The Name Game*

Authors, editors and publishers spend quite a bit of time choosing the right titles for books. And that makes sense. A good title can attract a reader’s interest and help make (and keep) a series distinctive. A ‘clunky’ title or a title that has little to do with the story can put readers off or make readers feel cheated.

So what does make for a good title? Everyone has different views about this, and the same sort of title that attracts some readers puts others off. I’m hardly an expert on title choice, but here are a few of my ideas about crime fiction titles and types of titles that work.

Traditional wisdom is that titles should be relatively short, and I can see why. Titles that are too long are cumbersome and annoying, and it’s much harder for people to remember them. There are even some very effective titles of only one word. For example, Deon Meyer’s Trackers is a highly effective title. The novel tells three stories, really. One is the story of professional bodyguard Martin Lemmer, who’s persuaded to help smuggle some rare rhinos across the border from Zimbabwe to South Africa. Another is the story of Millla Strachan, who fled an abusive husband and untenable home life and takes a new job as a journalist. The third is the story of Mat Joubert, recently retired from the police service, who’s now doing private investigation. He takes the case of Tanya Flint, whose husband Danie has disappeared. The three stories are tied together (no spoilers!), and all of them involve leaving traces, tracking those traces, and the ‘footprints’ we leave behind. The novel treats this theme on several levels and the title shows that in only one word.

Gene Kerrigan’s The Rage tells the story of Dublin DS Bob Tidey’s investigation into the murder of Emmet Sweetman. Sweetman was a successful but shady banker who’s shot in his home by two thugs. It’s also the story of Vincent Naylor, who’s recently been released from prison. Naylor, his brother Noel, and some of their friends plan a major heist – the robbery of a security company that transports money among banks and businesses. Figuring in both cases is Maura Cody, a former nun who is trying to live with her own past. As we learn what’s behind Sweetman’s murder, how the planned armed robbery plays out, and what Maura Cody is trying to live with, we see the common theme of rage. There’s rage against those who profited illegally from the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years in Ireland. There’s rage against certain events that happen in the story. And there’s the rage that has come from the revelations about certain priests and nuns in the Catholic Church. The novel’s plot threads are tied together in a few ways, that theme being one of them, and it’s neatly captured in the title.

Titles can also be used effectively to tie a series together. For example, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels all include a colour in the title. There’s The Deep Blue Goodbye, The Lonely Silver Rain and those are just the first and last in the series. And Sue Grafton’s series featuring PI Kinsey Millhone are famously titled by letters of the alphabet. What’s more, each title also includes a crime-related word. I’m not sure what the title of W is For… will be, but according to her Facebook page, Grafton said (as of 22 February) that

 

‘W is for Whew!’

 

and that she has completed the ‘W’ novel. No word on publication date or actual title yet.

Many cosy series titles are linked too, so as to tie the novels together. For instance, Riley Adams’ (AKA Elizabeth Spann Craig) is the author of the Memphis Barbecue series, each novel of which has something related to barbecue in the title. There’s Delicious and Suspicious, Finger Lickin’ Dead, Hickory Smoked Homicide, and (coming soon), Rubbed Out. Not only do those titles link the novels, but they also are short, clever and easy to remember too.

One of the more inventive ways to title novels in a series has come from Martha Grimes, whose Richard Jury/Melrose Plant novels are each titled with the name of a pub. What’s even more effective is that the titles also have something to do with the story itself. For instance, The Anodyne Necklace concerns the murder of temporary secretary Cora Binns, the theft of several valuables, including a particular emerald necklace, and a vicious attack on sixteen-year-old Katie O’Brien. All of these incidents take place or are related to the same village, so it’s a little much for Jury and Plant to think they are unrelated. And they do turn out to be interwoven events. The title in this case gives readers an important clue to the plot and is consistent with Grimes’ other titles.

Titles can also be very effective if there’s something unusual about them – something that makes the reader curious. For example, Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing has a title that makes the reader wonder. And it’s got everything to do with the plot too. This novel concerns the case of Dr. Suresh Jha. One morning, Jha attends a meeting of the Rajpath Laughing Club, instructed by Professor Pandey. The principle behind the club is that laughing therapy provides exercise, healthy breathing and an opportunity to heal both body and soul. The members are involved in their regular laughing exercises when it seems that the goddess Kali appears and murders Jha. The event becomes a media circus and a rallying cry for those who believe that the gods and goddesses have been neglected. It comes out that Jha was the leader of the Delhi Institute for Rationalism and Education (DIRE), which is dedicated to the unmasking of fake gurus and spiritualists – ‘the godmen’ as Jha called them. Many people believe that Kali has attacked Jha in revenge for his diatribe against her worship. Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri gets interested in this case since Jha was a client at one point. He starts to ask questions and follow up leads on what really happened. And as it turns out, this case is, in many ways, not what it seems. But as you can see, the title is not just an attention-getting title. It’s also a solid reflection of what happens in the story.

So, what got me thinking about titles? Another really fascinating title: Nigerians in Space, written by Deji Olukotun. It’s certainly an unusual title and reflects the theme of the novel. This one’s about a Nigerian government official named Bello, who contacts Nigerian scientists around the world. His proposal is that they return to Nigeria and pursue their science in their own country, so as to make Nigeria a technology/science powerhouse. He seems to be bona fide, and a few of his contacts take him up on his offer. But of course, this is a crime thriller, so things don’t go as planned…The plot lines in the novel follow the stories of three people who are affected by Bello’s offer and all are related both to that offer and in a larger way, to the concept of the moon. And no, it’s not science fiction. I’ll confess I’ve not (yet) read this novel. But the title did inspire me to think about this whole question of how we choose titles and what they mean.

What about you? Do you choose a book based on its title? Do you pay close attention to titles? Which titles have you thought were the best/cleverest? If you’re a writer, I’d be really interested in how you choose your titles.

 

ps. Many thanks to Mack at AfricaScreams for the review that led to the inspiration for this post. Folks, do check out this excellent blog. It’s a rich resource for crime fiction from Africa.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Shirley Ellis and Lincoln Chase.

There Was Fifty-Seven Channels and Nothin’ On*

An interesting comment exchange with Bill Selnes at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan has got me thinking about television. Bill did a very interesting post about the fact that fictional sleuths don’t really watch a lot of TV. Actually, all of Bill’s posts are really interesting. If you’re a crime fiction fan, you really should be following his blog if you’re not already doing so. And he’s right about TV, too; it doesn’t seem to be a major part of life for most fictional sleuths. They’re either too busy or quite frankly not interested. And yet TV is a pervasive presence in our lives. Even if you’re not a TV watcher, chances are that something on TV is going to be discussed at work, family gatherings and so on. So it seems to me only natural that there’d be plenty of TV in crime fiction, even crime fiction that features sleuths who really don’t watch much of it.

A television news story is part of what gets Sergeant Barbara Havers involved in a murder case in Elizabeth George’s Deception on His Mind. Haytham Querashi has recently emigrated from Pakistan to the British seaside town of Balford-le-Nez. There’s already an immigrant community there and Querashi’s plan is to marry Salah Malik, whose family has already gotten established. When Querashi is found dead on a beach near the town, the case makes the television news, mostly because of the already-simmering rift between the immigrant community and the locals. Havers happens to see a news broadcast about the case and learns that DI Emily Barlow, who is one of Havers’ idols, is leading the investigation. Havers arranges to be assigned to the case in part so that she can work with Barlow. Havers hardly spends all day sitting in front of the television, but in this case she happens to be watching at the right time.

So does Emma le Roux in Deon Meyer’s Blood Safari. She is watching a news story about a man named Cobie de Villiers who is wanted in connection with the murder of a traditional healer and three other men when she notices that one of the men looks exactly like her brother Jacobus. Jacobus le Roux disappeared twenty years earlier from South Africa’s Kruger National Park. At the time, everyone assumed he’d been killed in a skirmish with poachers, but if that’s not true, Emma wants to find out where he is. Shortly after she contacts the police about the news broadcast, Emma is attacked in her home. Now she knows that there’s more to her brother’s disappearance than everyone thinks, and she hires bodyguard Martin Lemmer to go with her from Cape Town to the Lowveld to get some answers. What they find is that the murders and Jacobus le Roux’s disappearance are all connected to greed, international business intrigue and politics.

Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Salvo Montalbano is not an avid TV-watcher. But he knows the value of TV in getting and passing on information. One of his good friends is Nicolò Zito, who works for Vigatà’s Free Channel. The two men often co-operate on cases and with Montalbano’s access to exclusive and valuable information, and Zito’s connections, each benefits the other. In The Wings of the Sphinx for instance, the body of an unidentified young woman is found near a local landfill. The only distinguishing mark on her is a tattoo. Montalbano knows that it will be very hard to find out what happened to the woman and who would have killed her if she can’t be identified. So he has Zito broadcast a picture of her and a picture of the tattoo. It turns out to be a very good thing that he did, because that’s how Montalbano learns that the victim was a member of a group of Eastern European girls who had come to Italy to find work. It’s through that thread that he’s able to find out who killed the girl and why.

In Gail Bowen’s A Colder Kind of Death, political scientist and television commentator Joanne Kilbourn has to revisit the tragedy of her husband Ian’s murder when his killer Kevin Tarpley is shot in the prison yard. When Tarpley’s wife Maureen, who was with him on the night of Ian Kilbourn’s murder, is killed too, Kilbourn needs to clear her own name. She also wants some resolution. So she looks into the circumstances of both murders. In one thread of the story, Kilbourn’s son Angus, who’s fifteen at the time of this novel, finds out that Tarpley’s been killed and asks his mother for more details about that murder and about his father’s death. She reluctantly agrees and the two go to the local offices of Nationtv where Kilbourn works. It’s through recorded television broadcasts that Angus learns more about his father’s death, the trial of Kevin Tarpley and the impact Ian Kilbourn had. The recordings also give Kilbourn a hint as to the truth about the murders of Tarpley and his wife.

In Catherine O’Flynn’s The News Where You Are, we meet regional television presenter Frank Allcroft. He’s happily married and has a strong bond with his eight-year-old daughter Mo. But he’s at a crossroads in his life and he’s dealing with the loss of his mentor and predecessor at the network Phil Smethway. Smethway was killed in a hit-and-run incident while he was out jogging. When Allcroft is drawn to the scene of the death one day he sees that the road is straight and clear. It should have been easy to see Smethway and avoid him. Although the driver was never located, Allcroft begins to suspect that this death is more than a simple case of tragic miscalculation or drink driving. So he begins to ask questions about Smethway’s life and finds out there were sides to his friend that he never knew. As Allcroft searches for answers, readers get a look at the power of TV. Viewers feel they know Smethway and Allcroft and speak and write as though both men were close acquaintances instead of strangers who simply present on TV. And some viewers’ reactions and suggestions really are funny.  We also see how being on TV has affected both Smethway and Allcroft.

Paddy Richardson’s Traces of Red features TV journalist Rebecca Thorne. A successful presenter, her show Saturday Night has been a popular New Zealand show for some time. But it’s hit a proverbial plateau and Thorne knows that in the TV business, there’s always someone new coming up who can easily supplant the people ‘on top.’ So she’s eager for the story that will cement her position. She thinks she’s found it in the case of Connor Bligh. Bligh is in prison for the murders of his sister Angela Dickson, her husband Rowan and their son Sam. Only their daughter Katy survived because she wasn’t at home at the time of the killings. New hints have come up though suggesting that Connor Bligh may be innocent. If he is, then this is a really important case of justice gone wrong. So Thorne eagerly pursues the case. As she searches for the truth, we see the impact of TV in the way people react to her, in the way viewer ratings matter, and in the public reaction to this new investigation.

There are also novels in which TV ‘personalities’ are murdered. Lynda Wilcox’s Strictly Murder and Liza Marklund’s Prime Time are just two examples. And there are fictional sleuths such as Elizabeth Spann Craig’s  Myrtle Clover who do watch TV (her never-miss-it show is called Tomorrow’s Promise).

TV is woven throughout a lot of other crime fiction too – much, much more than I have space for here. Love it, hate it or don’t care about it, TV is a big part of life. Bill Selnes is right that fictional sleuths don’t usually watch a lot of it – they can’t if they’re going to investigate crime. But the rest of us seem to…

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Bruce Springsteen’s 57 Channels (and Nothin’ On).

There’s Got to be Some Changes Made*

No matter how content we are with ourselves, we all know that we’re works in progress. So there’s always something we can do better. Some people make New Year’s resolutions to motivate themselves, and others do different things. But in some way most of us try to do better at handling at least something in our lives. It’s not always easy though and most of us have occasional slips as we try. But that process and those slips make us human. They also make us interesting. That’s why that side of a character can add a lot to a novel. Of course that’s true of any genre, but since this is a crime-fictional blog let me show you what I mean with a quick look at crime fiction.

In Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train for instance, we meet Derek Kettering. He’s not exactly a model human being. He’s unwise and wasteful with money and he’s been cheating on his wife Ruth. Kettering justifies what he does by telling himself that Ruth isn’t exactly a perfect wife either. Everything changes though when Kettering meets Katherine Grey. She is a former paid companion whose employer has just died, leaving her a very large fortune. Katherine decides to use some of her inheritance to travel to Nice on the famous Blue Train. That’s how she gets caught up in a case of murder when Ruth Kettering, who’s on the same train, is killed. Ruth’s father Rufus Van Aldin hires Hercule Poirot to investigate the murder and Poirot begins to ask questions. Derek Kettering is the most obvious suspect. Besides his motives, he was seen on the train and can’t account for his time. Meeting Katherine and being involved in the murder investigation force Derek to re-think everything. I don’t think it’s giving away spoilers to say that he decides to change.

Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn is a political scientist and an academic. She is also a loving mother to Mieka, Peter, Angus and Taylor. And therein lies a personal challenge for Kilbourn. She has the same desire that any loving parent has to protect her children and to see them succeed in life. But as they get older, Kilbourn’s children do what any healthy child does: they start to make their own choices in life, some of which are not choices that Kilbourn would make. In The Wandering Souls Murders for instance, Peter’s former girlfriend Christy Sinclair comes back into the family’s life. Kilbourn has never thought that Christy was good for her son but at the same time, she doesn’t want alienate Peter. So she’s forced to walk a very thin line as she welcomes Christy back into the family circle, especially when Christy happily announces that she and Peter are back together as a couple. Then it all becomes moot when Christy dies in what seems like a tragic canoeing accident. Her death turns out to be not at all accidental and Kilbourn discovers that it’s related to a series of other killings. Although Kilbourn does slip at times, she really does try hard to let her children work out their own lives while still being available as a caring mom. And that’s not easy. Trust me.

Deon Meyer’s Martin Lemmer is a professional bodyguard whom we first meet in Blood Safari. Lemmer has a dysfunctional background and that’s contributed to a deep well of anger. He knows all too well how easy it is to let that anger overtake one; in fact, Lemmer has served time in prison for murder because of that anger. So he fights a regular battle as you might say to keep his temper under control. He faces quite a challenge when Emma le Roux hires him to accompany her from Cape Town to the Lowveld to find out the truth about her brother Jacobus’ disappearance. For years it was thought that Jacobus le Roux was killed in a battle with poachers. But Emma saw a man who looks exactly like her brother while she was watching a news story on television. So she decides to find out whether her brother might still be alive. There are several very nasty people who don’t want the truth about Jacob le Roux to come out, and some of them have quite a lot of clout. So Emma and her bodyguard face all sorts of terrible danger as they search for answers. Through it all Lemmer constantly has to guard against allowing his rage to spill over and that adds a layer of tension to this novel.

M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin has her own ongoing struggles. One of them is dealing with her ex-husband James Lacey. Through the course of the novels, we watch as she and Lacey fall in love, marry and then divorce. Not that Lacey has no redeeming qualities, but he isn’t faithful and he isn’t exactly known for his honesty. Agatha is hardly perfect herself, but she does try to make it work with Lacey. She has a great deal of feeling for him and it’s the one weak spot she constantly tries to shore up – and doesn’t. In several novels (Love, Lies and Liquor is one and so is Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye), she is determined to let go of her feelings for Lacey after their divorce. In fact, she’d agree with you that she’s well rid of him. But keeping that resolution is harder than making it is…

Domingo Villar’s Leo Caldas is a police inspector in Vigo, in the Spanish province of Galicia. He is devoted to his work and makes his job a high priority. At the same time he’s resolved to spend more time with his father. The two don’t have a lot in common but they care about each other and they do respect each other. In Death on a Galician Shore for instance, Caldas investigates the death of local fisherman Justo Castelo, whose body is found washed ashore near the small town of Panxón. At first it’s thought that Castelo committed suicide, but little pieces of evidence suggest otherwise so Caldas and his assistant Rafael Estevez dig deeper into the case. It turns out to be more complicated and time-consuming than either thought it would be. In the meantime, Caldas’ Uncle Alberto has had to go into hospital and of course, Caldas would like to spend time with him as well as with his father. More than once in this novel Caldas resolves to call his father or meet him for a meal. He also resolves to visit his uncle. Sometimes he follows through on his commitment to spend more time with his father and uncle. Sometimes he doesn’t. His resolution to work harder at those relationships adds an interesting side to his character.

Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest knows that she has a tendency to speak her mind before really thinking things through. She has a habit of taking rash, even reckless decisions too. She herself admits that she goes too far at times. For instance, in Gunshot Road she takes on a difficult and very dangerous case when the body of Albert ‘Doc’ Ozolins is discovered in his shack at Green Swamp Well. Tempest doesn’t believe the official explanation that Ozolins was killed as the result of a drunken quarrel and does her own investigation. On one hand, it turns out that she is quite right about Ozolins’ murder. On the other, she goes off recklessly on her own. Her choices lead her to the truth, but she pays a very heavy price for it. Part of what makes Tempest’s character interesting is that she knows she should be more prudent and more than once she resolves to do so. But she doesn’t always succeed.

And that’s the thing about people. As I say, we’re works in progress. We resolve to do things better and we do try. At times we succeed and at times, well, we don’t. And that adds to our richness. It also adds to the depth of fictional characters.

 

 
 

*NOTE:  The title of this post is a line from The Animals’ I’m Going to Change the World.

How Do You Measure, Measure a Year?*

It’s interesting how the end of the year often gets us into a reflective mood, whether or not we make and keep New Year’s resolutions. It’s often a time for taking stock of oneself – well, it is for me anyway. And no, I promise this isn’t going to be one of those ‘Best of 2012’s Reading’ posts. You’ll be reading enough of those as the next weeks go by. Besides, I don’t like to ‘stay within the lines’ like that. But here are a few things I’ve noticed about my crime fiction reading this year. If they help you make some reading choices, then I’m glad to have been of service.

 

 

Book That Has Caused Me to Re-Think My Assumptions

 

Angela Savage – Behind the Night Bazaar

Y.A. Erskine – The Brotherhood

Roger Smith – Dust Devils

Martin Edwards – All the Lonely People

 

Most of us, myself included, have a set of assumptions about, well, everything. About people from other groups, about how to make the world better, about how to solve the world’s problems. But those assumptions can blind us to the fact that very few of life’s problems and inequities have an easy solution. All of these books present difficult issues (e.g. poverty, human trafficking, questions of racial equity) that do not have an easy solution. And these authors are all to be commended for not offering pat solutions. All of these novels have caused me to question what I always believed, and that’s a good thing. The book that has most caused me to really question myself though is Angela Savage’s Behind the Night Bazaar. In that novel, PI Jayne Keeney investigates the murders of her friend Didier ‘Didi’ de Montpasse and his partner Nou. The trail leads Keeney to some ugly truths about child trafficking and the sex trade. I think we’d all agree that something has to be done to keep children safe and to stop human trafficking. But Savage shows us, without preaching, that there isn’t a simple solution. Not until we question what we assume to be true can we look at the source of these problems and try to solve them. This isn’t an easy, light book, but it stays with me in part because it has invited me to stop and re-think everything I always ‘knew’ about human trafficking.

 

 

Book I Am Very Annoyed at Myself For Not Reading Yet

 

Michael Connelly – The Black Box

Ben Winters – The Last Policeman

Deon Meyer – Seven Days

Vanda Symon – The Faceless 

 

Here’s the thing. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, and seven days in a week. And one has to eat and sleep and pay bills, etc…   So there simply isn’t enough time to read it all. I am a fan of all four of these highly talented authors, so it has nothing to do with my interest in their books. It really doesn’t.  I will read all of these books. However, I am most angry with myself for not yet reading Vanda Symon’s The Faceless. Symon is the highly talented author of the Sam Shephard series, and I was very much looking forward to this standalone release. I still am. I promise, Vanda, I will read it. Very soon. Folks, if you haven’t yet read it, give it a try. Symon will not disappoint you.

 

 

Pattern in My Reading That I Didn’t Even Notice

 

I Have Read More Canadian Crime Fiction This Year.

I Have Read More French Crime Fiction This Year.

I Have Read More Australian Crime Fiction This Year, Mostly Written by Women.

I Have Read More Thrillers This Year.

 

Did you ever catch yourself in a new pattern that you weren’t even aware of? Well, this year I found myself, and I promise it was unplanned, branching out in all sorts of different reading directions. I’m glad for that, as I am a better informed crime fiction fan for it. I’m all for ‘stretching oneself’ as a reader. And I am truly grateful for those who’ve helped me do that this year. The pattern that I’ve most noticed – that seems the strongest – without me even being aware of it is that I’ve read a whole lot more crime fiction by Australian women writers than I had before. This year I’ve read some terrific work by Sandy Curtis, Virginia Duigan, Y.A. Erskine,  Kerry Greenwood, Wendy James and Angela Savage, among others. I’m so glad I ‘met’ these wonderful ladies from down under. To all of you, thanks for sharing your work with us, and it is my great pleasure to mention it on my blog. Want to read some terrific crime fiction by Aussie women writers? Sure ya do! Check out Fair Dinkum Crime, which is the source for all Australian crime fiction. And check out the Australian Women Writers challenge. Go ‘head. You’re in for a real treat!

 

 

New Character I’ve Met This Year That I’d Love to Have a Drink With

 

Anthony Bidulka’s Russell Quant

Angela Savage’s Jayne Keeney

Donna Malane’s Diane Rowe

Alan Orloff’s Channing Hayes

 

All of these sleuths are absolutely terrific characters whom I’m really happy that I met. They’re all smart, interesting and I’m sure they’d be a lot of fun to know in person. My vote, by a slim margin (‘cause they’re all great characters) is Anthony Bidulka’s Russell Quant. Quant’s smart, thoughtful, interesting, and knows lots of cool places to eat and drink. I could truly enjoy sharing a bottle of good wine and swapping stories with him. His would probably trump mine by a long shot. Check out all of these protagonists, folks – they’re all worth getting to know.

 

 

Author Whose Next Release I Am Most Eager For (Fingers are Drumming and I’m Waiting……Still Waiting…)

 

Paddy Richardson

Adrian Hyland

William Ryan

James Craig

 

All of these authors have wowed me with their novels. And now that I’ve gotten hooked it’s really very unfair to keep me waiting. Come on, you folks!! Next novel, please!!!!!!  There are a few other authors who’ve gotten me hooked (e.g. Elizabeth Spann Craig and Donna Malane), but I know when their next books are coming out, so I’ll be patient. But I am especially eager to read the next book by… Adrian Hyland. Hyland’s Emily Tempest series is one of the finest series I’ve read, and I really truly hope there’ll be a new one soon. A-a-a-hem, Mr. Hyland!!!

So there you have it. A few reflections on my own reading as we face the last few weeks of 2012. Now, please don’t ask me which book I’ve liked most of all I’ve read this year. First of all, the year isn’t over yet. Secondly, I couldn’t narrow it down.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Jonathan Larson’s Seasons of Love.

Walkin’ the Tightrope Every Day and Every Night*

In several ways, a high-quality crime novel is a lot like a successful tightrope act. The author has to balance several different elements and that balance depends on a lot of factors (e.g. sub-genre and the sort of plot the author’s creating). Because of those factors, each author’s balance is likely to be a bit different, and that’s all to the good. Readers are all different and have different preferences, so the variety that comes from “walking the tightrope” in different ways is probably a good thing. One could think of lots of balances authors have to strike; I’m just going to touch on a few of them here.

 

Narrative vs Dialogue

 

As with most balances, there is no right answer as to how much dialogue vs how much description there should be in a story. Some authors keep the description to a minimum and use more dialogue. Their spare writing style suggests more than describes and there’s something to be said for that. For example, Håkan Nesser’s writing tends to include less narrative. In The Unlucky Lottery for example, Intendant Münster and his team investigate the stabbing death of Waldemar Leverkuhn, who was killed on the night he discovered that he and some of his friends had purchased a winning lottery ticket. Because Leverkuhn’s friends had gone in with him on the lottery ticket, they fall under suspicion. So do the members of Leverkuhn’s family, since family members are more likely than anyone to have a hidden motive for murder. The other residents of the building where the Leverkuhns live are investigated as well. In this novel Nesser doesn’t rely on long descriptions or narrative although there is some detail. Here, for instance is a conversation Leverkuhn has with his wife Marie-Louise as he gets ready to leave to celebrate the win with his friends:

 

“‘Where are you going?’ [Marie-Louise]
‘Out.’
‘Why?’
‘To buy a tie.’
There was a clicking noise from her false teeth, twice, as always happened when she was irritated by something.
Tick, tock.
‘A tie?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why are you going to buy a tie? You already have fifty.’
‘I’ve grown tired of them….
‘You don’t need to cook a meal tonight.’ [Leverkuhn]
‘Eh? What do you mean by that?’
‘I’m eating out.’”

 

Here Nesser uses dialogue to show not just the state of the relationship between Leverkuhn and his wife but also to let the reader know that Marie-Louise doesn’t know about the lottery win.

Some writers strike this balance by using more description and narrative, and that can work well too. For example, James Lee Burke uses narrative very effectively to place the reader in the Southern Louisiana setting of most of his novels. Here for instance is a scene from The Tin Roof Blowdown, in which Burke’s sleuth Dave Robicheaux investigates the disappearance of his old friend Jude LeBlanc in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His search ends up being related to another case he’s working: the shooting death of a looter who with two other looters made the mistake targeting the home of a wealthy mobster. Here’s a description of what New Orleans looks like after Katrina:

 

“From a boat or any other elevated position, as far as the eye could see, New Orleans looked like a Caribbean city that had collapsed beneath the waves. The sun was merciless in the sky, the humidity like lines of ants crawling inside your clothes. The linear structure of a neighborhood could be recognized only by the green smudge of yard trees that cut the waterline and row upon row of rooftops dotted with people who perched on sloped shingles that scalded their hands.”

 

Both approaches to writing – spare and lean with emphasis on dialogue, and rich in narrative – can be very effective when they’re done well. That’s why this decision isn’t always an easy one.

 

“Body Count” and Violence vs “Gorebage”

 

How many murders and how much violence should there be in a well-written crime novel? That’s a difficult balance too for an author. After all, a murder mystery involves, well, murder. That entails violence. There’s also the fact that readers want to remain engaged in the story. They want suspense and a reasonable number of twists and turns. Sometimes, that involves more than one murder. On the other hand, I’m sure we’ve all encountered novels where there was so much gore and violence that there was no room for an actual plot or characters. This balance, like every other balance, depends a lot on the sub-genre, the sort of mystery the author’s writing, and other factors.

Some authors use little or no gory violence in their novels. For instance, one of the most famous of Agatha Christie’s novels is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Hercule Poirot has moved to the small village of King’s Abbott to retire and raise vegetable marrows. His peace and quiet is short-lived though when Flora Ackroyd begs him to find the murderer of her uncle, retired magnate Roger Ackroyd. The most likely suspect is Ackroyd’s stepson Captain Ralph Paton but Flora, who is Paton’s fiancée, is sure he’s innocent. And as Poirot discovers, there are several other people in Ackroyd’s life who had a motive for murder. This novel really features only one murder – Ackroyd’s. And although Ackroyd’s been stabbed Christie doesn’t go into any real description of the body or the act. And yet the story has plenty of twists and turns to keep readers turning pages, and one of the most famous dénouements in crime fiction.

Other stories, even those not featuring serial killers, are more violent. There are several murders and they are ugly murders. Deon Meyer’s Blood Safari is like that. Emma le Roux hires professional bodyguard Martin Lemmer to travel with her from Capetown to the Lowveld where Emma’s brother Jacobus disappeared years earlier. When she learns that he may still be alive, she wants to find out the truth about what’s happened to him. It turns out that his disappearance is related to environmentalism, corruption and high-level politics. In this novel, some very nasty people target both Emma le Roux and Martin Lemmer. In order to keep the truth hidden, there are two other murders as well and they are brutal. This amount of violence works in this novel in part because of the sort of story it is and in part because it’s a thriller.

 

Length vs Brevity

 

This can be a very difficult balance for an author. Stories that are too short may not allow for enough character development to interest the reader, and their plots may be too linear. But we’ve all had the experience of getting mired in doorstop-sized tomes that could have told the story in less than half the number of pages. I don’t have the right answer for exactly how many pages a well-written mystery novel should have (although I know many publishers have suggested word counts). But I do know that some very high-quality crime fiction novels are short.

For instance, Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone is the story of the murders of four members of the Coverdale family. From the beginning of the novel we know who the murderer is. The real suspense in the story – and there is quite a lot of it – comes as we learn why the murders were committed and what events exactly led up to the killings. This story includes (at least in my opinion, so feel free to differ with me if you do) well-developed characters and a solid and interesting “fleshed out” plot. Yet it’s not a long book; my edition is only 188 pages.

Does that mean a longer book can’t be really well-written? I don’t think so. Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Mercy (AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes) is the very well-regarded story of Copenhagen homicide detective Carl Mørck and his assistant Hafez al-Assad, who together comprise the new “Department Q.” That department’s purpose is to investigate cases of “special interest,” and the first such case that this team takes up is the five-year-old disappearance of promising politician Merete Lynggaard. Everyone’s always believed that she drowned in a terrible ferry accident, but Mørck and Assad discover that she may actually still be alive. This novel, which (in my opinion) keeps the reader’s interest throughout, is just shy of 400 pages.

The balance of factors such as length, kind and amount of violence, and how much narrative or dialogue to use is a difficult balance for any author. And it’s not made easier by the fact that readers’ tastes vary when it comes to these factors. What are your thoughts? Which factors do you think are balanced well in your favourite crime fiction? If you’re a writer, how do you “walk the tightrope?”

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Tightrope.