You Gotta do it Till You’re Through it So You Better Get to it*

If you’ve ever been ill or away and then had to get back into your routine, you know how hard that can be. At the same time as it’s good to get back to work, it’s also difficult to get back into your daily life. And for detectives it’s even more of a challenge. Many of them deal with things that are awful to face even on the best of days, let alone when they’re getting back to work after some time away. But that resilience – that ability to get back into the routine after getting knocked down, so to speak – is a really useful trait if you’re a detective. The challenge of getting back to work can also add a layer of interest to a story.

Peter Temple introduces us to part-time lawyer/part-time investigator Jack Irish in Bad Debts. Irish is getting back to work after his wife Isabel was shot by one of his clients. His first response to losing his wife was to hide at the bottom of the bottle so to speak. But as Bad Debts begins, he’s stopped that instinctive response to life and now does occasional legal work as well as a sort of side business in finding people who would rather not be found, mostly to  get them to pay debts they owe. Life is slowly returning to stability for Irish until he gets a ‘phone message from a former client Danny McKillop. McKillop was imprisoned on charges that he killed Anne Jeppeson in a drink-driving hit-and-run incident. Now he’s been released and is desperate to talk to Irish. Irish doesn’t respond right away and by the time he follows up to see what McKillop wants, it’s too late; McKillop himself has been killed. Irish feels a sense of obligation to McKillop’s family. He was the attorney who defended McKillop in the original case and did an unprofessional job of it because of his drinking. So he decides to find out the truth behind both deaths. In this novel we see how at the same time as Irish is glad to have a purpose, he also finds it difficult sometimes to be back on the job.

That’s also true of Dick Francis’ Sid Halley, a former jockey whose left hand was permanently injured in a racing accident. After he recovers enough physically to work again, he spends two years working at a detective agency. But he really comes back to work in Odds Against. In that novel, Halley’s ex-father-in-law Charles Roland hires him to uncover a plot to take over the Seabury Racecourse, which Roland owns. Halley finds it difficult to get back to life around racecourses. He’s insecure, especially because of his injury, and he’s been away from the scene for a few years. But he finds the resilience he needs to search out the truth about the racecourse plot. He also discovers a new career for himself as a racetrack investigator.

Gail Bowen introduces us to her sleuth, political science expert and academic Joanne Kilbourn, in Deadly Appearances. Kilbourn and her family are coping with the loss of her husband Ian, who was murdered when he stopped to help a young couple who were having car trouble. Since that time the family has stuck together but of course, it hasn’t been easy. When Kilbourn’s friend Androu ‘Andy’ Boychuk is poisoned during an important political speech he’s making, Kilbourn decides to face her grief by writing a biography of him.  As she finds out more about Boychuk’s past, she also gets to the truth about who killed Boychuk and why. And that gets Kilbourn into a great deal of danger. So as the next novel Murder at the Mendel begins, Kilbourn is getting back to work, this time in a guest teaching position in Saskatoon. There, she finds that an old friend Sally Love is having a show of her controversial art at the Mendell Gallery. Kilbourn wants to renew their friendship but it turns out to be difficult. Then, local gallery owner Clea Poole is murdered, and Sally is a likely suspect. Kilbourn is still dealing with her own setbacks, but she finds the resilience she needs to help Sally – and to deal with the truth about the history of their friendship.

In Martin Edwards’ The Coffin Trail, we meet DCI Hannah Scarlett who has to get back to work after a case she was investigating falls apart. She’s been made the scapegoat for everything that went wrong with the case and after a brief break, is re-assigned to avoid a public-relations disaster. Although it’s ‘sold’ as a ‘fresh challenge,’ Scarlett knows that being assigned to head the Cumbria Constabulary’s Cold Case Review Team is s demotion. Still she takes up her new job and gets back to work. Scarlett and her new team are soon involved in the investigation of the deaths of Gabrielle Anders, a somewhat enigmatic beauty who’d recently moved to the Lake District, and Barrie Gilpin, the autistic young man who was said to have killed Anders. With help from Oxford historian Daniel Kind, who’s recently moved back to the Lake District himself, Scarlett and her team find out the truth about the Anders and Gilpin deaths. Then later, in The Arsenic Labyrinth, Scarlett has to get back to work again after a serious personal loss that she suffers in the previous novel The Cipher Garden. Scarlett finds it difficult at times to get ‘back in the game’ as the saying goes, but also finds the resilience she needs.

So does Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Carl Mørck, whom we first meet in Mercy (AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes). As that novel begins, Mørck is recovering from a scene-of-crime incident in which he was gravely wounded, one of his colleagues was murdered and another was left with paralysis. At first, Mørck has little interest in getting back to work. He’s hardly maudlin about it but he is still suffering from the trauma of what happened. In fact, he is so difficult to work with that he’s ‘promoted’ to the newly-created Department Q, which is charged with investigating cases ‘of special interest.’ Despite Mørck’s lack of interest in doing much of any work, he’s soon drawn to the case of the disappearance of Merete Lynggaard, a promising politician who disappeared five years earlier. Everyone’s always thought she drowned in a tragic ferry accident. But there are hints that she may actually still be alive. So Mørck and his assistant Hafez al-Assad work together to find out what really happened to Lynggaard and where she is now, if she is indeed still alive.

And then there’s Stockholm attorney Rebecka Martinsson, whom we first meet in Åsa Larsson’s Sun Storm (AKA The Savage Altar). Martinsson returns to her home town of Kiruna when a former friend is accused of murder and asks for her help. Finding out who the real murderer is takes a serious toll on Martinsson but she gets back to work after a fashion in The Blood Spilt. In that novel, Martinsson works with police detectives Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke to find out who murdered local priest Mildred Nilsson. The events at the end of that novel set Martinsson back even further so to speak, so she takes some time away. Then, at the beginning of The Black Path, Martinsson returns to work again and gets involved in the investigation of the murder of Inna Watrang, Head of Information at Kellis Mining. Although returning to work is difficult for her, Martinsson is pleased to slowly feel her life become a little more stable.

It’s never easy to get started working again after a time away. That’s especially true if the time away was spent coping with illness or trauma. But most detectives do get back to work again, and that balance between wanting to be back in a routine and needing to deal with whatever takes one away from the routine can add real interest to a story.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Elvis Costello’s Welcome to the Working Week.

I’m Not the Same As I Used to Be*

An interesting comment exchange has got me thinking about the way our reading tastes and the novels and series that appeal to us change over the years. In part of course our tastes change as we mature and develop. Our tastes also change as we read more and expose ourselves to different sub-genres and authors. Want to see how you’ve changed as a reader? Pick up a book you first read at least ten years ago. Do you still feel the same way about it? Are there any authors whose work you used to love but have now drifted away from reading? I’m not talking here about authors who’ve changed their style; we’ve all had the experience of reading a novel by an author who’s long since ceased to innovate or who’s changed her or his style. I’m really talking about an author whose work you feel differently about because you’ve changed. There may even be authors whose work you used to dislike but have come to really like.

Some people for instance started out by reading spy thrillers, and there’ve been a lot to love over the decades. For instance, Frederick Forsyth’s The Odessa File is the story of crime reporter Peter Miller, who happens to follow an ambulance to the scene of the death of Holocaust survivor Solomon Tauber, who’s committed suicide. Through Tauber’s diary entries and some of his own investigation Miller learns of an ultra-secret worldwide organization to re-establish the Nazis as a world power.

There’s also the work of John le Carré, like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. In that novel, jaded and wearied British spy Alec Leamas is the leader of British Intelligence in East Berlin. When several of his agents are killed on his watch, it’s obvious that Leamas isn’t doing his job very well any more. Then, his best agent Karl Riemeck is murdered. Leamas is called back to London where he’s persuaded to take on just one more assignment: the murder of Hans Dieter Mundt, who organised the killings of Leamas’ agents.

Spy thrillers like these and the work or authors such as Robert Ludlum are past-paced and “high-octane” so it’s no wonder that they’ve sparked many people’s interest in crime fiction. Were spy thrillers your first introduction to crime fiction? Do you still love them as much as you did? Did you move on to more modern thriller authors such as Daniel Silva? Do you branch out into psychological thrillers such as those by Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine?

Other people (and I am one of them) started out with classic or Golden Age crime fiction. For instance, one of the first crime fiction novels I read was Agatha Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. That’s the story of the murder of a seemingly inoffensive charwoman, allegedly by her lodger James Bentley. Superintendent Spence begins to believe that perhaps Bentley isn’t guilty, and asks Hercule Poirot to investigate. Poirot travels to the village of Broadhinny to look into the matter and finds that several of the villagers are keeping secrets and that Mrs. McGinty had found out more than it was safe for her to know about one of them.

If you started out with the classics, perhaps you began with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels or stories. The Adventure of the Red-Headed League, for instance is the story of pawnbroker Jabez Wilson, who gets hired for a job that seems too good to be true: he’ll be paid to copy the Encyclopaedia Britannica. When his “dream job” disappears, Wilson visits Holmes to ask his help in unravelling the mystery.

If you started with the classics or Golden Age novels, do you still love them as much as you did? Do you still read Rex Stout, Margery Allingham, Patricia Wentworth or Ellery Queen as much as ever? Do you also read more modern authors such as Colin Dexter, Peter Lovesey or P.D. James who keep some of the classic traditions?

Lots of people began their mystery reading with books in the British or U.S. tradition, whatever the sub-genre, and have discovered translated crime fiction. For example, when Maj Sjöwall and  Per Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series was first translated in the mid-1960’s, many English-speaking crime fiction fans who’d been reading authors like Patricia Highsmith, Dick Francis or Ed McBain had a whole new series of novels to enjoy. The first in the Martin Beck series, Roseanna, is the story of the discovery of the body of an unknown woman who was murdered during a holiday cruise. She turns out to be twenty-seven-year-old Roseanna McGraw, an American who was on a tour of Sweden when she was murdered. Martin Beck and his team may not have had today’s technology, but they doggedly pursue the case and in the end, they find out who the murderer is.

There have been many other translated authors since then of course, from all over the world. Have you moved from work only in your own language to translated work? Have your feelings about “homegrown” crime fiction changed as you’ve read novels originally written in other languages?

There are also readers who began by reading cosy mysteries. If you started out with cosies, perhaps you began with LIlian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who… series featuring newspaper columnist James “Qwill” Qwilleran. Much of that series takes place in Moose County, “400 miles north of nowhere” and follows the lives of Qwill, his two seal-point Siamese cats and the various “regulars” who live in the small town of Pickax. This was a very popular and enduring series actually; it lasted from 1966 until Braun’s death in 2011 (OK, there was an 18-year break between 1968 and 1986, but still!).

If your first mystery novels were cosies you might have begun with something like Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen mysteries. Swensen is a former aspiring teacher of literature who returns to her Lake Eden, Minnesota home town after the death of her father and opens a bake shop The Cookie Jar. Fans of this series have followed the lives of Swensen, her love interests Mike and Norman, and the other residents of Lake Eden for thirteen years as I write this. These mysteries have the small-town setting, the amateur sleuth, the theme and the recipes that have become features of several cosy series over the years, so it’s easy to see why cosy fans would have started here.

If you’ve stayed with cosies, are you a fan of other cosy series such as M.C. Beaton’s Hamisch Macbeth series or Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Memphis Barbecue series? Perhaps you’ve branched out to “cosies with an edge” such as Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman series. Or maybe you’ve moved on to something completely different.

Sometimes it’s really interesting to look back at the way your crime fiction tastes have changed. If you’re a writer, it’s also interesting to think about theyou’re your changing tastes in crime fiction affect your writing. So thanks, Kathy D., for the food for thought.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Elton John’s My Elusive Drug.

Fully Accessible

One of the welcome developments in our society has been our increasing open-ness to meeting the needs of those with physical disabilities. Laws and policy now mandate accessibility to public buildings for those with disabilities and forbid discrimination against them. If you look at modern technology, there are all sorts of adaptations now available for people who need them. For example, there are cars with special kinds of controls and TTY technology has made telephoning possible for those with deafness. Little wonder that as our society continues to become more inclusive, so would crime fiction. It is, after all, a mirror of society. There are of course challenges to writing this kind of character. People with physical challenges are no different in most ways to anyone else, so if too much attention is paid to a character’s use of, say, a wheelchair or a prosthetic device, it can come off as self-conscious and pull the reader out of a story. On the other hand, if a character, say, has only one arm and no mention is made of it, that can feel unrealistic. It can also be a challenge to write the personality of a person with a disability. Again, people who have physical challenges have strengths, weaknesses and so on just like the rest of us. So concentrating overly on the use of a guide dog or the need for a wheelchair makes the character too one-dimensional. That said though, people with physical disabilities are affected by them. Not including that aspect of a character’s life in her or his personality isn’t realistic. And realistic characters are, after all, one of the keys to high-quality crime fiction. It’s tricky to write such a character but when it’s done well, it adds to the diversity of the genre and that is a good thing, at least in my opinion.

One of the “breakthrough” fictional sleuths with a disability was Dennis Lynds’ Dan Fortune, whose stories Lynds wrote as Michael Collins. Fortune started out as a New York “street kid,” but lost his arm in an accident when he was looting a ship that had docked in New York’s harbour. After that he decided to “go straight,” served in the Merchant Marines for a while and then became a private detective. Fortune himself has gotten accustomed to not having an arm and he doesn’t wallow in self-pity. But at the same time, he doesn’t deny his situation either. For example, in the 1972 short story Who?, Fortune gets a visit from Mrs. Patrick Conners, whose son Boyd had just died unexpectedly of what looks like a heart attack. Boyd Conners was in good health and he was a teenager, so his mother thinks that something more is going on. Here’s Fortune’s reaction:

 

“That was when my missing arm began to tingle. It does that when I sense something wrong.”

 

Fortune’s client makes no mention of his disability at all and neither does anyone else. As Fortune starts asking questions, he retraces Boyd Conners’ movements in the last hours of his life and that’s how he discovers that Boyd was killed by accident. He was unintentionally murdered with a weapon meant for someone else.

Dick Francis’ former jockey Sid Halley suffered a severe injury to his left hand during a riding accident and in Odds Against, he loses his left hand entirely. In that novel, Halley’s former father-in-law Charles Roland is concerned because he believes that Howard Kraye, a shady businessman, is trying to take over his racetrack. Halley, whose accident has ended his racing career, is now working for private detective agency Hunt, Radnor and Associates. Halley agrees to look into the matter and gradually uncovers what Kayes’ plans are and how he plans to put them into action. In the novels that follow this one, we see the very slow gradual process of Halley coming to terms with the fact that he now has a prosthetic left hand. He’s much less comfortable and accepting of it than Dan Fortune is of his disability. But in Halley’s character we see the anxiety, the insecurity and the fear that you could well imagine a talented athlete would have on being faced with the end of a career and having to deal with a physical disability. Halley’s is a believable and honest reaction to his life situation.

Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhymes had a successful career as the head of the NYPD’s elite Criminal Investigation and Resource Division. Then, in a scene-of-crime accident, a beam fell on him and crushed his spine so that he’s been left a quadriplegic with the use of only one finger. Rhymes has had to go through more than just physical therapy to return to any kind of life. He’s bitter about what happened and he actually discourages people – especially people he knew before the accident – from visiting him. And yet, he is a gifted forensic specialist. So when we meet him for the first time in The Bone Collector, he’s drawn into the case of a mysterious taxi-driving killer. And in The Broken Window he’s persuaded by his cousin to look into a rape and murder of which his cousin’s husband is accused. In many of the stories featuring him, we see the discomfort felt by many who aren’t accustomed to those with physical disabilities. There’s awkwardness, there are long pauses, there’s refusal to make eye contact and so on. On the one hand, the awkwardness gets (and this is only my opinion, so feel free to differ with me if you do) a bit laboured. On the other, that process – the bitterness, the awkwardness, the slow acceptance – is normal. It’s real and authentic.

In Anne Holt’s 1222, former police detective Hanne Wilhelmsen is among 269 passengers riding on a train from Oslo to Bergen one cold February day. When the train is involved in an accident, only the conductor is killed. So Wilhelmsen and the rest of the passengers are taken to a local hotel while plans are made to get them where they need to go. Wilhelmsen has retired because of an on-the-job shooting incident that left her permanently confined to a wheelchair. But she is persuaded to come out of retirement, if you want to call it that, when one by one, the passengers begin to die. She has no interest in getting involved in the case, but instead of leaving her alone, which is what she wanted, people keep interacting with her to be sure she’s all right and to discuss the deaths:

 

“I was beginning to wonder if I had “police officer” stamped all over me. The only thing that distinguishes me from everybody else is the fact that I’m in a wheelchair. And that I might be slightly more dismissive than most people. Both these elements tend to lead to the same result: people keep away from me….people kept coming up to me, asking questions, poking about. It was as if my stationary sojourn in a room where everyone else was simply coming and going made me so different that I had been accorded the status of an oracle…”

 

Against her will, Wilhelmsen looks into the case and discovers the truth about the deaths.

In Gail Bowen’s The Last Good Day, Bowen’s sleuth Joanne Kilbourn accepts an invitation from her friend Kevin Hynde to spend some time at his summer cottage on Lawyers’ Bay, an hour from Kilbourn’s home in Regina. The cottages at Lawyers’ Bay are owned by a major firm Falconer Shreve, and it’s an exclusive community, so getting an invitation to visit isn’t an everyday occurrence. Kilbourn, her son Angus and his girlfriend, and her daughter Taylor travel to Lawyers’ Bay and for a short time, they enjoy their visit. Then one night, Chris Altieri, one of the firm’s partners, has more than he should have to drink and bares his soul to Kilbourn. The next day he’s found dead when his MGB is discovered in the bay. Because Kilbourn was the last to have a long conversation with the victim, she gets drawn into the investigation and in any case, she wonders whether Altieri’s death was really a suicide. So she starts to ask questions. That’s how she meets Zack Shreve, the senior partner of Falconer Shreve. Shreve’s a paraplegic who’s been in a wheelchair since childhood. He’s a gifted attorney with a stellar reputation and although he’s got a somewhat high-handed manner at times, he is also compassionate and loving. Little wonder Kilbourn falls in love with him. The two begin a relationship and we can see how as their relationship develops, Shreve’s disability factors into who he is as a person but does not define him.

And that seems to be the key to creating a well-drawn character with a disability. When that disability is part of the richness and multiple dimensions of a character without defining that person, it can make for an interesting perspective and a well-drawn character.

You Know I Think It’s Time to Give This Game a Ride*

The Major League Baseball season has started, the National Hockey League playoffs have started and the National Basketball League playoffs will be starting in a couple of weeks. And even though the Summer Olympic Games in London won’t be held until the end of July, there’s quite a lot of fervor already as final preparations are made and all of the athletes get into their best physical condition. Sport is a really important part of lots of people’s lives even if they don’t participate themselves. If you’ve ever had to get through a traffic jam because of people leaving or going to a game, you know what I mean. If you arrange your schedule to watch your favourite team play, you know what I mean. We see that interest in sport in real life of course, and we see it in crime fiction, too. And no, I don’t just mean sleuths such as Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar and Dick Francis’ Sid Halley, who are former professional athletes. Sport’s woven all through the genre.

For instance, you wouldn’t think of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot as a lover of sport, and really he isn’t. But in The Mystery of the Blue Train, he uses tennis matches as a very good opportunity to follow up on leads in the murder of Ruth Van Aldin Kettering. She was traveling on the famed Blue Train to meet her lover when she was strangled. At first the motive seems to be a jewel theft, since a very valuable ruby necklace she had was stolen. But Poirot soon discovers that it’s more complicated than that and he looks into the case at the request of Ruth’s father Rufus Van Aldin. Several of the important people from whom Poirot thinks he can get clues are attending a tennis match, so Poirot goes, too. And it turns out he gets some interesting and useful information there, too.

Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey shows himself to be quite the cricket player in Murder Must Advertise. In that novel, Wimsey goes undercover at Pym’s Publicity, Ltd. when one of their copywriters Victor Dean is killed one afternoon when he’s at work. At first Dean’s death looks like a tragic accident (he fell down a flight of stairs), but he left behind a half-finished note alleging that someone at the company has been using company resources for illegal purposes. Pym’s management wants to get to the bottom of the matter and hires Wimsey for the purpose. Wimsey soon finds that someone in the company was using the company’s advertising resources to set up meetings between a drugs gang and a group of local dealers. Dean found out about it and was blackmailing that person, and that’s the reason he was killed. In his guise as new copywriter Death Bredon, Wimsey finds out who the killer was. He also ends up playing for the company cricket team and it’s at that match that the climactic scenes of the novel happen.

Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski follows sport closely and particularly likes the Chicago Cubs baseball team. In Indemnity Only, for instance, Warshawski is tracking down a young woman Anita Hill who seems to have disappeared. In the process of looking for the missing woman, she goes to the home of Anita’s boyfriend Pete Thayer only to find he’s been killed. Now Warshawski gets involved in a case involving insurance fraud, union thugs, and another murder. But she’s not too busy to listen to her beloved Cubs on the car radio as she drives, and we listen to the progress of the game, too. Warshawski is also a former basketball player and in Blood Shot (AKA Toxic Shock) she attends a reunion of her former team. That’s when Caroline Dijak, the organiser of the reunion, asks Warshawski’s help. Dijak wants to find her father, whom she never knew. Warshawski agrees, but then, the body of another friend is found in Dead Stick Pond. Now Warshawski has two cases, each involving friends of hers, to solve.

Peter Temple’s Jack Irish is a Fitzroy supporter and the son of a former Fitzroy player, so he spends his share of time with some of this father’s old football friends at the Prince of Prussia. In Bad Debts, Irish has just finished one case and is started on the case of the mysterious murder of Danny McKillop, a former client. He stops in at the pub and several of its usual denizens ask where he’s been.

 

“‘I had to go to Sydney,’ I said. ‘Work.’…
‘What kind of work does a man have in Sydney on Satdee arvo?’ said Norm O’Neill in a tone of amazement. These men would no more consider being away from Melbourne on a Saturday in the football season than they would consider enrolling in personal development courses.”  

 

Irish also follows horse racing, and a sub-plot of this novel involves a case of racing and betting arrangements.

Helene Tursten’s sleuth Inspector Irene Huss is a former European woman’s champion in judo and is still involved. She teaches a judo class and her daughter Katarina has inherited her interest. Huss doesn’t solve her cases by using judo, but she does use it to stay in shape, clear her mind and focus when she needs to. Her workouts at the dojo and her interest in judo are woven through the novels rather than becoming a separate plot in and of themselves.

And then there’s Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen’s The Cosy Knave. In that novel, retired teacher Rose Walnut-Whip is murdered during a football match between England and Germany. Everyone has gathered to watch the match on television at the home of grocer Tuxford Wensleydale and the noise from the match is so loud and people’s attention is so fixed on what’s happening in the game that they pay no attention to what has happened to Rose until it’s too late. Constable Archibald Penrose isn’t accustomed to having to deal with murder cases, but his boss Chief Inspector Alexander Mars-Wrigley is far too interested in the outcome of the match to pay a lot of attention to the investigation. So with the help of his fiancée Rhapsody Gershwin, Penrose has to put the pieces of the puzzle together himself.

Even when sport isn’t a major theme of a novel, it’s often woven into a story in subtle ways. In many, many crime novels, characters watch ball games on television (or attend them), they talk about their favourite teams and so forth. Sport is a very important part of life for many people, so it makes sense that it’s a part of stories, too. Just to show you what I mean, here’s a bit I particularly like from Kel Robertson’s Smoke and Mirrors, which isn’t even about sport. In that novel, Australian Federal Police Officer Bradman “Brad” Chen is taking a leave of absence from work. He’s lured back to investigate the murders of former politician Alec Dennet and the editor of his memoirs Lorraine Starke. This is the conversation that takes place just after Chen has been persuaded to come back to work and help investigate this case:

 

“‘Welcome back,’ said Talkative. “let’s go and talk post-mortems.’
‘Nah, I’ll come back tomorrow,’ I said, ‘to read my way through things.’
‘Dr. Nick will be shattered, not seeing you.’
‘He’s a South Sydney supporter,’ I said. ‘They’re used to heartbreak.’”

 

See what I mean about sport?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from John Fogarty’s Centerfield.

You’ve Got the Power*

When many people think of important characters in crime fiction, they think about the victim, the sleuth and the criminal. And it’d be hard to have a well-written crime fiction novel, especially one involving a murder, without a victim, a sleuth and a murderer. But in well-written crime fiction novels, whether they’re standalones or parts of series, other characters can also make a real impression on the reader. Some characters are so strong, or so important to the plot or in some other way so memorable that they keep a novel going. You could say that they help to “add power to” a novel or series. Of course, we all have our favourite examples of characters like that, who add such texture and interest to a story that we remember them clearly. There’s no way that one blog post from one person’s perspective could do justice to them all. But let me if I may share a few of those characters who’ve “powered up” some crime fiction novels for me, and then hopefully you’ll share some of your favourites.

Among the characters who “power” Agatha Christie’s novels is her fictional detective novelist Ariadne Oliver. Oliver may be scatty at times, but she has a keen sense of human nature and is a much better judge of character than people often realise. She’s said to have been Christie’s way of poking fun at herself, so through Oliver, we learn a bit about the ins and outs of writing detective fiction, often in a humourous way. For instance, in Cards on the Table (the novel in which she makes her debut), Oliver works with Hercule Poirot, Colonel Race and Superintendent Battle to solve the stabbing murder of the very eccentric Mr. Shaitana. In the course of the investigation, Oliver meets a fan who says how wonderful it must be to be able to think of plot ideas. Here’s Oliver’s response:

 

 ”’I can always think of things,’ said Mrs. Oliver happily. ‘What is so tiring is writing them down. I always think I’ve finished, and then when I count up I find I’ve only written thirty thousand words instead of sixty thousand, and so then I have to throw in another murder and get the heroine kidnapped again. It’s all very boring.’”

 

Oliver has several idiosyncrasies; for instance, she’s addicted to apples and she’s constantly experimenting with her hair. She’s got some strong opinions, too. She’s convinced that the next Head of Scotland Yard should be female and has no patience with a lot of reflection in the course of a case. And yet, she’s not foolhardy. She’s an interesting character with enough wisdom and shrewdness to keep from becoming ridiculous, and certainly adds to the series.

Ngaio Marsh’s Agatha Troy is another character who gives power to a series. She’s the wife of Marsh’s sleuth Chief Inspector Roderick “Rory” Alleyn, but she’s by no means an appendage to her husband. And that’s what’s so appealing about her. Troy is a very intelligent and talented sculptor and painter; her work is well-received and she has a career in her own right. As a matter of fact, in several novels (Tied Up in Tinsel and A Clutch of Constables are only two examples), Alleyn gets drawn into an investigation because of Troy’s work. She’s also, though, a loving wife and mother who enjoys her family (not that they have no disagreements, of course). In an age where it was less common to find a professional woman who also had a strong sense of family, Marsh tackles some of those issues (‘though not always directly) in Troy’s character. She’s witty, interesting, and shows keen insight. She certainly adds a “charge” to this series.

And then there’s Frank Sam Nakai, whom we get to know in Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn series. He is the maternal uncle of Hillerman’s sleuth Jim Chee, and in the Navajo culture to which they both belong, that’s a very important role indeed. Chee frequently looks to Nakai for wisdom and respects his uncle’s superior knowledge not just of people but of the area in which they live. More than that, Nakai is a yata’ali, a Navajo singer/healer, and in the first few Chee novels, he’s teaching his nephew to be a yata’ali, too. Nakai doesn’t play a major role in the novels – not, for instance, as major a role as Agatha Troy plays in the Ngaio Marsh Alleyn series. But he is a strong, steady presence. In a subtle way, he’s got a lot of influence over Chee, and an interesting personality. Nakai’s way of “powering” this series is understated, but it’s there.

In Dick Francis’ Sid Halley series, we meet Halley’s ex-father-in-law Charles Roland, Rear Admiral, Navy, retired. Roland is wealthy and also has a lot of social power, so you might think that when his daughter Jenny and former jockey Halley divorce, Roland would want nothing to do with Halley. But Roland isn’t that simple a character (which is part of what makes him interesting), nor is he that shallow. He recognises in Halley both talent and resilience – more than Halley sees in himself. So in Odds Against, the first of the Halley novels, Roland asks Halley to investigate Howard Kraye, whom Roland suspects of trying to take over his racetrack. At the time, Halley is down and out. His marriage is over, his jockey career was ended by a racetrack accident, and although he’s taken a job with private detective agency Hunt, Radnor and Associates, he’s far from happy.  There’s no real reason for Roland to hire Halley, and several reasons for him not to do so. But he does and in the end, Hally gets to the truth about Kraye’s plans. Roland can be surprisingly compassionate although he’s not demonstrative. He’s intelligent, practical, and Halley always seems to be learning something new about him. Readers, too. That’s part of the way Roland “powers” this series.

The character of Hazel Flinders “powers up” Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest novels. She is a member of the Moonlight Downs Aborigine encampment and the daughter of its former leader. She’s also Emily Tempest’s best friend. And that’s what she really contributes to these novels. She’s loyal to Tempest, cares about her and sees the best in her. Through her eyes, we get a different perspective on Tempest. We also get to learn both women’s backstories and we see a different side of each as they interact. What’s more, Hazel Flinders is a rich character in her own right. While she treasures Tempest’s friendship (and the feeling is mutual), Flinders has her own life within the community, and she’s got her own very strong opinions. Her good sense, wisdom and loyalty to Tempest add layers to this series and help to “power” it.

Jussi Adler-Olsen has introduced readers to another interesting character who “powers up” his Carl Mørck series: Mørck’s assistant Hafez al-Assad. The two meet in Mercy (AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes) when Mørck is “demoted” to becoming head of Department Q, a police department devoted to cases of “special interest.” In reality, Mørck’s been given a small basement office and no work to do as a way to get him out of the way of the rest of the Copenhagen police force. He’s not easy to get along with as it is, and that’s gotten worse since an incident in which he was gravely wounded and two of his colleagues killed. Mørck “works the system” and Assad is assigned to work with him. Although Mørck is the “main” sleuth, and the series takes his perspective, Assad is a very interesting character in his own right. He’s got a somewhat enigmatic Middle Eastern background, and has somehow managed to acquire a surprising number of skills useful in detection. He’s a devout Muslim and family man, and is one of the few people who really seem to work well with Mørck. He also is no mean sleuth in his own right. He “powers” this series because he’s interesting, because we learn things about him bit by bit, and because we see a different side of Mørck through him.

Those are just a few of the characters in crime fiction who “power” its novels. And did you notice that only one (Assad) is a sleuth? The rest aren’t “main” sleuths or even official “partner” sleuths. And yet, their personalities, their interactions with the main characters and their backstories add rich layers to the stories and work to add “power” to them. So now it’s your turn. Which characters do you find so interesting that they “power” novels and series even if they’re not sleuths?

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a Steve Miller Band song.