I Can Read the Writing on the Wall*

Of the things that distinguish people from each other is their handwriting. Perhaps it’s not as unique as a fingerprint or DNA sample, but handwriting is sometimes quite distinctive. That’s why handwriting analysis plays the role it does both in real life investigation and crime fiction. And that’s why, for instance, people may print in block letters or take other measures to disguise their handwriting if they feel they need to. Of course, handwriting experts don’t always agree on whether, say, two samples of writing come from the same person, but handwriting can matter in a criminal investigation. There are an awful lot of examples of the importance of handwriting in crime fiction and only room in this post for a few, but hopefully they’ll suffice to give you a sense of what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesoptamia, famous archaeologist Eric Leidner hires a nurse Amy Leatheran to help look after his wife Louise. Louise Leidner has been having anxiety attacks, seeing faces at windows and hearing hands tapping. A short time after Leatheran arrives, her patient confides to her that she is afraid of her former husband. She’d always believed he was killed after World War I, but she’s been getting threatening notes from him. Leatheran reads the notes and at first she can’t tell much about the handwriting. But then she sees an envelope written in Louise’s handwriting and notices the striking similarities between that writing and what she saw in the letters. Is it because Louise wrote the letters? Did someone else write them and forge the handwriting? This becomes an important question when Louise is murdered. Hercule Poirot, who happens to be in the area, is persuaded to extend his stay and investigate. He finds that the letters, and their writer, play an important part in the murder.

In Elly Griffiths’ The Crossing Places, DCI Harry Nelson is investigating two abductions. One is the ten-year-old disappearance of Lucy Downey. The other is the very recent abduction of four-year-old Scarlet Henderson. Among other things, the two cases are related by the fact that Nelson receives notes, most likely from the girls’ abductor. The notes make references to ancient mythology, the Bible and certain works of literature and on the surface of it they don’t give straightforward clues. So Nelson decides to ask archaeology professor Ruth Galloway what she makes of the references, especially the references to ancient mythology. He’s hoping that she’ll be able to interpret what the notes mean. Most of the notes are word-processed, but a few are not. Galloway is helpful in terms of what the references may mean but she can’t tell much from the handwriting at first. But  those handwritten notes prove to be critical when Galloway later makes a connection between the handwriting on the notes and other handwriting she’s seen.

In Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff’s Some Kind of Peace, Stockholm psychiatrist Siri Bergman has done her best to put her life back together after the sudden death of her beloved husband Stefan. She’s more or less functioning until she gets a letter that makes it clear she’s being stalked. That letter in and of itself doesn’t give her much information about the stalker but soon, several frightening things happen that convince her she’s been targeted. Whoever is stalking her seems determined to discredit her and ruin her reputation. Then matters worsen. The body of Sara Matteus, one of Bergman’s clients, is found in the water near Bergman’s home. A suicide note has been left behind that claims Bergman is responsible for Sara’s decision to take her own life. At first, Bergman is naturally devastated. But then it’s discovered that the handwriting isn’t Sara’s. That’s how the police determine that Sara was murdered. The murderer faked the suicide note to further discredit Bergman and to psychologically manipulate her. Now Bergman and the police have to try to track down the stalker/murderer before Bergman becomes the next victim.

There’s an interesting use of questions about handwriting in T.J. Cooke’s Kiss and Tell. London lawyer Jill Shadow agrees to take the case of Bella Kiss, who’s been arrested at Heathrow Airport for drugs smuggling. Shadow does her best to help her client but Bella refuses to reveal who has paid or coerced her to bring drugs into the country. At first, Shadow decides she’ll have to drop the case because her client seems to be obstructing her efforts. But she changes her mind and ends up involved in a complicated case involving a drugs ring overseen by some very dangerous people who have powerful connections. Shadow and her daughter Hannah are targeted too; in fact, Shadow gets a text message that threatens Hannah. That’s when it’s decided that she and Hannah should go to a safe house. But before Hannah can be safely picked up from school and brought to the safe house, she disappears. The special team that’s been investigating the drugs ring and trying to protect Shadow does all it can to find Hannah but at first there’s little success. Then Shadow gets a letter from Hannah saying among other things that she’s safe. But there are several questions about the letter. Is it really from Hannah? Is it her normal handwriting? If so, is she really safe or could she have been abducted and then coerced into writing the letter? The question of who really wrote the letter and what has happened to Hannah adds a real undercurrent of tension to this novel.

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, most people know that handwriting can be quite distinctive. That’s why forgers (a topic worthy of a separate post!) work very hard to copy handwriting, and that’s why many people who write threatening letters, ransom notes or blackmail letters often use block letters or word processors. For instance, in Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Quilt or Innocence, we meet Beatrice Coleman, who has recently retired from her position in an Atlanta art gallery and moved to Dappled Hills, North Carolina. She wants to be closer to her daughter Piper and she is looking forward to the peace and quiet (or so she thinks) of retirement. In order to fit in with the local culture, Beatrice joins a quilting guild Village Quilters and begins to get to know its members. Then, one of the guild members is murdered. Beatrice begins to ask questions and very soon afterwards she starts receiving threatening notes. The notes are written in a very careful print style of writing in order to disguise the writer’s identity so at first Beatrice doesn’t know who’s threatening her. But as she keeps asking questions and finding out more about the other guild members and their backgrounds, Beatrice figures out who the note-writer is and how that person is tied in with the murder.

I know I’ve only just touched on this topic of handwriting; there’s a lot to it and when you add in things such as forgery, psychological profiling and other related topics, the issue gets even more involved. I’m going to have to write notes to myself to keep all of this in some order – that is, if I could only read my own handwriting.

OK, your turn…

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Paul Simon’s Kodachrome.

Every Step You Take I’ll Be Watching You*

One of the facts of life about modern technology is that we arguably have a lot less privacy than we used to have. Today, when you sign a lease or apply for a job (at least in the U.S.) it’s not uncommon to include a credit and criminal background check in the process. And computer and Internet technology has made it increasingly easy to get very private information without waiting weeks or longer. Even if you move from one country to another, it’s still fairly straightforward to find out if, for instance, you have a criminal history. And with so many people using social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, it’s not hard to find out private things about people – who their friends are, where they eat, how they vote in elections and lots more.

On the one hand you can say that having less privacy has benefits. It’s easier for police to catch criminals because they have access to information that they didn’t used to have. People who are not guilty of crimes can more easily support their claims, too (e.g. travel and credit card records that show someone was in another place at the time of a crime). On the other hand, a lot of people see this trend as a violation of their privacy. Whose business is it really what you buy, where you go (so long as you don’t commit a crime) or how you vote? And today’s ability to track people makes it frighteningly easy to follow someone – ask anyone who’s been stalked. Identity theft and fraud are scary realities too now that today’s criminals can find ways to get credit card and ID numbers. In that sense, we have to be more careful than we used to be.  For better or for worse, we do seem to have less privacy and it shouldn’t be surprising that this trend shows up in crime fiction.

For example, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock Holmes gets a visit from the King of Bohemia, who is planning to get married soon. The king is worried because his former lover Irene Adler has a compromising photograph of them and he’s afraid of the scandal that would get around if that photograph is ever published. He hires Holmes to get the photograph and return it so that his reputation will be protected. Holmes fans know of course that Irene Adler is a formidable opponent. In fact, she manages to elude Holmes and ends up keeping the photograph, promising never to use it unless she is forced to do so. The science and art of photography were relatively new at the time of this story; it’s interesting that if it had been written just a few decades earlier, there might not even be a compromising photograph. As it is, we can see how the limitations of technology meant the king was only worried about that one photograph. He had no worries about members of the press or his fiancée’s family getting hold of private telephone conversations or other communication between the two lovers. The limitations of technology also make it difficult for Holmes to track Irene Adler. In part it’s because he decides not to, but it’s more than that. The technology of the time meant that there were very few fingerprint records and the records that were available were not easily accessible. And of course there were no credit cards, no telephone records or other ways to track Adler. So she was able to maintain her privacy a lot more easily than she would be able to do in today’s world.

By the time Agatha Christie was writing, people already had less privacy because technology had evolved. In Death in the Clouds (AKA Death in the Air) for instance, Hercule Poirot investigates the poisoning death of Marie Morisot, a well-known French moneylender who did business under the name of Madame Giselle. The only possible suspects are the other passengers with whom she shared a flight from Paris to London. As a part of the investigation, Poirot and Inspector Japp look into all of the other passengers’ backgrounds. They also find out as much as they can about Madame Giselle’s past. Part of what they learn comes from personal interviews, which were not new. But part of what they learn comes from police and other contacts in other countries. By the time of this novel, photographs could be sent by cable from place to place, and the telephone had made communication easier. So it was beginning to be much harder for people to hide their pasts and that is what puts the proverbial nail in the coffin for the killer in this novel.

In Cat Connor’s Killerbyte, FBI special agent Gabrielle ‘Ellie’ Conway and her lover Cormac ‘Mac’ Connelly track down a vicious killer through the use of modern technology among other things. Conway and Connelly are both members of an Internet chat room called Cobwebs, which is devoted to poetry. When one of the members Carter McLaren is banned from the chat room, he tracks Conway down and threatens her. He’s arrested but disappears after he makes bail. When he’s later found dead in the trunk of Conway’s car, it’s clear that this is more than just a chat room member who took revenge too far. Then there’s another death. And another body is found. At each crime scene, police find a Post-It note with a poem, and before each murder, Conway and Connelly get cryptic taunting emails. It’s soon evident that the killer is targeting chat room members and that the killer is someone who knows Conway personally. As Conway and Connelly slowly put the pieces together, they and the FBI use modern computer surveillance and other high-tech equipment to track down the killer. In the end, it’s a simpler clue that leads the two sleuths in the right direction, but technology plays an important role in stripping away the killer’s privacy.

But this novel also shows the negative side of that loss of privacy. It turns out that the killer is technologically very adept at covering up ‘footprints’ and tracking down victims. Individual computer IP addresses, bugging devices and even tracking software are all part of what this killer uses to follow Conway and Connelly and to stalk victims.

We also see that kind of electronic violation of privacy in Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal. Eva Wirenström-Berg and her husband Henrik have been having marital difficulties, but so far they’ve stayed together. Then, Eva discovers that Henrik has been unfaithful. When she finds out, she takes a decision that turns out to have consequences she couldn’t possibly have imagined. At first her decision doesn’t seem so fateful though and she continues her life with Henrik and their son Axel. Then she learns the identity of Henrik’s mistress. Eva decides on a particular plan for revenge that also has consequences she hadn’t imagined. This plan involves a real violation of privacy. I can say without spoiling the story that it involves breaking into an email account, which Eva is able to do with frightening ease actually. In the end, you could say that Eva and Henrik have betrayed each other and their choices end up causing real tragedy.

There’s an interesting and chilling case of violation of privacy in Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff’s Some Kind of Peace. Stockholm psychologist Siri Bergman is still coping with the death of her beloved husband Stefan, but she’s functioning if not exactly functional. Then she gets a letter that makes it clear that she’s being stalked. What’s worse, someone seems to have gotten access to her private client information. That violation puts not just her but her clients at risk. There are other incidents too that seem designed to damage her credibility. Then the body of one of Bergman’s clients Sara Matteus is found in the water on her property. The death is set up to look like a suicide; there’s even a suicide note implicating Bergman in this client’s decision to kill herself. But it’s soon proven that this was a murder. Bergman herself is briefly a suspect until she’s able to show that she’s not guilty. Now the threats from this stalker become even more ominous and it’s clear that Bergman’s life is in danger. She’ll have to find out who the killer is in order to re-establish her credibility, protect her clients’ privacy and stay alive.

Today’s technology has made it easier than it ever was to catch criminals, and harder to avoid getting caught if one is a criminal. But it’s a double-edged sword as you might say. It’s also easier than ever to violate an innocent person’s privacy. Information is easier and easier to find, and today’s crime novels reflect that. Dozens and dozens of crime fiction stories (there really isn’t room here for me to list them) include cases where cops or private investigators trace criminals through their emails and social networking, even if the criminal leaves the country. Others depict people who’ve had their emails and banking accounts compromised. So do we have less privacy than we did? I’d say so. Is it a problem? For a lot of people, yes. For cops and private investigators, I’m not so sure.  What do you think?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Police’s Every Breath You Take.

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.

And You Read Your Emily Dickinson, and I My Robert Frost*

A lovely post by Sarah at Crimepieces has got me thinking about poetry. In the U.K. it’s National Poetry Day and I’m glad poetry is getting some attention. It’s a beautiful art form and one I must confess I’ve never mastered. Trust me. Poetry is everywhere, too, from the ‘master’ poets one reads to rap lyrics to advertising jingles. It takes many, many forms and that’s one thing I like about it. We also see it in crime fiction. Sarah made the point for instance that there’ve been poets who also wrote crime fiction. She’s right. There are also mentions of poetry throughout the genre. Space only allows me to mention a few of them; I’m sure you can think of others.

Several of Agatha Christie’s stories refer to poetry. One of them is The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (AKA The Mirror Crack’d). The title of the novel refers to Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott, and Christie uses both the title and if you will one of the themes of the poem in the novel. Famous actress Marina Gregg and her husband have recently bought Gossington Hall, which Christie fans will remember was the property of Colonel Arthur Bantry and his wife Dolly in The Body in the Library. The new owners decide to have a fête at Gossington Hall as a charitable fundraiser and to make the locals feel more comfortable with the newcomers. Local resident Heather Badcock is especially excited about this event because she’s very much a fan of Marina Gregg and thrilled at the prospect of meeting her idol. On the day of the fête, Heather does get to talk to Marina Gregg; in fact, Marina even gives Heather her own cocktail. Shortly afterwards though, Heather becomes ill and dies from what turns out to be poison. At first, everyone believes that since the cocktail was intended for Marina, she was also intended to be the victim. And if that’s the case there are certainly suspects. But it’s not long before Miss Marple begins to believe that Heather was the intended victim all along. She and Dolly Bantry work together to find out who would have wanted to kill Heather Badcock and why.

Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse is a fan of the poetry of A.E. Housman and we see that influence in this series. For instance, the title of the last Inspector Morse novel The Remorseful Day comes from a line from Houseman’s XVI – (How clear, how lovely bright). It’s a very clever choice too given Morse’s name and one major event in the story. Two years before the events in The Remorseful Day, a local nurse Yvonne Harrison was found murdered in her bed. The police investigated but could never get solid evidence to arrest anyone. Now Harry Repp, who’s just been released from prison after being convicted of burglary, is the subject of an anonymous tip to the police. The suggestion is that Repp was responsible for Harrison’s murder. Superintendent Strange gives the case to Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis, and they begin to look into it. But Morse is strangely reluctant to do a lot of work on the investigation. At one point, Lewis makes a disturbing discovery that leads him to what he thinks is the reason for Morse’s apparent apathy about this case. But as you might expect from Colin Dexter, things aren’t exactly what they seem…

Emily Dickinson (whose poetry I like very much) features in at least two crime novels. One is Kate Atkinson’s Started Early, Took My Dog. That title is taken from the title of Dickinson’s I Started Early, Took My Dog and themes from the poem are woven through the story. There are several threads to this novel, all of which lead back to an incident in the past. One thread follows the story of Tracy Waterhouse, a former cop and now security guard. One day she witnesses prostitute Kelly Cross behaving in an abusive way towards her small daughter Courtney. On the spur of the moment Waterhouse offers to buy the child, just to keep her out of harm’s way. Cross accepts and Waterhouse ends up with a new daughter and on a new path she hadn’t imagined. Another thread features former famous actress Tilly, who’s now battling the early signs of dementia. She witnesses the exchange between Waterhouse and Cross and, not quite understanding what’s going on, gets involved, with real consequences. And then there’s Atkinson’s protagonist Jackson Brodie, a retired police officer/PI. He’s spending some time trying to make sense of his life when he witnesses a dog being badly mistreated by its owner. He rescues the dog and ends up much more attached to his new companion than he’d thought he would be. As Atkinson fans have come to expect from her, all of these threads end up being related.

Another crime novel in which Dickinson’s poetry comes up is Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road. In that novel, Aboriginal Community Police Officer (ACPO) Emily Tempest and her team are assigned to investigate the murder of prospector Albert ‘Doc’ Ozolins at Green Swamp Well. On the surface the killing looks like the tragic result of a drunken quarrel, but Tempest believes there’s more to it than that. So she starts to ask some questions. One of the people she talks to is Ozolins’ brother Wishy, who manages a transport and works depot. In the course of her meeting with Wishy, Tempest also meets Wishy’s daughter Simone ‘Simmie.’ By accident she discovers that Simmie is reading a battered copy of a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and they discuss it. Each is pleasantly surprised that the other likes Dickinson’s work. A little later in the novel Tempest sends Simmie a leather-bound copy of Dickinson’s complete works and one poem in particular, Wild Nights, Wild Nights, reminds Simmie of Tempest. It’s not directly relevant to solving the murder (although Tempest does accomplish that), but it’s an interesting connection between the Tempest and Simmie Ozolins.

The poetry of the Lake District’s own William Wordsworth is featured in Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo. Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham hears of the discovery of a long-dead body in a pond near her Lake District home. There’s talk that the body may be that of Fletcher Christian; it’s always been rumoured that he didn’t die on Pitcairn Island but survived and returned to England. If that’s the case then Gresham reasons that he might have had contact with his great friend Wordsworth. If so what could be more natural than that Wordsworth would have written about it? There’s been talk before that there may have been an unpublished Wordsworth manuscript and the discovery of this body supports that theory. So Gresham returns from London, where she lives and works, to the Lake District to investigate the possibility of such a manuscript. When she gets there she starts to try to trace the manuscript but then one of the people she interviews dies. Then another person connected with this possible manuscript also dies. It soon looks as though these deaths are related to Gresham’s search and that she may be responsible. Now Gresham has to clear her name as well as try to find the manuscript if there is one.

And then there’s Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff’s Some Kind of Peace. That’s the story of Stockholm psychologist Siri Bergman. She’s still reeling from the death of her beloved husband Stefan and although she’s functioning, you couldn’t really call her functional. For example, she cannot tolerate darkness – she even sleeps with the light on. One day Bergman gets a frightening letter that makes it clear she’s being stalked. Other incidents happen too that are intended to discredit Bergman and scare her too. Then one day, the body of Sara Matteus, one of Bergman’s clients, is found in a lake on Bergman’s property. At first the police think Bergman may be responsible but it’s not long before it’s proven that she is innocent and that someone is trying to frame her. Now Bergman has to clear her name and find out who killed Sara Matteus before the killer strikes again. In a few places in this novel there are references to Swedish poet Erik Blomberg’s Var inte rädd för mörkret (Do Not Fear the Darkness). The poem has special meaning for Siri Bergman, since Stefan left it for her before he died. At the end of the novel she begins to understand what Stefan’s message really was, and is able to start the slow process of healing from his loss.

Poetry really is a powerful form of expression; I wish I could write that way. And as these few examples show, it finds its way into a lot of writing, including crime fiction.

 

In honour of the day here are just a few poets’ blogs where you can read some fine, fine poetry:

 

Finding Time to Write
Hugauga
Real Poems 

 

Check ’em out. Tell ’em Margot sent you. Mostly, enjoy…

 

ps. The book in the ’photo is part of an 1832 edition of a collection of the poetry of William Wordsworth. I’m proud to own it.

 

 
 

NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Simon and Garfunkel’s The Dangling Conversation.

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.