The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Garroting

The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme is moving right along, and we’re all quite enjoying the sights and frights. I am, as always, grateful to Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise for showing us all such a great time so far. And we’ve not lost anybody, either – yet…

Today, we’re stopping at historic G Castle, and we’re all looking forward to the castle tour and traditional meal we’ll be having later. While everyone’s busy unpacking and changing clothes, I’ll offer my contribution for this stop – garroting. Garroting is a very efficient way of committing murder and it doesn’t take a lot of physical strength or special background really. So it’s one of those ‘everyman’ kinds of murder methods that crime fiction authors like because it allows a lot of flexibility. Lots of different characters can be the murderer or the victim. Let me show you what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders, Hercule Poirot, Scotland Yard and several local police are up against what looks very like a serial killer. The first murder – of an old woman who keeps a newsagent shop – doesn’t get much press. But then, pretty, twenty-three-year-old Betty Barnard is found garroted with her own belt. The only things that these murders have in common are that both victims are women and an ABC railway guide is found near each body. That and the fact that Poirot is sent a cryptic note before each murder. The police are just getting busy linking those two murders when there’s a third one. Franklin Clarke, a respected retired throat specialist, is found bludgeoned to death. Again there’s a cryptic note beforehand and an ABC near the body. Bit by but, Poirot gets the clues that he needs to solve this case, but not before there’s yet another murder…

Caroline Graham’s A Place of Safety introduces us to Charlie Leathers. He’s a local resident of Ferne Bassett who’s got a reputation as a blackmailer and generally not nice person. One night, he happens to be walking his dog near a bridge over the Misbourne when he sees a drama played out. Carlotta Ryan, a troubled teen who’s been staying with the local curate and his wife, runs out onto the bridge. Ann Lawrence, the curate’s wife, runs after her. They quarrel and then Carlotta goes over the bridge. She doesn’t turn up and is soon believed dead. Only Charlie saw the incident and he pays a heavy price for his knowledge when he is later found garroted. DCI Tom Barnaby and Sergeant Gavin Troy investigate both incidents and they find that things are not as they may seem on the surface…

Inspector Reg Wexford and his team have to deal with a case of garroting in Ruth Rendell’s Simisola. It all starts when Wexford’s physician Dr. Raymond Akande asks his help. Akande’s twenty-two-year-old daughter Melanie hasn’t been home for a few days, and hasn’t called or sent a note. At first Wexford doesn’t believe it’s a serious matter, but when more time goes by, he looks into it. The last person to talk to Melanie was Annette Bystock, a jobs counselor at the local Employment Bureau. So Wexford and his team look to interview her. But by the time they do so, she’s already dead – garroted in her bed. Now it looks as though something is going on at the Employment Bureau, so the team pays special attention to it. As it turns out, those events, and another death that occurs, are all tied in, each in a different way, to the bureau.

Val McDermid’s Report For Murder is the story of the murder of famous cellist Lorna Smith-Couper. Journalist Lindsay Gordon is hired to do a piece on an upcoming fundraising weekend to be held at Derbyshire House Girls’ School. The weekend’s festivities will culminate in a gala dinner and concert and Smith-Couper, a very well-known alumna, is to be the feature attraction. When she is found garroted with a cello string, the media are prepared to make as much as possible of what’s happened. Of course the school authorities want exactly the opposite: a minimum of attention on the murder. So Gordon and Cordelia Brown, a TV personality and author who’s also there by invitation, agree to try to keep the media at bay. The only way this can be accomplished though is to find out who the killer is as soon as possible…

And then there’s Jonathan Kellerman’s A Cold Heart. In that novel, painter Juliet ‘Julie’ Kipper is poised to make big news with the opening of a new show at a gallery called Light and Space. One night, she’s attacked in the ladies’ room and garroted. Her body is later found carefully posed. LAPD cop Milo Sturgis thinks that this isn’t a ‘regular’ murder (if there is such a thing). The odd posing of the body, for instance, suggests something different. That’s what leads him to consult his good friend psychologist Alex Delaware. In the meantime, the LAPD are also investigating the stabbing death of talented blues guitarist Baby Boy Lee, who was killed outside a club called The Snake Pit after one of his sets. The two murders have in common that both victims are on the brink of real fame. But Delaware and Sturgis soon learn that there’s more to the case than that…

In Rennie Airth’s The Dead of Winter, which takes place in 1944, we meet Polish Land Girl Rosa Nowak. Late one night she is garroted outside the British Museum. At first, the police consider this a terrible but random act of violence and they’re frankly ready to let it go. It’s wartime and they’ve a lot of other things more pressing. But retired inspector John Madden isn’t so eager to let things go. It turns out that Rosa was employed at his family’s home and he feels a personal obligation to find out what happened to her. On his urging, the police look more closely into the matter and find out that Rosa’s death is connected to other, earlier murders and valuable stolen gems.

It’s not really surprising that garroting would show up in crime fiction the way it does. After all, it can be quick and efficient, and doesn’t need a lot of equipment or know-how. Now, how about I straighten that collar for you? Here, let me just step behind you…

Some Fairly Safe Bets…

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

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

 

Blunt Force Trauma and ID

 

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

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

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

 

The Fate of the Blackmailer

 

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

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

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

 

Danger For the Sleuth

 

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

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

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

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

You Can Do if You Want to*

One of the many things that make it hard to be a sleuth is that cases can take a very long time to solve. And some cases never do get solved. There are also times when the detective knows exactly who’s guilty, but can’t do much about it because of politics. And that means that sleuths don’t often get that ‘rush’ that comes with a sense of personal accomplishment. But I think (or maybe I’m wrong) that we all like that sense of ‘I did this.’ So it’s not surprising that a lot of crime fiction’s well-drawn sleuths find ways besides sleuthing to get that sense that they’ve accomplished something. And that aspect of a sleuth’s character can really add to a novel or series. First, readers can identify with that feeling of accomplishment. Second, it makes sense. Very often when you’re using your hands to build, paint, bake or otherwise create, your mind is freed up. And that’s often how fictional sleuths sort out their cases. It’s also a way to make a sleuth more rounded and realistic.

One doesn’t think of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot as someone who works with his hands (although in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd he does give gardening a try). But like anyone, he likes that sense of having accomplished something. Poirot likes to do jigsaw puzzles and build houses of cards. There are several examples of this; I’ll just mention two. In Three Act Tragedy, Poirot investigates the poisoning death of Reverend Stephen Babbington. At first there seems to be no motive, but after another, similar murder, it’s clear that this wasn’t some fluke; there’s a pattern at work. In one scene in the novel, Poirot is building a house of cards. The only cards he’s been able to get for the purpose are from the card game Happy Families, so when he gets a visit from Hermione ‘Egg’ Lytton Gore, she’s more than a little surprised to see him playing a child’s game. He explains to her why he’s building the house of cards, and although she still doesn’t completely understand it, she goes along with what he says. Then she makes a comment about the card game that gives Poirot a vital clue. That clue points him in the right direction and helps in solving the case.

In Dead Man’s Folly, Poirot works with detective novelist Ariadne Oliver to find out who murdered fourteen-year-old Marlene Tucker, a girl who seemingly had no enemies and certainly had no fortune to leave. She did, though, have too much curiosity for her own safety and Poirot deduces that that’s why she was killed. Poirot is sure that Marlene’s death is related to a disappearance that also happens in the novel, but for quite a while he doesn’t see exactly how. So late one afternoon, he builds a jigsaw puzzle. As he’s working with his hands and putting the physical puzzle together, his mind is working on the case. His thought pattern leads him to one character who knows more than it first seems. Poirot decides to pay a visit to that person and finds that visit to be very helpful. It turns out that that person is key to solving the case.

Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman also enjoys the sense of accomplishment that comes from creating with one’s hands. She’s a baker whom we first meet in Earthly Delights. As we learn in that novel, she was an accountant until it occurred to her that numbers really didn’t matter to her. That’s when she decided to do what she really loves – bake. For her, creating really well-made bread, rolls and so on is real. It gives her a critical feeling of accomplishment. And she’s passed that view on to her assistant Jason. When we first meet Jason, he’s just quit a drug habit and is actually still living more or less in the streets. As time goes on, Jason discovers that he’s good at baking and learns to get a real sense of personal accomplishment when he masters a new recipe. In fact, one of the running discussions in this series is Jason’s remarkable ability to make the very best muffins anyone’s ever eaten. When he gets a new muffin recipe right and one of his experiments works well, he gets a real sense of pride.

So does Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Beatrice Coleman as she learns the craft of quilting. When we first meet Coleman in Quilt or Innocence, she’s just retired from her position in an Atlanta art gallery to the small town of Dappled Hills, North Carolina. Quilting is the social activity of the area, and many of the residents have been quilting for years, so Coleman is persuaded to join one of the local groups, the Village Quilters. At first, she resists doing actual quilting; her idea is to do her part by promoting the group’s quilts and perhaps working on designs. But bit by bit she’s persuaded to try the craft itself. Then, one of the group’s members is murdered, and Coleman herself begins to get threatening notes. She does a little investigating and finds that even among the supposedly close group of quilters there are several people who had a motive for murder. All along, Coleman keeps trying to learn to quilt. At first her results aren’t exactly noteworthy. She just can’t get the knack of it. But then, with a little help from an expert quilter, she slowly learns and by the end of the first novel in this series (Yay! The second one, Knot as it Seams, comes out in February), she’s created some of her own quilting. Her sense of personal accomplishment adds to her character, and adds an interesting sub-plot to the story.

There are also sleuths (I’m thinking for instance of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Caroline Graham’s Tom Barnaby) who get that sense of ‘I did this!’ through gardening and horticulture. That makes sense too. To see a garden bloom because of the special care you’ve taken with it, or to use your own home-grown fruit and vegetables as part of a meal is a real sense of accomplishment. And for both of those sleuths, the time they take tending flowers, attacking weeds, doing the lawn and so on frees their minds up and relaxes them. Little wonder that Wolfe absolutely refuses to be disturbed when he’s in his orchid room.

And then there’s Peter Temple’s Jack Irish. He’s a sometimes attorney, sometimes private investigator who gets involved in some very dark and ugly cases. He’s learned the hard way that drinking his way through the bleakness doesn’t accomplish anything. So he does cabinetry. He informally apprentices himself to master cabinetmaker Charlie Taub, who’s always known the feeling you get when you create a beautiful piece of furniture from just the right wood. Irish hasn’t yet completely mastered the craft, and one of the running themes in this series is that both he and Taub know that. When he does create something that turns out beautifully, Taub acknowledges it in his characteristic understated way and that praise means more to Irish than even he is aware. And the sense of personal accomplishment that comes from it means at least as much.

There are also several mystery series that focus on building, such as Jenny Baker’s Do It Yourself Mystery series, and Juliet Blackwell’s Haunted Home Renovation series. Those novels too reflect that need so many of us have to accomplish things – especially with our hands.

We all feel good I think when we can step back and say, ‘I did this.’ And it’s easy to see why. So it makes sense that that theme’s woven through plenty of crime fiction too.

 

ps. Oh, the ‘photo? That’s my new home office desk and chair. Yes I built them myself. OK, I didn’t cut the wood. And no-one will ever mistake my work for that of Charlie Taub. But I did it. Myself. I built the cabinet you see just at the left edge of the ‘photo, too. Myself.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Journey’s Can Do.

It’s an Illusion, It’s a Game*

Have you ever been to a magic show? I mean a really well-done show. We all know going into a show that the magician really cannot, for instance, turn water into coins. But a talented magician can make the audience believe even if it’s just for a moment that a handkerchief turned into flowers. Magicians use misdirection and other strategies to create illusions. And when they do it well, it takes all of one’s effort to remember that it isn’t real.

We see that same use of strategy to create illusion in crime fiction. I’m not referring here to things like faking an alibi. Rather, I mean strategies that make people believe that something they think they see is true, while the reality is something entirely different. And when you get people to think that something is true, they are often convinced – even to the point of testifying in court – that they are right. And that fact of human life can be useful to criminals.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Lord Edgware Dies (AKA Thirteen at Dinner), Hercule Poirot investigates the stabbing death of the 4^th Baron Edgware. Edgware’s wife Jane Wilkinson is the most likely suspect. It’s well-known that she wanted a divorce from her husband so that she could marry again. She’s even approached Poirot to try to convince Edgware to withdraw his objection to the divorce. What’s more, she was heard to threaten her husband. And she was admitted to the house on the night of the murder. So at first, Chief Inspector James ‘Jimmy’ Japp believes that he’s got his culprit. But on the night of the murder Jane Wilkinson went to a dinner party in another part of London. Twelve people, including the host, are willing to swear in court that she was at the party. So Poirot, Hastings and Japp have to look elsewhere for the killer. And they find plenty of suspects too, as Edgware was an extremely unpleasant person. In the end Poirot finds out who the killer is and we get a first-class lesson in the power of illusion.

Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives introduces us to attorney Walter Eberhart, his wife Joanna and their two children Pete and Kim. The Eberharts decide to move from New York to the beautiful and quiet town of Stepford, Connecticut and at first all goes well. They are warmly welcomed and the children soon settle into school and start to make friends. But soon, Joanna begins to think that something odd is going on in Stepfored. She and her new friend Bobbie Markowe ask a few questions, but they don’t get clear answers. Besides, there is no obvious danger to them or their families. Then, disturbing things begin to happen and Joanna becomes more and more convinced that Stepford’s beauty, peace and quiet are illusions. She begins to believe that something truly sinister is going on in town. It turns out that she’s right.

We also see the use of illusion strategies in Linwood Barclay’s Bad Move Science fiction writer Zack Walker, his journalist wife Sarah and their children Angie and Paul move to a beautiful new housing development called Valley Forest Estates. Zack is hoping that the lower cost of living in the suburbs will mean that he can write full-time, and he’s utterly convinced that life in the suburbs will be safer than it is in the city where they lived before the move. But little by little, his illusion of the ‘perfect suburban life’ is shattered. First, the house itself has all sorts of structural and other problems and Zack can’t seem to get anyone in authority to respond to his requests for maintenance. Then he discovers the body of Samuel Spender, a local environmental activist, in a creek. Then there’s another murder. Little by little Zack discovers that the development has mostly been a carefully orchestrated illusion designed to cover up some nasty goings-on. It’s not until Zack puts aside his belief that life is safer in the suburbs that he’s really able to see what’s happening.

Caroline Graham’s A Ghost in the Machine also includes the use of illusion to cover up a crime. Mallory Lawson and his wife Kate move to the village of Forbes Abbot when Mallory’s wealthy Aunt Carey dies. Aunt Carey has left her home and much of her fortune to Mallory and his family on the condition that her former companion Benny Frayle will always have a home. Mallory and Kate are happy to agree to that and everyone settles into the new arrangement. Then, the Lawsons’ financial advisor Dennis Brinkley is killed in what looks like a very tragic accident. But Benny thinks it was murder and tries to get the police to investigate. No-one takes very much notice of her allegation until there’s another death. Self-styled medium Ava Garret is leading a séance one day; during the event she says some things about the murder that she couldn’t possibly know. Not long afterwards she’s poisoned. Now Inspector Tom Barnaby and his team re-open the Dennis Brinkley case and slowly link it to Ava Garret’s murder. In a sad irony, Ava’s determination to maintain the illusion that she is psychic costs her her life as the murderer uses what you could call an illusion against her.

There’s an effective use of illusion in Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen’s Toffee’s Christmas too. In that short story, an author of romance novels who calls herself Toffee Brown moves to the small Yorkshire village of Knavesborough. As she tells the local vicar’s daughter Rhapsody Gershwin, Toffee came to the village to get some rest. Although she’s very eccentric and rather put out at not being identified as the world-famous writer she is, Toffee becomes a part of village life and settles in. Then one day, Rhapsody and her sister Psalmonella discover Toffee’s body in the cottage she’s taken. Rhapsody’s fiancé local constable Archibald ‘Archie’ Primrose begins to investigate and in the process they learn what Toffee’s real identity was. That doesn’t bring them much closer to finding the murderer though. It’s not until Rhapsody discovers that another character has created an illusion that she and her fiancé catch the killer.

Betty Webb’s Desert Wives is mostly set in the compound of a polygamous sect called Purity. The sect has been run by Brother Solomon Royal until he is murdered. Private investigator Lena Jones goes undercover to join Purity and find out who killed Royal when her client Esther Corbett is accused of the crime. Esther had a good motive for the murder too, as Royal had been planning to marry Esther’s thirteen-year-old daughter Rebecca. Jones settles into Purity and begins to ask questions about Royal’s murder. What she finds is that Purity is hiding some truly ugly secrets. There’s been a very carefully-designed illusion of Purity as being a peaceful, happy group of people who help each other, meet the group’s needs in a self-sufficient way and raise the group’s children together. But the reality is far, far different. Jones discovers domestic abuse, child molestation, and intermarriage leading to some serious birth defects. She also discovers financial wrongdoing. In fact, the reality underneath the illusion of Purity is so awful that Jones finds it hard to focus on her main reason for being there. But she does discover who killed Solomon Royal and why.

The thing about well-crafted illusions is that they can be very convincing. And in crime fiction that ability to create a reality that isn’t there can be very useful to criminals. Of course, sleuths can create illusions too; maybe I’ll address that in another post…

 

ps.  The photos are of Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller, who make up the hugely popular and successful magician duo Penn and Teller. Not only are they dedicated to debunking fraudulent psychics and other fakes, but they are truly gifted illusionists themselves. Oh, and they’re as pleasant in person as you could wish for, despite their great success.

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Genesis’ Abacab.

Does Anything Last Forever?*

An interesting post at Fair Dinkum Crime (You really should be following that blog if you’re not) has got me thinking about what happens as we expand our reading horizons. Reading more widely introduces one to all kinds of ideas, themes, and authors that one wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. It also gives debut authors and authors who are less widely known the chance to get their work ‘out there.’ So I for one think it benefits readers, authors and the genre (in this case crime fiction) when readers stretch themselves. Of course, let’s not talk about what expanding one’s reading horizons does to one’s TBR list… But there’s another consequence to branching out: one sees one’s old favourites in a different light. Sometimes that’s a positive experience, and sometimes it isn’t. As we evolve in our reading habits, we do get a different perspective and that affects the way we look at the authors and books we always loved before.

For example, authors such as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr created memorable novels that feature mostly a focus on plotting as opposed to deep character development. Of course one can point to exceptions in each of these authors’ back catalogues but in general their novels feature intellectual puzzles. That’s their appeal for millions of crime fiction fans. But for those of you who loved those puzzles, what happened to your view when you first read, say, Ruth Rendell’s work or P.D. James’ work? Those authors certainly feature solid mystery plots but their focus is also on deep interesting characters and psychological study. Did expanding your horizons that way change your perception of the ‘whodunit’ kind of intellectual exercise?

Many readers fell in love with the hardboiled PI novel along the lines of Raymond Chandler and later, John D. MacDonald, Peter Temple, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton. It’s easy to see why too. A well-written ‘hard boiled’ novel has a solid blend of realism, action, compelling plot and suspense. And the very well-written ones also develop the characters so that they aren’t ‘cardboard cutouts.’ But if you’re the PI-novel type, what happened to your perception when you expanded your horizons to include quieter series such as Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series? Did you change your view of the level of violence and grit in the series you’d always loved? If you’ve broadened your reading to include some traditional ‘country house’ or ‘English village’ series such as Ngaio Marsh’s or Caroline Graham’s work, have you returned with the same interest to the PI sub-genre?

Very often crime fiction fans experience these ‘growing pains’ if you want to call it that when they broaden their reading to include the work of authors from other countries. Each country has a different culture – sometimes several different cultures – and that’s reflected in the crime fiction that comes from that country. So suppose you’ve been a fan of L.A. crime fiction such as the work of Michael Connelly. What happened to your perception of that sort of crime fiction after you expanded your reading to include work such as Håkan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren novels or Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache novels? Those series reflect the cultures of their authors and thus expose readers to those cultures. After experiencing those different cultures did you return to Connelly’s work with the same enthusiasm?

There are also many crime fiction fans who originally fell in love with historical crime fiction such as Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series. If that describes you, what happened to your perception of that context and those authors when you began to read crime fiction set in the modern day? Do you still enjoy virtually returning to medieval times? What about when you began to read historical crime fiction set in different eras, such as Rebecca Cantrell’s Hannah Vogel series which is set just before World War II? Did that change your perception of the historical crime fiction you’d always loved?

Sometimes of course we broaden our reading only to realise how much we really do enjoy the novels we’ve always loved. In those cases, returning to a favourite author’s work is like re-uniting with a dear friend. Yes we’ve matured but that doesn’t change our feelings about that author’s novels. I know I have my favourites whose writing I always enjoy. It doesn’t always work out that way though, even if the author has continued to innovate and create well-written books.

When that happens – when we see that our tastes have simply changed – it can be a little sad, especially if we have some very good memories of a particular author or series. But people grow and expand their horizons and sometimes that simply means that our favourite clothes if you will simply don’t fit any more.

Has that happened to you? What’s happened to your perception of your favourite authors’ novels as you’ve widened the scope of your reading? If you’re a writer, has your writing changed as your reading has changed? Just wondering…

Thanks to Bernadette at Reactions to Reading for the inspiration for this post. Folks, you really should be following her superb blog. I know it’s one of my must-reads.
 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Kenny Loggins’ Heart to Heart.