The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Drowning

The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme continues on our treacherous journey through the alphabet. I’m pleased to say that thus far, we’ve had no casualties – yet. That’s thanks to our tour leader Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, who’s seen to all the arrangements.

Today we’ve arrived at the Hotel D. It’s quite a hotel, with its own fitness center, steam room and pool. That last is actually maybe not such a good thing, as my contribution for today’s stop is drowning.

The thing about drowning is that it can look deceptively like an accident. And it doesn’t really require a lot of specialised knowledge or weaponry. So it’s not surprising that there are a lot of cases of drowning in crime fiction.

Several of Agatha Christie’s works involve drowning. That’s what happens in for instance Hallowe’en Party. Thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds is with a group of young people who are helping to prepare for a Hallowe’en party. She boasts that she’s seen a murder and although just about everyone hushes her up she insists that it’s true. That evening Joyce is drowned in a bucket of water used for a bobbing-for-apples game. Christie’s fictional detective story author Ariadne Oliver was at both the preparations for the party and the party itself, and she is convinced that Joyce was killed because she really did witness a murder and the murderer wanted to keep her quiet. Mrs. Oliver asks Hercule Poirot to visit the village of Woodleigh Common and investigate. He agrees and starts to ask questions. Then there’s another murder. Poirot discovers that both murders are related to some events in the town’s past and a murder that occurred a few years earlier.

Minette Walters’ The Breaker tells the story of the murder of Kate Sumner, whose body is discovered on a beach near Chapman’s Pool in Dorsetshire. Forensics reports show that she was choked, drugged and then drowned. Shortly after her body is discovered, her toddler daughter Hannah is discovered wandering around a nearby town. PC Nick Ingram works with WPC Sandra Griffiths, DI John Galbraith and Superintendent Carpenter to find out who killed Kate Sumner and how Hannah got to the village. Their search for answers leads them to three main suspects: Kate’s husband William; Stephen Harding, an actor with whom Kate had flirted several times; and Harding’s roommate Tony Bridges. This murder turns out to be related to be much more psychological in nature than anything else.

DCI Hannah Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team investigate a case of drowning in Martin Edwards’ The Serpent Pool. Six years earlier Bethany Friend was drowned in the Lake District’s Serpent Pool. At the time, the case was put down as a suicide. But Scarlett has never quite believed that explanation. So she and her team re-open the case. At the same time, Scarlett’s friend and co-worker Fern Larter and her team are investigating two more recent murders. The two compare notes and it’s not long before they determine that the three murderers are related. And so they turn out to be. With help from Oxford historian Daniel Kind, Scarlett and Larter find out who killed all three victims and what the motive was.

Gail Bowen’s The Wandering Souls Murders also includes a drowning. Political scientist and academician Joanne Kilbourn gets involved in a case of multiple murders when her daughter Mieka discovers the body of a young girl in a trash bin. The police are just beginning to look into that case when there’s another death. Christy Sinclair is the former girlfriend of Kilbourn’s son Peter. When the two broke up, Kilbourn was only too happy to see Christy go. Then, she suddenly comes back into Peter’s life, going so far as to say they’re back together. One night she drowns in what looks like a tragic boating accident. But her death was quite deliberate. Kilbourn discovers that both deaths are related to a secret from Christy’s past and to some dark truths about some of the characters.

There’s a tragic case of drowning in Wendy James’ Out of the Silence, which is based on true incidents. Born and raised in Victoria, nineteen-year-old Maggie Heffernan was imprisoned in 1900 for the drowning death of her baby son Jacky. The novel is a fictional portrayal of Maggie’s life, her meeting with Jack Hardy, their brief affair and the resulting pregnancy. By the time Maggie realises that she’s pregnant, Jack has left for New South Wales to find work. Jack doesn’t respond when Maggie writes to tell him about her pregnancy, and she knows that her family won’t accept her. So she moves to Melbourne to find work and hopefully trace Jack. She gives birth and after a time, she finally traces Jack. When she does, he claims that she’s crazy and won’t have anything to do with her. With nowhere to go, Maggie searches through Melbourne for a place to stay and is turned away from six different lodging houses. That’s when Jacky’s death occurs. Through diaries, letters and news items, we read of Maggie’s experiences, the trial, and the efforts to free her once she is imprisoned.

And then there’s Domingo Villar’s Death on a Galician Shore. In that novel Vigo police detective Leo Caldas and his team investigate the mysterious drowning death of a local fisherman Justo Castelo. The evidence suggests that he committed suicide but there are just a few hints that suggest otherwise. So Caldas and his assistant Rafael Estevez dig deeper into the case. As they do so, they get to know about Castelo’s background they learn that his death could very well have to do with a 1996 tragedy in which he and two fellow fishermen were the only survivors of a boat tragedy that claimed the life of their captain Antonio Sousa. Bit by bit, Caldas and Estevez find out how Castelo’s drowning is related to the 1996 Sousa drowning.

See what I mean? Drowning happens a lot in crime fiction. Well, now; I’ve finished unpacking. What about a swim?

The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades*

Crime fiction is an awfully diverse genre and in a lot of ways that’s a good thing. In fact in most ways it is. There’s something in the genre for just about anyone to enjoy, no matter how dark, light, thriller-ish, character-driven, plot-driven or any other way they like their novels. And for the crime writer, writing in a diverse genre means there’s a lot of flexibility in terms of the kind of novel to write. But here’s the thing. A diverse genre with a lot of authors means that the crime fiction fan’s TBR list/library can get out of control. But that doesn’t stop crime fiction fans from getting excited when a new release by a favourite author is coming out.

Of course, everyone has a different set of favourites. But here are just a few of the new books coming out this year that I am very much looking forward to reading.

Coming out in April will be Martin Edwards’ The Frozen Shroud, the sixth in his Lake District series featuring DCI Hannah Scarlett and Oxford historian Daniel Kind. Edwards has a real gift for depicting the beautiful Lake District, and this series weaves together strong characters, past mysteries and present mysteries. Little wonder I’m so eager for this new novel. In it, Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team investigate the connections between the World War I-era murder of Gertrude Smith, the five-year-old murder of Shenagh Moss, and another murder closer to home for Scarlett.

Another book I’m very much looking forward to reading is William Ryan’s The Twelfth Department. This is the third in his historical crime fiction series featuring Moscow CID Captain Alexei Korolev. These novels take place mostly in Moscow during the Stalinist years leading up to World War II. Korolev lives and works during a very dangerous time in the then-Soviet Union. He’s assigned to investigate murder cases and he is committed to his job. At the same time, he is fully aware of the political tinder box in which he lives and he knows that he has to move carefully and trust no-one completely. In The Twelfth Department which is scheduled to be released in July, and which has already been getting excellent advance reviews, Korolev is excited at the prospect of a visit from his son Yuri. But he’s soon caught up in something quite different when he is assigned to investigate the murder of a noted scientist who’s been shot. It turns out that the victim was working on a sensitive, and very dark, project, and when another scientist is murdered, Korolev knows that this case is going to be extremely dangerous for him and also for his family.

Also being released in July will be Angela Savage’s The Dead Beach. This is the third in her series featuring Australian ex-pat Jayne Keeney, who lives and works in Bangkok. Savage creates a very real picture of life in Thailand and what it’s like to be a farang – a foreigner – who lives there. In this novel, Keeney is hired to find out who murdered a young tour guide who worked in the southern part of Thailand. From what Savage says about the novel, this case

 

‘…brings her [Keeney} face-to-face with unscrupulous businessmen, embittered thugs, environmental zealots and deadly cobras.’

 

Sounds like just another day’s work for Keeney, who’s already had to go up against child traffickers, corrupt cops and unscrupulous charity workers.

July will be a good month for me reading-wise because I’m also looking forward to Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Rubbed Out, the fourth in her Memphis Barbecue series which she writes as Riley Adams. This series features Lulu Taylor, who owns and runs Aunt Pat’s Barbecue, a popular Memphis restaurant. One of the things I like about this series is its authentic portrait of Southern life and culture. There’s humour and strong characterisation in this series, too. In this particular novel, Taylor gets mixed up in the murder of barbecue pitmaster Ruben Shaw. Taylor’s good friend Cherry Hayes gets into a violent quarrel with Shaw at a barbecue competition, so when Shaw is found murdered only a few hours later, Hayes is a very likely suspect. Taylor wants to clear her friend’s name, so she investigates the murder and finds that Hayes is not at all the only person who had a good reason to kill Ruben Shaw.

I’m also looking forward to a couple of October releases. For one, Jørn Lier Horst’s Vinterstengt is coming out in English as Closed For Winter. This is the seventh in Horst’s series featuring Chief Inspector William Wisting, who lives and works in Stavern, Norway. Horst creates (in my opinion at any rate) a strong sense of place and local culture and some well-drawn characters in this police procedural series. Closed For Winter continues Wisting’s story. In this novel, Ove Bakkerud is preparing for a last few quiet weeks in his summer home before closing it for the winter. Then his home is burgled. As if that’s not enough, Bakkerud discovers the body of a neighbour in the house next door. Wisting and his team investigate, only to be faced with the discovery of other bodies on the same archipelago. And what does all of that have to do with an unusual number of dead birds in the area?

October will also see the release of The Case of the Love Commandos, Tarquin Hall’s fourth novel featuring Punjabii private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri. Puri lives and works in Delhi, which Hall depicts in all of its beauty, squalor, vivid colour, life, and variety. Puri’s team consists of his secretary Elizabeth Rani, his office boy Door Stop (so called because he does as little as he can get away with doing), his driver Handbrake, and his fellow investigators Tubelight (who always takes his time sputtering to life in the mornings), Flush (whose family was the first in his village to get an indoor toilet) and Facecream (so called because she blends in perfectly in any surroundings). In this particular novel, Puri and his team investigate the abduction of a student named Ram, a member of India’s untouchable caste. He was set to marry a girl from a high caste, who’d been rescued from her family by the Love Commandos. But when Ram doesn’t appear at his own wedding, Puri takes the case. The trail leads to rural India so Puri travels to an area outside his usual element, so to speak. He also has to look over his shoulder because his rival Hari Kumar is also on this case. Word is too that Puri’s mother Mummy-ji, of whom I am very fond, features in this novel as well.

And then there’s December, when Michael Connelly’s The Gods of Guilt is set for release. This novel features attorney Mickey Haller, whom Connelly fans will know made his first ‘starring’ appearance in The Lincoln Lawyer. In The Gods of Guilt, Haller discovers that a former client – someone he thought he had saved and helped start a new life – has been murdered. Connelly is a master of creating flawed but basically sympathetic characters such as Haller, and forcing them to face their own pasts. He did it (in my opinion) brilliantly with his other famous creation Harry Bosch in novels such as Echo Park and The Last Coyote. And in The Gods of Guilt, it seems it’ll be Haller’s turn to deal with his past. I’m a fan of Connelly’s work, so this is one of those novels I’ll probably pre-order…

I’m also looking forward to lots of other releases as well. For instance, Domingo Villar’s Cruces de Piedra (Stone Crosses) will be released in Spain in May. I’m not sure how long it’ll take for this third Leo Caldas novel to be released elsewhere, but as soon as it is, I will definitely be reading it. Oh, and I’m currently reading T.J. Cooke’s Defending Elton which is due to be released very soon, but I’m not commenting on it much at the moment as I’ve not finished it; you’ll hear more about it, I can say that much.

What about you? Which novels are you really, really, really looking forward to reading this year?

If you’re a writer, here’s your opportunity: Got anything crime fictional being published this year?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Timbuk3

And I Go Where the Ocean is Deep*

For a lot of people there’s something exciting about boats and being on boats. It may be the lure of adventure or it may be the connection with the sea. And of course, there’s the reality that for plenty of people, boats represent their livelihood. Whatever the reason is, we seem to have a fascination with boats and ships. And if you think about it, boats and ships, with their dangers, legends and so on make very effective contexts for crime fiction novels. If you add to that the fact of disparate people being brought together, as can happen on a boat, it’s easy to see how boats and ships could figure into crime fiction. Of course, one post isn’t nearly enough space for me to mention all of the novels where boats and ships figure into the plot, but here are a few to show you what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, newlyweds Linnet and Simon Doyle are on their honeymoon trip – a cruise of the Nile. On the second night of the journey Linnet is shot. The first suspect is Linnet’s former best friend Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ de Bellefort, whose fiancé Simon was before he met Linnet. But it’s soon proven that Jackie could not have committed the crime. Hercule Poirot and Colonel Race are on the same cruise and work together to find out who the murderer is. In this novel, it isn’t the actual boating or the ship itself that figures into the crime. Rather, Christie looks at the interactions of the different personalities who are on the same ship at the same time.

So does Ngaio Marsh in A Clutch of Constables. Painter and sculptor Agatha Troy decides to take a cruise on the Zodiac, but she soon finds that this isn’t going to be the relaxing and enjoyable trip she’d planned. First, one of the passengers is left behind and is later found murdered. Then another passenger is drowned. In the meantime and possibly related to the murders, Troy finds that an international art forger known only as the Jampot may very well be among those aboard the ship. As Troy gets more deeply involved in the mystery, she writes letters to her husband Inspector Roderick Alleyn and in them she tells him what’s happened. In an interesting plot strategy, Alleyn uses those letters to share the crimes and their solutions to a group of students in a class he’s teaching.

John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee lives aboard a boat called The Busted Flush. As we learn in The Deep Blue Goodbye, he won the boat in a poker game (hence its name). McGee calls himself a ‘salvage consultant.’ What that really means is that he helps people recover what’s been stolen from them. For instance, in The Deep Blue Goodbye he agrees to track down something that was stolen from his client Catherine Kerr by the father of her son Davie. The big challenge at first is that Kerr’s not even sure what was stolen. McGee finds out what was taken and is able to track down both the stolen property and the thief. McGee takes in payment half of whatever is recovered for his clients and they are usually more than grateful to pay his fee. What’s interesting is that McGee could probably afford to live in a house if he wanted, but he doesn’t. He prefers his boat and his life on the sea. In several places in that novel (and in the other novels in the series too), we see McGee working on his boat. He paints, cleans, makes repairs and so on. That side of him adds depth to the character.

Carole Sutton comes from a family of boat builders, so it’s only natural that her love of boats should come through in her novels. In Ferryman, we meet Steve Pengelly, who moves to Guernsey to start over, as the saying goes. There, he meets Angela DuPont, who connects him with the seller of a beautiful thirty-eight-foot sailboat that Pengelly happily buys. His new life falls apart when Angela disappears and he is arrested and tried for her murder. There’s forensic evidence against him too and he is in fact convicted and imprisoned. Then, two years later, Angela’s body washes ashore. What’s shocking is that it’s proven that she died only a short time before her body was discovered. This means that Pengelly wasn’t guilty of the crime. Now DI Alan Grimstone has to go back to the beginning to find out the truth of the matter.

In Sutton’s And the Devil Laughed, DS Hannah Ford returns to work after taking some leave for post-traumatic stress. She’s assigned to go to Draper’s Wharf on Australia’s Parramata River to investigate possible drugs activity in the area. Posing as a journalist she settles in and begins to get a sense of the place. She soon discovers that there’s been a recent tragedy in town. Local barmaid Victoria Brown was raped and murdered. Her killer hasn’t been caught, so Ford begins to ask questions about the case even though she hasn’t been officially asked to do so. Part of the reason for her interest in the case comes from her desire to prove herself fit for work. Another part comes from the fact that she was distantly related to the victim. As Ford investigates this case as well as the drugs smuggling, we get a real feel for the local boating and boat-building culture.

Boats have long been used for smuggling of course, and we get a real sense of that in Jeffrey Stone’s Play Him Again, which takes place in 1920’s Los Angeles during the years of Prohibition in the U.S.  In that novel we meet Matt ‘Hud’ Hudson, who makes his money smuggling alcohol on his boat The River Belle. His dream is to become a film-maker in the newly-developing Hollywood scene and at the moment, he’s using his smuggling income until he can. When his friend Danny is murdered, Hud decides to find out who the murderer is. He soon finds out though that he’s up against several forces. First, there are rival smuggling groups and a large criminal gang that’s moving into the area. There’s also the fact that the smuggling Hud’s doing is illegal, so the police aren’t going to be co-operative. But Hud keeps looking for answers and he discovers how Danny’s murder is related to the ‘rum-running’ and to the developing film industry. There are plenty of scenes aboard The River Belle in this novel, so we get a chance to see what a boat that’s been refitted for smuggling is like.

Of course more than just about anything else, boats are used for fishing and that’s the focus of Domingo Villar’s Death on a Galician Shore. Vigo police inspector Leo Caldas and his team are called in when the body of local fisherman Justo Castelo is discovered. At first it looks as though he committed suicide. But little clues suggest that he might have been murdered, so Caldas and his assistant Rafael Estevez look into the case further. As they find out about Castelo’s background, they discover that Castelo’s murder may be related to a 1996 tragedy in which Castelo and two other fishermen José Arias and Marcos Valverde nearly drowned while they were aboard a fishing vessel. Their captain Antonio Sousa did drown and none of the survivors has been the same since then. Caldas and Estevez have to learn exactly what happened that night to get to the truth about Castelo’s death. This novel shows readers what the fisherman’s life is like, from early-morning fish markets to sudden and terrible storms to building and maintaining fishing boats.

We also see the fishing life depicted in Sandy Curtis’ Deadly Tide. Alan ‘Tug’ Bretton is the captain of Sea Mistress, a trawler based in Brisbane. He’s accused of murdering Ewan McKay, the deckhand from another boat. Bretton claims that he’s innocent, but all of the evidence is against him. There’s also a possibility that Bretton and Sea Mistress may be connected to the drugs trade. Bretton’s daughter Samantha ‘Sam’ believes her father is innocent and she wants to find out who killed McKay. Besides, if the family-owned trawler doesn’t go out to sea, the ship may be lost to creditors. So Bretton reluctantly turns the skipper position over to his daughter. Sam begins both to start the fishing season and to try to find out who killed Ewan McKay. What she doesn’t know is that Chayse Jarrett, the deckhand she’s just hired, is an undercover cop who’s been assigned to the McKay murder too. As the two of them, first separately and later together, investigate the murder, we also see what it’s like to live on and operate a fishing trawler.

Whether they’re used for work, sport, relaxation or smuggling, boats and boating have been an essential part of our lives for millennia. Their fascination still lures a lot of people. Do you see the appeal? I know I’ve probably not mentioned the boat-related crime novels you like best because there’s not enough space to mention them all. So now it’s your turn. Which gaps have I left?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s The Downeaster ‘Alexa.’

Where do We Go From Here, Now That All of the Children Are Growin’ Up*

An excellent post from Bernadette at Reactions to Reading has got me thinking about one of the most fundamental changes in our society in recent decades: people are living longer. Go ahead, check out Bernadette’s post. I’ll wait. You really should follow her superb blog if you’re a crime fiction fan.

…Back now? Thanks! Today it’s a fact of life that people routinely live into their 80’s and beyond. And if you add to that the ageing of the ‘Baby Boomers,’ it all means that many, many working adults have to negotiate completely new relationships with their ageing parents. Most 60-plus folks don’t want to be ‘put out to pasture.’ Yes, they may be less physically fit than they were but that doesn’t mean they want to be left on life’s sidelines. Most of them want to do things with their lives and for the most part, they can. At the same time it’s hard to escape the fact that ageing brings with it physical and other challenges. For their part, adult children have to learn to see their parents differently. Yes, they are still ‘Mum and Dad,’ but they are more vulnerable in some ways. At the same time, any adult child of an ageing parent can tell you that parents don’t want to be condescended to, ‘hovered over,’ or ‘managed.’ And one can’t blame them. They are still mature adults. It’s an entirely new world out there for adult children and their parents and because it’s a relatively recent phenomenon, we aren’t always really sure how to handle it. But it is a reality so of course we see it in crime fiction too.

Just so you know, this isn’t going to be a post about elderly sleuths. Not really. There are plenty of them though and if you’re looking for some ideas, please feel free to email me (margotkinberg(at)gmail(dot)com) and I’ll try to help. But we do see a lot of adult child/elderly parent relationships in crime fiction.

Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander faces exactly this kind of challenge. He’s a busy police inspector in the town of Ystad. As it is he has a somewhat troubled relationship with his father because they are in some ways very different people (fans will know though that they also have some eerie similarities). Wallander’s father for instance never wanted him to be a cop and in that way he’s very disappointed with his son. As the series begins (with Faceless Killers), Wallander is facing life on his own after his wife Mona left him. He’s also involved in a very difficult and complex murder investigation when an elderly couple is found murdered at their farm. He also has to negotiate a relationship with his father which isn’t easy to do. On the one hand, the two aren’t close. On the other, Wallander is concerned about his father, who lives alone and doesn’t take care of himself. The way Wallander tries to balance visiting his father and doing his best as a son with his own busy life forms an important thread through some of the Wallander novels. So does the tricky balance of trying to respect what his father wants while at the same time acknowledging the fact that his father can’t take care of himself any more.

Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Red Clover is the chief of police of the small town of Bradley, North Carolina. In general the town isn’t what you’d call crime-ridden but his job, his wife Elaine and their son Jack keep him busy. Red loves his mother Myrtle, a retired English teacher who now writes a column for the local newspaper. But he has his own ideas about what her retirement ought to be like. He envisions her as volunteering at the local church, watching her TV shows and in general, relaxing and enjoying retirement. Myrtle on the other hand is still very much interested in life. She doesn’t want to be ‘put out to pasture’ and she certainly doesn’t want to be ‘managed.’ So in Pretty is as Pretty Dies she completely ignores her son’s pleas to stay out of the investigation when Parke Stockard is murdered. Stockard is a malicious and spiteful real estate developer whom no-one exactly mourns when her body is found in the church. Myrtle can’t resist the chance to find out who the killer is, if for no other reason than that she wants to prove that she can still hold her own in life. Her relationship with her son is an important thread through these novels.

Elizabeth George’s Sergeant Barbara Havers has a very difficult relationship with her mother. Havers is a busy police officer whose job requires odd hours and lots of time. Her mother however has been diagnosed with dementia and can’t live very easily on her own. And yet Havers’ mother wants to live in the house she’s always had. She doesn’t want to be ‘managed,’ either. So Havers starts out with looking for a caregiver for her mother. That works well enough at first but as her mother’s condition deteriorates things get more difficult. In For the Sake of Elena, Havers has to balance some difficult choices about her mother with an equally-difficult investigation into the death of Elena Weaver, who was a student at Cambridge when she was murdered during her morning run. In this novel there’s a really interesting and powerful discussion of what it’s like to be an adult child who has to take painful decisions that often lead to guilt. We also see how difficult those choices can be from a logistical standpoint, to say nothing of the finances involved.

Domingo Villar’s Vigo police inspector Leo Caldas has a somewhat easier time working out a relationship with his father. Caldas’ father is still in fairly good health and is living out something he’s wanted to do since the death of his wife. He’s a vintner who’s developed his skill to the point where he’s making some decent wine. So Caldas doesn’t (yet) have to deal with difficult decisions about care for his father, or managing his father’s financial matters. But it’s still a somewhat delicate relationship at times. Caldas’ father loves his son and wants him to be well and take care of himself. And yet he knows that Caldas is an adult who doesn’t want his parents managing his life. For his part Caldas knows that his father is getting older and won’t be able to manage the vineyard alone indefinitely. He gets concerned about his father living alone and trying to manage things without a lot of help. And yet he also knows that his father wouldn’t consider moving to Vigo – the pace of life is too fast for him there. Caldas’ interactions with his father form a really fascinating part of this series (at least in my opinion).

One of the fictional adult child/older parent relationships I like best (so do feel free to differ with me if you do) is the relationship between Tarquin Hall’s Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri and his mother Mummy-ji. Puri loves his mother and treats her with the respect that a ‘properly brought up’ son should. It’s obvious that he cares very much about her. At the same time though, he wants her to live the ‘typical’ (if there is one) life of an ageing, retired woman. He most certainly doesn’t want her getting involved in any investigation. That however doesn’t suit Mummy-ji at all. And as we learn in The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing she’s quite an able detective. In that novel she and her daughter-in-law Rumpi (Puri’s wife) attend a ‘kitty party’ where all of the guests put money into a kitty. A winner’s name is drawn and that guest takes home all of the money. During this particular party, a thief steals the kitty. But Mummy-ji finds a very clever way to identify the culprit. Mummy-ji lives her life exactly as she chooses without appearing to do so and the way Puri deals with that is an important ongoing thread through this series. So is their overall relationship.

There’s also a terrific depiction of an adult child/older parent relationship in Anthony Bidulka’s series featuring Saskatoon private investigator Russell Quant. For as long as Quant can remember his Ukrainian mother Kay has lived on the family farm in rural Saskatchewan. His relationship with her has always gone by certain ‘rules,’ but those ‘rules’ change in Flight of Aquavit when she decides to spend Christmas with him instead of with either of his siblings. The two hadn’t been very close but they are re-introduced to each other when she moves in for a few weeks. On the one hand Kay wants to take care of her son. She also doesn’t want to be beholden to him. So she cooks, cleans and so on. On the other she has her own ideas about what counts as ‘a decent meal’ and what counts as ‘clean’ and they aren’t always the same as Quant’s are. For his part, he suddenly finds himself in the position of being responsible for his mother’s well-being in a way he never was before. It’s clear that they love each other but their relationship has to be re-negotiated as the series goes on.

Gone are the days when most people died in their 60’s. Today adult children and their parents have to decide how they’ll work out their relationships. It’s an ongoing process and there aren’t a lot of ‘rules’ for how it should be done. That’s what makes it so challenging and so interesting.

 

Thanks Bernadette  for the inspiration. I know your post wasn’t exactly about ageing parents and their adult children but as always, you got me thinking. I’m grateful.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Alan Parson Project’s Games People Play.

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.