the local wildlife and the ecosystem. That’s to say nothing of people who object to the changes that development brings to their small towns and their quality of life. That conflict between land development advocates and opponents is ongoing and has sometimes flared up into violence. So it’s little wonder we see it in crime fiction too.

A few of Agatha Christie’s stories touch on land development in a tangential way, (I’m thinking for instance of The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side and Death on the Nile). In those stories, there’s some dismay for instance at the coming of council housing and the uprooting of people so that a personal piece of property can be developed. But that theme isn’t a central part of the mystery.

In Peter Temple’s Bad Debts though, land development plays a major role in the story. Sometime-attorney Jack Irish gets involved in a case of greed, corruption and land development when a former client Danny McKillop is murdered. Irish had unsuccessfully defended MicKillop in a drink-related hit-and-run case in which Melbourne activist Anne Jeppeson was killed. When McKillop was released from prison after serving his sentence, he contacted Irish, trying desperately to reach him, but by the time Irish returned McKillop’s calls it was already too late. Now Irish feels a sense of guilt over not getting to McKillop sooner and over not doing a better job of defending his client. So he decides to look into the Jeppeson case again. He soon discovers that McKillop was framed for Jeppeson’s murder.  Before her death, Jeppeson had been spearheading a protest against the closing of a public housing estate in Melbourne’s Yarrabank district. And the more Irish looks into this planned closing, the more he sees that it’s motivated by greed, land development planning and corruption. In the end, Irish and journalist Linda Hillier trace the murders to very highly-placed people with much to lose if the planned closing doesn’t go through.

Science fiction novelist Zack Walker and his family get caught up in a fight between land developers and local eco-activists in Linwood Barclay’s Bad Move. Walker and his family move from the city to Valley Forest Estates. There, Walker hopes that life will be safer (and less expensive) for his family. He soon finds out how wrong he is though when he witnesses an argument between local environmental activist Samuel Spender and one of Valley Forest’s sales/development executives. Later that day Walker discovers Spender’s body in a nearby creek. Then, Walker is trying to return a handbag he’s found to its owner when he discovers the owner’s body. It’s now clear that something very serious is going on at Valley Forest. And even though the one thing Walker wants more than anything else is to have a safe, quiet life, he finds himself more and more involved in the murders, which have everything to do with greed and development schemes.

Ruth Rendell’s Road Rage tells the story of the conflict that arises over a planned road that will cut through Framhurst Great Wood. Many of the residents of Kingsmarkham, including Inspector Reg Wexford and his wife Dora, are not happy about this road. In fact, Dora’s joined a local citizens’ group that is actively opposing this development. But matters turn ugly when several groups of activists come to town. They end up taking hostages, including Dora Wexford. Then, there’s a murder. Now Wexford and his team have to work the murder case as well as try to rescue Dora and the other hostages before there’s any more death. The land development people aren’t exactly Citizens of the Year in this novel, but Rendell doesn’t oversimplify the issues and it’s interesting to see how she portrays what is sometimes the darker side of activism.

Vicki Delany’s In the Shadow of the Glacier has land development as one of its major themes too. Constable Moonlight ‘Molly’ Smith has recently joined the Trafalgar (British Columbia) police. One night while making her rounds, she finds the body of wealthy developer Reginald Montgomery. Sergeant John Winters is assigned to investigate the case and he and Smith begin to look into Montgomery’s professional and private relationships to find out who would have wanted to kill him. There are several suspects too. One important angle to this case is that Montgomery was co-owner of the soon-to-be opened Grizzly Resort, an upmarket resort/spa/holiday destination. Many people feel that Grizzly will bring in desperately-needed money and will provide jobs for several of the local residents. Others feel at least as strongly that the resort will ruin the natural beauty of the area and will be hard on the local ecosystem. They don’t want the influx of tourists either. That conflict adds an underlying layer of tension to the novel as Smith and Winters work to find out who killed Montgomery and why.

In C.J. Box’s Open Season, newly-appointed game warden Joe Pickett has an embarrassing encounter with local outfitter and poacher Ote Keeley. Shortly afterwards, Keeley’s body is found on Pickett’s property. What’s more, Pickett’s daughter Sheridan discovers something else – a family of endangered animals living in the woodpile near the post where Keeley’s body was discovered. Now that Pickett and his family are personally involved, he works to find out who killed Keeley. What he discovers is a long-simmering conflict among oil developers, a poaching ring and independent locals who do not want a game warden telling them what they can and cannot do. This isn’t the only novel in this series in which Box addresses issues of land development and what it may mean.

That’s also true of Carl Hiaasen’s work. In several of his novels (I’m thinking for instance of Lucky You and Tourist Season), we meet characters who want to develop the land. And it’s Hiaasen’s work that actually got Col and me ‘talking’ about the way land development is portrayed. As Col pointed out, Hiaasen uses a lot of humour in his stories but there’s a strong underlying urgency about protecting the land from over-development.

There are plenty of mentions of land development in cosy mysteries too. For instance in Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Prretty Is as Pretty Dies, retired English teacher Myrtle Clover is ‘volunteered’ to work with her local church’s women’s group. She goes to the church for a meeting of the Altar Guild where she finds the body of Parke Stockard. Myrtle wants to prove, especially to her overprotective son, that she’s not ready to be ‘put out to pasture’ yet, so she decides to investigate the murder. As it turns out, there are several suspects. Parke Stockard was a malicious real estate developer who used all sorts of unethical and illegal tactics to ensure her place in the community and to get the properties she wanted. Myrtle sifts through what she finds, what people tell her and what she overhears (deliberately and otherwise), and figures out who killed the victim and why.

The question of whether, how and for what purpose land ought to be developed is not an easy one. That’s why it’s been such a contentious issue for such a long time. Little wonder we see so much crime fiction that touches on land development.

Thanks, Col, for the inspiration. Folks, please do pay Col’s blog a visit; it’s a nicely focused set of crime fiction reviews well worth following.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s No Man’s Land.

Do You Think That I’ll be Different When You’re Through?*

Since crime fiction is about, well, crime, it makes sense that the topic of prison would come up in any discussion about the genre. And one of the developments we’ve seen in crime fiction over the decades is that there is some solid discussion of the effects of being imprisoned. There are also questions raised about whether the threat of prison is really a deterrent. Certainly questions about prison have been around for a very long time and we do see mentions of prison in Golden Age crime fiction. But it’s become a real topic of interest in more recent crime fiction. There are a lot of examples, and this one post only gives me space for a few, but hopefully these will suffice to show you what I mean.

Gail Bowen’s sleuth Joanne Kilbourn is the widow of Saskatchewan politician Ian Kilbourn, who was murdered one night when he stopped to help a young couple who were having car trouble. When he refused to take them to a party they wanted to attend, the young man Kevin Tarpley murdered him. In A Colder Kind of Death, Tarpley is shot while he’s in the exercise yard of the prison where he’s been remanded. As if that isn’t enough of a shock to Kilbourn, she then receives a letter and a newspaper clipping that Tarpley sent her just before he was murdered.  From the letter and from what she learns from the media, it seems that Tarpley was a ‘model prisoner’ who found religion while he was behind bars. Then, Tarpley’s wife Maureen, who was with him on the night of Ian Kilbourn’s murder, is herself killed. Now suspicion falls on Joanne Kilbourn, who has a very strong motive in both cases. Partly to clear her name and partly to deal with her own continuing sense of loss and grief, Kilbourn looks into both murders. She finds that the reality of Tarpley’s prison life was more complicated than just a man who’d ‘found God.’ Prison chaplain Paschal Temple tells her that at first, Tarpley simply attended chapel events so that he’d get an earlier parole. But in other conversations, he admitted having lied about something and began to seem worried about his eternal fate because of his lies. It’s that fact that proves the most salient as Kilbourn works to find out who killed Tarpley and his wife. The answer also leads her to more truths about her husband’s murder.

In C.J. Box’s Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, we meet Jack McGuane who, with his wife Melissa, has adopted a baby girl Angelina. The couple’s happiness is complete until they get the shocking news that Angelina’s biological father Garrett Moreland never relinquished his parental rights and now wants to exercise them. At first the McGuanes believe that it’s all a terrible mixup that will be resolved. But then, Garrett’s powerful father, Judge John Moreland, visits the McGuanes and more or less tries to bribe them to go along with Garrett’s wishes and give up the child. When they refuse, Moreland uses the full force of his legal authority and orders them to relinquish custody of Angelina within three weeks. The McGuanes are not willing to do this, and resolve to do whatever it takes to keep Angelina. ‘Whatever it takes’ turns out to be more than either of them could have imagined. I don’t think it’s spoiling the story to say that the last section of this novel includes McGuane’s depiction of prison life:

 

‘I’m in the general population. The guards protect me because they…are sympathetic. I have my own cell with a bed, a washstand and toilet, books, and this laptop computer. There are books in the library and decent medical care. I am pleasant but not friendly with all the rest of the population. The only time I see the truly dangerous inmates is across the room at mealtimes.’

 

McGuane then goes on to reflect on what happens in the novel and on the fact that anyone is capable of anything and that once a person ‘crosses the line’ it gets easier to do things one wouldn’t have considered:

 

‘Which is why I’m here and why I should be.’

 

It’s an interesting look at imprisonment as a tool for social and personal discipline.

Wendy James’ Out of the Silence gives a very different look at prison, although the notions of reform and reflection are present. In that novel, we follow the life of Maggie Heffernan, born and raised in Victoria, who was imprisoned in 1900 for the murder of her infant son. The story is based on a real-life case, but takes a fictional look at the circumstances that led to her trial and imprisonment. In the novel, Maggie meets and falls in love with Jack Hardy, who seems to be in love with her too. They get engaged (although not publicly) and then Hardy leaves for work in New South Wales. When Maggie becomes pregnant, she writes to Jack about it, but he doesn’t respond. At first, she tells herself that he will respond when he can and besides, she has the very real problem of finding a new place to live, since she doubts her family will accept her living with them. She moves to Melbourne where she continues to search for Jack and where she gives birth to their son. Shortly after the baby is born, Maggie finally finds Jack, who says that she’s crazy and pretends not to even know her. Distraught, Maggie goes looking for lodging and is turned away from six different places. That’s when the baby’s death occurs. Maggie is arrested, tried and imprisoned, but soon enough, women’s suffrage activist Vida Goldstein takes an interest in the case and she and her friend Elizabeth Hamilton begin to work for Maggie’s release. And as we learn the circumstances of the baby’s death, we see why there is so much sympathy for Maggie. It’s a real example of the way society’s limitations and views of women at that time placed many women in terrible positions. The women’s prison to which Maggie is remanded is not cruel in the sense of featuring torture or forced feedings or some of the other barbarities some prisoners have known. It’s designed to help the prisoners do useful work, embrace religion and basically repent. At the same time, the assumptions made about the women who are there show the institutionalised sexism of the times.

Jøern Lier Horst’s Dregs also takes a look at the purpose of prison and its effects.  Stavern, Norway police inspector William Wisting and his team investigate when a left foot, encased in a shoe, is washed up on the shore. The team is just beginning to look into the matter when another foot is discovered. Then another appears. As the case continues, the team learns that these macabre findings may be related to the disappearances of several people from a nearby retirement home. As that angle is explored, we learn that the old men who have disappeared had another connection going back to the post-World War II years, so one possible explanation for the disappearances may lie in the past. In the meantime, Wisting’s journalist daughter Line is working on a feature story about former prison inmates who have been released. Her main question is whether imprisonment serves any purpose. She even suspects that imprisonment may do more harm than good, and she wants to tell the stories of people who have been there. A few of her interviewees live not far from where her father lives, so Line stays with him while she’s conducting them. As she talks to her participants, we get the sense of how prison changes people. At one point, for instance, Line asks one of her interviewees,

 

‘Are you a better person now than before you went to prison?’…
‘No,’ he finally answered. ‘On the contrary.’

 

Line comes to really question the value of prison, and this forms an interesting sub-plot in this novel. The story Line is working on turns out to be related to the missing men and the discovery of the feet.

Paddy Richardson’s Traces of Red tells the story of Connor Bligh, who has been imprisoned for the murders of his sister Angela Dickson, her husband Rowan and their son Sam. At the time of the murders, everyone was convinced that Bligh was guilty and there is evidence against him. But there are also hints that he may be innocent. So when television journalist Rebecca Thorne learns of this case, she decides to pursue it. She is granted an interview with Bligh (who usually doesn’t agree to speak to visitors) and visits him in Rimutaka Prison:

 

‘The mass of buildings and acres of land are barricaded by a six-metre fence topped with barbed wire and razor blades.’

 

When she first meets him, Thorne believes that Bligh will be eager to have her take up his cause so he can get out of prison. But here is what he says:

 

‘I’ve got a shower and a TV in my room and I can go outside every day for exercise so I can walk further now than from one wall to the other. I’m deemed responsible enough to work in the gardens where I earn somewhere between a dollar fifty and two dollars an hour. That plus free board makes this a reasonable deal.’

 

At the same time, he also tells Thorne that he wants to get out of prison. Thorne tells him she’ll pursue the story and she does – vigourously. The question then becomes, is she right? Is Bligh innocent? If so, it’s the story of Thorne’s career. If not, she’s in real danger. It’s an interesting portrait of a person who has managed to make the prison system work for him, and of a journalist who may (or may not) be getting far too close to a story.

Angela Savage’s The Teardrop Tattoos tells the story of a woman who’s recently been released from prison after serving time for murder. She’s been given a small place to live not far from a local child care facility. She settles in there with her pit bull Sully and all is stable until a complaint is filed against her for having a dog of a ‘dangerous breed.’ Sully is her only companion so the woman makes plans for revenge against the person who filed the complaint. As she carries out her plans, we learn why she went to prison and about the hard shell that being in prison has given her. Although her time in prison is not the main focus of this story, the imprisonment has left its mark on her.

And that makes sense. Prison has a strong effect on people. And whether that effect is a good thing or not continues to be an unsettled question. Perhaps the fact that we don’t have all of the answers about this one is part of what makes it such an interesting topic in crime fiction. What do you think?

 

ps.  The ‘photo is of a cell in the old Knox County (Illinois) Jail, now preserved as an historical site. It’s located on the campus of Knox College.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Johnny Cash’s San Quentin.

Little to Win and Nothing to Lose*

Most people weigh the consequences of what they’re going to do, at least a little, before they do it. And that’s what can make it so dangerous when people feel they have nothing to lose. That belief can push people to do some awfully dangerous and sometimes terrible things. In crime fiction, characters who feel they have nothing to lose can add to the suspense of a story, though.

For instance, in Donald Honig’s short story Come Ride With Me, a man named Gannon goes into the Quick Stop diner with a specific purpose in mind. He’s just committed a robbery that ended in a murder and now he needs to ‘borrow’ a getaway car. He waits at the diner until he sees exactly the kind of car he wants. The driver is Lee Carstairs, who’s doing well financially and who drives a fast, late-model car. Carstairs uses the telephone and while he’s doing so Gannon takes his chance and hides in the back seat of the car. But as he soon finds out, he’s picked the wrong car. As it turns out, Carstairs has other plans with his car and we learn that he has nothing to lose by carrying them out.

In Stephen J. Cannell’s The Tin Collectors, we meet LAPD homicide cop Shane Scully. One night he gets a frantic call from Barbara Molar, wife of Scully’s former partner Ray Molar. Barbara says that Ray is trying to kill her and begs Scully to help. Scully races over to the Molar home in time to save Barbara, but Molar shoots at him. Scully shoots back to defend himself. Molar’s bullet misses; Scully’s hits its mark. At first Scully thinks that what happened will be dealt with in a routine Internal Affairs investigation. After all, it was a ‘clean’ hit. But soon Scully finds himself a pariah on the force, since Molar was a beloved cop. Then it becomes clear that this is not going to be a routine investigation. The Internal Affairs authorities are planning to take Scully’s badge and perhaps charge him with murder. Scully knows now that this is far bigger than just a questionable shooting. He starts to ask more questions and finds himself targeted by some very powerful and corrupt people. Now, with little left to lose professionally, Scully goes to great lengths to try to find out who is targeting him and why.

In Robin Cook’s Seizure, we are introduced to U.S. Senator Ashley Butler. He’s been a strong force against stem cell and other kinds of controversial medical procedures and research. But everything changes completely when he is diagnosed with Parkinson ’s disease. He knows that unless he gets some kind of medical miracle, he’ll never be able to achieve his goal of becoming president. In a professional sense he has much to lose. But he has nothing to lose at all by pursuing a cure and for that he contacts Dr. Daniel Lowell. Lowell’s been conducting promising research and has pioneered a controversial surgical procedure that may be exactly what Butler needs. So together, Butler and Lowell go to extraordinary (and very, very dangerous) lengths to perform the surgery. One of the dangers for instance is that the clinic chosen for the procedure is the Wingate Clinic, located in the Bahamas. The owners of that clinic are guilty of several legal and ethical violations and when Lowell and his co-worker Stephanie D’Agostino discover that, they also find that they are in real danger of their lives.

In C.J. Box’s Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, Travel Development Specialist Jack McGuane and his wife Melissa are the proud and happy adoptive parents of beautiful baby Angelina. Everything changes though when they learn that Angelina’s biological father Garret Moreland never waived his parental rights. Now he wants to exercise them. The McGuanes are devastated by this news and they decide to do what they can to keep their daughter. They face difficult odds though. First, Moreland’s father is a powerful local judge who is determined that Angelina will be given to his son. In fact he starts off by basically trying to buy the McGuanes’ co-operation. When that doesn’t work he uses his authority and orders the McGuanes to relinquish custody of Angelina in 21 days. With nothing much to lose, Jack McGuane decides to do whatever it takes to keep his child. ‘Whatever it takes’ turns out to be more than either McGuane bargained for but to them, there is no real choice.

We also see get that sense of ‘nothing left to lose’ in Åsa Larsson’s The Blood Spilt. In that novel, Kiruna police inspector Anna-Maria Mella and her partner Sven-Erik Stålnacke investigate the murder of local priest Mildred Nilsson. Attorney Rebecka Martinsson works with Nilsson’s widower to arrange for the return of their house to the Swedish Church so she gets involved in the investigation too. Nilsson had some controversial views and was not at all afraid to share them. So there’s more than one suspect in this case. But slowly, Martinsson and the police get to the truth. In this novel, the murderer is a person who has nothing left to lose, or so it seems to that person. That sense of desperation is part of what drives the killer on instead of stopping before the murder is committed.

Lindy Cameron’s Redback is the story of a crack team of Australian retrieval specialists called Redback. They’re called in when people need to be rescued from extremely dangerous situations and that’s exactly what happens on the Pacific island of Laui. The island is hosting the Pacific Tourism and Enviro-Trade Conference when a group of rebels disrupts the meeting and takes the delegates hostage. Team Redback, led by Bryn Gideon, is called in and rescues the conferees. It’s not long before that incident is connected to a terrible train explosion, two murders and an explosion on a U.S. military base. As it turns out, a shadowy group of terrorists is using a video game called Global WarTek to recruit members and give instructions. Several local terrorist groups with nothing to lose and a lot of fanaticism are only too happy to follow those instructions. So Gideon and her team have their proverbial work cut out for them as they go up against a group that’s not supposed to even exist.

Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff’’s Some Kind of Peace tells the story of Stockholm psychologist Siri Bergman. She is dealing with the horrible trauma of having lost her beloved husband Stefan in a diving incident. Otherwise, though, she’s managing her life – more or less. Then one day she gets a chilling letter that makes it clear she’s being stalked. Other incidents happen too, all of them designed to frighten and discredit her. Then one day she discovers the body of a patient Sara Matteus in the water near her home. As if that’s not bad enough, the death is made to look like a suicide for which Bergman is responsible. When the evidence shows that Matteus was murdered, the police even wonder whether Bergman might have committed the crime. In order to clear her name and save her own life, Bergman has to find out who is responsible for the murder and for stalking her. It turns out that the killer acted out of a sense of desperation and the belief that there was nothing to lose. While that’s not precisely the killer’s motive, it does drive the killer ‘over the edge.’

And that’s the thing about having nothing to lose. It can also mean one has nothing to keep one from pushing the limits and doing things that can turn tragic.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from  Strawberry Alarm Clock’s Incense and Peppermint.

My Baby Just Wrote Me a Letter*

An interesting post by Patti Abbott at Pattinase has got me thinking about the tools authors use for driving a plot forward. Many authors use either narrative or dialogue. But sometime sauthors use other ways of telling a story, such as letters, emails, text messages or case files. Those approaches can add some real interest to a novel and they certainly can be innovative if they’re used well. They can also of course pull a reader out of a story if they interrupt its continuity. So, like anything else in a crime novel, they have to be used deftly and with care.

Fans of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes know that those stories are presented as memoirs and case notes of Holmes’ associate Dr. Watson. That’s mentioned here and there throughout the 56 short stories and 4 novels that feature those characters. But plots themselves are driven by narrative and dialogue so to the reader, the stories have the “feel” of a short story or a novel.

The same is true of Agatha Christie’s stories that feature Captain Arthur Hastings. And yet, Christie also used other approaches to telling stories too. For instance in Cat Among the Pigeons games mistress Grace Springer is shot one night in the new Sports Pavilion at Meadowbank, an exclusive girls’ school. The police are investigating that matter when there’s a kidnapping. Shortly after that there’s another murder. One of the pupils Julia Upjohn slowly starts to figure out what might be going on at the school. She pays a visit to Hercule Poirot, who is what you might call a friend of a friend. Poirot returns with her to Meadowbank and looks into the case. He finds that the murders and the kidnapping are all related to a revolution in a Middle East country and a cache of stolen jewels. One of the chapters in this novel is told completely through letters that various pupils and staff members send, and it’s interesting to see the way Christie fleshes out characters and offers clues that way.

Ngaio Marsh’s A Clutch of Constables is also told in great part through a series of letters. In that novel Superintendent Roderick Alleyn learns of a case through letters from his wife painter Agatha Troy. Tired and stressed from a busy summer, she impulsively decides to take a river cruise on the Zodiac. The cruise doesn’t have a particularly auspicious beginning as one of the passengers is left behind and later found murdered. Then another passenger is drowned. All of this could very well be related to the fact that there may be aboard the ship an international art forger known as the Jampot. No-one knows exactly what the Jampot looks like or who this person really is. So finding the murderer is also going to entail discovering which of the passengers is the Jampot. Alleyn uses the letters his wife sends him to help solve the case and later, as a tool in a class that he teaches.

Although it’s not crime fiction, one of the most powerful stories told through letters that I’ve read is Katherine Kressmann Taylor’s Addressat Unbekannt (Addressee Unknown). This short story is a series of letters between Max Eisenstein, an American who lives in San Francisco, and his art-gallery business partner Max Schulse, who lives in Munich. Through the letters, which are sent between 1932 and 1934, we read of the rise of the Third Reich and its terrible effects on what had been a deep friendship between the two men. The letters also tell of a tragic event in the lives of both and how each reacts to it. I don’t want to say more for fear of spoiling the impact of the story; I do recommend it though.

In C.J. Box’s Below Zero, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is on the trail of the Mad Archer, a poacher who shoots animals and leaves them to die. He rushes home though when his daughter Sheridan receives a disturbing series of text messages from the Pickett’s foster daughter April Keeley. What’s eerie about this is that everyone believed April had been tragically killed six years earlier. Pickett decides to use the clues in the text messages to see if April is still alive and find her if she is. If she isn’t, Pickett wants to know who would want to impersonate April and why. While this story is not completely told through text messages, they do drive the plot.

Some stories are partly told through case notes and other official files. That’s what we see in Minette Walter’s The Breaker. The body of thirty-two-old Kate Sumner is discovered on the beach near Chapman’s Pool in Dorsetshire. Shortly afterward, her nearly-three-year-old daughter Hannah is found wandering around unsupervised in nearby Poole. PC Nick Ingram works with WPC Sandra Griffiths, DI John Galbraith and Superintendent Carpenter to tie these two threads together and discover what happened to Kate Sumner. The three most viable suspects are Kate’s husband William Sumner, actor Stephen Harding and school teacher Tony Bridges. All three men had logical motives for murder so the focus of most of this investigation is on them. Several parts of this story are told through official notes and files. For instance there’s the post-mortem report on Kate Sumner, the psychologist’s report on Hannah Sumner and interview records with several people that Kate knew. It’s an interesting perspective that gives readers insight into the victim and into the process of police investigation.

Case notes also help to drive the plot in Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff’s Some Kind of Peace. Stockholm psychologist Siri Bergman is putting together the pieces of her life after the tragic death of her husband Stefan. She’s not doing well but she can function most of the time. Then one day she receives a letter that makes it clear she’s being stalked. Other eerie incidents follow, each of them intended to frighten and discredit her. Then one of Bergman’s clients Sara Matteus is murdered and her body is left on Bergman’s property. Soon it becomes apparent that whoever is stalking Bergman wants to kill her. And the stalker seems to know her well enough that it could be nearly anyone in Bergman’s circle of friends and colleagues. Among the suspects are Bergman’s other clients, so part of this story is told through Bergman’s case notes about them. It’s an innovative way to give backstory on those clients and add to their characters and to the suspense.

Texts, emails (I’ve used those in some of my own writing), letters and official files add a level of authenticity to a crime fiction novel. We communicate that way in real life, so it does make sense that there would be such communication in crime fiction too. And when it’s done effectively such tools give an interesting perspective on characters and events. Of course like any other tool an author uses, these tools need to be used carefully so they don’t appear “shoehorned in.” What’s your view? Do you find that tools such as letters, texts and case files add to stories for you? Or do they pull you out? If you’re a writer do you use them?

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Box Tops’ The Letter.

What an Amazing Future There Will Be*

If you think about it there are all kinds of scientific inventions we use every day that we couldn’t have imagined just a couple of decades ago. It’s actually pretty amazing. For instance a lot of people have given up their landlines entirely and now communicate exclusively on mobile telephones. I’ll get to other examples in just a bit; for now, just think of the difference mobile and satellite technology has made in our lives. It’s true in real life and we certainly see it in crime fiction.

For instance in Martin Edwards’ The Serpent Pool, DCI Hannah Scarlett and her team investigate the six-year-old drowning death of Bethany Friend. It turns out that her death may be related to two other, more recent, deaths. So Scarlett works with her friend and colleague Fern Larter, who is in charge of those investigations, to find out how the murders are connected and who is responsible for them. At one point in the novel Scarlett arranges to meet with Oxford historian Daniel Kind to discuss the case with him. Kind’s running late but it’s not a huge problem; all he has to do is send a text message to Scarlett telling her he’s delayed in traffic. That couldn’t have happened fifteen years ago.

We see a similar advance in C.J. Box’s Below Zero. In that novel Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is up against the Mad Archer, an unknown hunter who’s illegally shooting game and leaving them to die. Pickett rushes home when his daughter Sheridan begins to receive eerie text messages from the Pickett family’s step-daughter April Keeley, whom everyone thinks was tragically killed six years ago. Pickett wants to find April if she is still alive. If she has died he wants to know who knew so much about April that it was possible to feign her identity. Neither this mystery nor its solution would have been possible just ten or twelve years ago.

And what about the joystick? Val McDermid’s video-game-loving sleuth Tony Hill would probably find it quite difficult to get along without this scientific invention. Hill is a profiler who works most frequently with DCI Carol Jordan and sometimes his work is both dangerous and difficult. It takes quite a toll on Hill so it makes sense that he’d want something to help him relax. Video games are his choice. Without the invention of the joystick his whole character would be different. Fans of Tony Hill will likely agree that part of what makes him unique is his attachment to gaming.

In Lindy Cameron’s Redback, the joystick takes on a more sinister purpose. In that novel, a crack Australian team of retrieval specialists have earned a reputation as experts in getting people out of extremely dangerous situations. This time they’re up against one of the most dangerous enemies they’ve ever faced. Several horrible terrorist attacks and a murder have occurred in different parts of the world. When Team Redback finds out they track down the threads that tie these terrorist acts together. They discover that a behind-the-scenes group of terrorists is using a video game called Global WarTek to recruit new members and give them instructions. Joystick technology isn’t mentioned specifically in this novel, but it’s an essential part of modern gaming.

And what about the modern microchip? We can all think of dozens and dozens of crime novels in which computer technology is critical. I’ll just mention two examples. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy features computer wizard Lisbeth Salander. In those novels, Salander proves herself a master of the microchip as she tracks down information, hacks others’ computers and manipulates all sorts of financial transactions.

There’s also Kerry Greenwood’s Heavenly Pleasures. In that novel, Greenwood’s sleuth Corinna Chapman and her lover Daniel Cohen investigate a few mysteries, one of which is a bomb in the building in which Chapman lives and works. The bomb may be related to a case Cohen’s been investigating – a self-proclaimed messiah who’s been luring young people away from their homes. Or it could be related to a case of poisoned chocolates at Heavenly Pleasures, a confectionary located in the same building. Or it could have something to do with a mysterious new resident in the building. The key to the bombing turns out to be information that’s stored digitally – something that couldn’t be done before the advent of the microchip.

Oh, and then there’s enhanced photography. Photographs prove essential in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s Roseanna. In that novel Stockholm police detective Martin Beck and his team solve the murder of twenty-seven-year-old Roseanna McGraw. She’s an American who’s murdered during a holiday cruise in Sweden. What makes this case challenging is that when the victim’s body is discovered there is no identification with it. At the time this novel was written there was no DNA testing so it takes weeks for the body to be identified. Finally Roseanna McGraw is identified but communicating with Nebraska police lieutenant Elmer Kafka is challenging. At the time this novel was written there was no satellite technology that would have made a transatlantic telephone call easy. A break in the case finally comes when the police start paying attention to photographs that other tourists took of the cruise. That phase of the investigation takes a long time too because developing the ‘photos takes time. Besides, they’re not high-resolution quality. All in all it takes months for Martin Beck and his team to track down Roseanna McGraw’s killer. Can you imagine how much more quickly the team could have cracked this case if they’d had satellite technology and digital imaging?

So where did all of these great developments I’ve mentioned here come from? That’s right. Scientific research. Science, the scientific method and the scientific approach to inquiry has led to more advances than I could ever mention in a year of posting. Suffice it to say that the decades of research that so many scientists have engaged in have revolutionised the way we live. And that, to me, is a good thing.

 

ps. Want an example of what I mean? Today’s post, including the ‘photo, was planned, written and posted to my blog using a tablet computer that fits in a medium-sized handbag. Ain’t science amazing?
 

Oh, and at the risk of going on too long on this topic, tomorrow I’ll be taking a look at some crime fiction that features scientists. Here’s to ‘em!

 
 
In Memoriam…

 

 

This post is dedicated to the memory of Neil Armstrong. Not only was he a noted astronaut but also, he was a dedicated scientist. All of the developments I’ve mentioned in today’s post came about because of the space program that took Armstrong and his colleagues to the moon. He was one of those who boldly went…

 
 
 

Note: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Two Thousand Years.