We’ve Been Through Some Things Together*

The university experience involves a lot more than just going to class and studying for exams. During people’s years at school, they often form very strong bonds with a group of other students and become close friends. Those friendships may start as bonds of convenience, forged because of proximity, but they can last a lifetime. It makes sense too, especially for young people who go away to university rather than live at home. There’s something special about the bonds we form with university friends; if you’ve been to college or university, you probably know what I mean. Those are the people you turn to for advice, for coffee, for lecture notes, for a study group, for beer money and for music, among other things. And all sometimes at two o’clock in the morning. So it’s no wonder that we see those kinds of friendships come up in crime fiction.

In Agatha Christie’s Hickory Dickory Death, Hercule Poirot gets involved in the lives of several university students. His ever-efficient secretary Miss Lemon asks him to investigate a series of odd occurrences at a hostel managed by her sister Mrs. Hubbard. For one thing, some unusual things have gone missing, and there seems no logical explanation. Intrigued, Poirot visits the hostel where he makes the acquaintance of several of the young people. While he’s there, one of the residents Celia Austin admits that she’s responsible for most of the thefts. At first it looks as though the matter has been settled. But then, two nights later, Celia is poisoned. Now that it’s clear that something more than simple petty theft is going on, Poirot works with Inspector Sharpe to find out what has been going on at the hostel. In this novel, we get a look at some of the ins and outs of the relationships among the young people. Some of them are friends; some are most emphatically not. One couple even pairs up in the end. It’s a really interesting portrait of the kind of bonds that can form during those years.

We see a bit of the long-term friendships that can evolve from university bonds in Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night. Mystery novelist Harriet Vane receives an invitation to attend the Gaudy Dinner and festivities at her alma mater Shrewsbury College, Oxford. At first she’s unwilling to go. She’s recently gotten some public notoriety (Sayers fans will remember these events from Strong Poison) and isn’t sure how she’ll be received. But this letter comes from an old friend Mary Stokes, with whom Harriet became very close while she was at school. Mary very much wants to see her old friend again, and this is what finally persuades Harriet to attend. She goes back to Shrewsbury and is happily surprised at the warm reception she gets. And that’s what I mean about college friends; the real ones welcome us, even after a long time, without judging. The Gaudy Day celebrations go off well and Harriet returns to her home, glad that she attended. Then a few months later she receives a letter from the Dean of the College. It seems some vandalism and other troubling events have been going on at the school, and the Dean would like the matter resolved and the person responsible stopped without involving the police. Harriet agrees and travels back to Shrewsbury under the guise of doing research for one of her novels. In the end, and after being attacked herself, she finds out that these incidents have to do with an old grudge someone has held.

The relationships among a group of friends play a major role in Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s Last Rituals.  Reykjavík attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir gets a call from Amelia Guntlieb, whose son Harald has been found murdered on the campus of the university at Reykjavík, where he was studying. The police are convinced that Harald’s friend Hugi Thórisson is the murderer and in fact, he’s been arrested for the crime. But Amelia doesn’t think that Hugi Thórisson killed her son.  She wants Thóra to investigate the murder and clear Hugi’s name. Thóra agrees and works with the Guntlieb’s family banker Matthew Reich to find out who the killer is. Her starting point is the group of people with whom Harald spent most of his time – his student friends. During her interviews with them we can see that they’ve formed a very tight bond that’s important to them. Without spoiling the story I think I can say that that bond has a lot to do with one of the important aspects of this investigation.

In Gail Bowen’s A Killing Spring, her sleuth Joanne Kilbourn investigates a murder that deeply affects the university where she teaches. Reed Gallagher, who’s Head of the School of Journalism, is murdered and his body discovered in a seedy apartment in an even seedier neighbourhood. Kilbourn is drawn into the mystery when Inspector Alex Kequahtooway from the Regina Police Force calls her with the news. She and Alex are already friends (you can follow up on that story in A Colder Kind of Death), and he wants someone to be with him to break the news to the victim’s widow Julie. Kilbourn already knows Julie (although you could hardly call them friends), so she agrees to go along. The police and Kilbourn look into Gallagher’s relationships with his wife, his colleagues, his friends and his students to find out who would have wanted to kill him. One thing that Kilbourn discovers is a possible connection between the murder and the odd behavior of one of Gallagher’s students Kellee Savage. She has her own personal issues but after the murder, her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. Then one night after a trip to a bar with some of her classmates, Kellee disappears. When she’s later found dead Kilbourn knows she’ll have to find out the truth about that night and about Kellee from those friends. As she interviews them, we get a look at the kinds of relationships and friendships that develop among classmates. Her college friends are not the most important characters in this novel but they do play an important role in her share of the story.

There are also lots of crime novels in which we see connections among former university friends, even years after they’re no longer in school together. That’s what happens in Kishwar Desai’s Witness the Night, in which social worker Simran Singh gets drawn into the case of fourteen-year-old Durga Atwal, who apparently killed thirteen members of her family before setting her house on fire. There are signs though that Durga was raped and bound, so it’s quite possible that someone else might have been responsible. Simran’s old university friend Amarjit is now Inspector General for the state of Punjab, and he wants Simran to work with Durga and try to get her to talk about what happened on that awful night. It’s not long before Simran discovers that the wealthy and well-connected ‘respectable’ Atwal family was hiding some ugly secrets. Simran’s friendship with Amarjit is not the reason for the murders. But it plays an important role in her involvement with the case, and it’s a good example of the way university friendships can endure.

 

I’m fortunate enough to have a group of very good friends from university. I know that if I ever showed up at any of their doors at two in the morning and in need, they would take me in, no questions asked. Even after all these years. This post is dedicated to them.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line Neil Young’s Long May You Run.

Some Fairly Safe Bets…

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

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

 

Blunt Force Trauma and ID

 

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

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

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

 

The Fate of the Blackmailer

 

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

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

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

 

Danger For the Sleuth

 

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

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

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

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

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Arsenic

Well, I’ve bought my ticket and packed my bags and I’m off on another thrilling and chilling journey through the alphabet with the 2013 Crime Fiction Alphabet meme. I am delighted to be a part of this meme, so capably led by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. I’m sure she’ll keep us safe throughout the journey, won’t you Kerrie? Won’t you?????

We start our journey of course with the letter A and my contribution is…arsenic.  Arsenic is closely associated with classic and Golden Age crime fiction, but it also turns up in more modern crime fiction too. Today of course it’s easy to test for arsenic, but that doesn’t mean it’s never used. Arsenic used to be readily available in a variety of products and its symptoms are similar to those of several gastric disorders, so at least in earlier eras it wasn’t always easy to identify arsenic poisoning. And even now it’s not immediately suspected. Little wonder it was the ‘poison of choice’ for a long time.

For instance, in Agatha Christei’s 4:50 From Paddington (AKA What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!), Elspeth McGillicuddy is on her way by train to St. Mary Mead to visit her friend Miss Marple. Another train passes in the same direction and Mrs. McGillicuddy happens to glance through her window into the other train. What she sees horrifies her: a man is strangling a woman. She alerts the conductor and later the station authorities but no-one believes her. Even the police don’t believe her; after all, no-one has reported a missing woman and no dead body has been found. The only person who does believe Mrs. McGillicuddy is Miss Marple. She does her own research and deduces where the body must be: on the grounds of Rutherford Hall, the home of the Crackenthorpe family. So she arranges with her friend professional housekeeper Lucy Eyelesbarrow for Lucy to take a job at Rutherford Hall and do some sleuthing. Sure enough, the woman’s body is discovered and the police are called in. Since the body was found on the Crackenthorpes’ property, each member of the family comes in for suspicion. Then one day Lucy cooks a lunch that seems to sicken everyone. It’s discovered that the food contained arsenic, but the dose was small enough that slowly, everyone begins to feel better. Then, one of the family members suddenly worsens and dies from the arsenic. Miss Marple puts that event together with the earlier murder and figures out who the killer is and what the motive is.

Dorohy Sayers’ Strong Poison also features arsenic. Mystery novelist Harriet Vane is on trial for the poisoning murder of her former lover Philip Boyes. She had motive too as they had quarreled recently. She also had the means; her explanation is that she had purchased arsenic for research for a new novel. But the Crown is convinced that she intended to use the arsenic as a murder weapon. Lord Peter Wimsey attends the trial and becomes smitten with the defendant. In fact he determines to clear her name so he can marry her. When the jury can’t agree on a verdict, a new trial is arranged and Wimsey gets his chance. With help from his friend Katherine Climpson and his valet Mervyn Bunter, Wimsey finds out who really poisoned Philip Boyes and why.

In Rex Stout’s novella Poison à la Carte, Nero Wolfe gets a visit from millionaire Lewis Hewitt, a former client. Hewitt is a member of a gourmet group called The Ten for Aristology, and he wants to ‘borrow’ Wolfe’s chef Fritz Brenner to cook the group’s annual dinner. Wolfe and Brenner agree and the meal is duly planned and prepared. At the meal, to which Wolfe and Archie Goodwin are both invited, the guests are served by a group of Broadway actresses who are called, for this occasion, the Hebes. Each guest gets individual service from one of the Hebes. Then suddenly one of the guests Vincent Pyle dies of what turns out to be arsenic poisoning. Fritz of course is suspected but it soon comes out that there are several other suspects. Pyle was a Broadway ‘angel’ who knew more than one of the Hebes. And the other members of the Ten for Aristology aren’t exactly above suspicion either. In the end Wolfe figures out who had and took the opportunity to poison Pyle’s food.

Dashiell Hammett’s short story Fly Paper begins when Major Waldo Hambleton hires the Continental Detective Agency to track down his missing daughter Sue. Sue has been mixed up for some time with very shady people and has basically cut off communication with her family. But her father is wealthy and wants to know that she is safe. Then, Hambleton gets a request for money from his daughter and the agency sends one of its detectives to the address mentioned in the letter. The address turns out to be that of Joseph ‘Holy Joe’ Wales, whom Sue has recently begun seeing. That’s how the detective discovers that Sue has also been involved with a thug named ‘Babe’ McCloor. When the PI finally gets to Sue’s own place it’s too late; she is dead of arsenic poisoning. Now the case has changed from a missing person’s case to a case of possible murder – or was it suicide?

One of the more famous short stories featuring arsenic is Roald Dahl’s The Landlady. In that story, Billy Weaver has just arrived in Bath to start a new job after a trip from London. He’s on his way to spend the night at the Bell and Dragon when he notices a small bed-and-breakfast residence. On impulse he stops in. His landlady makes him welcome and although she seems a little eccentric, she also seems pleasant enough and the lodgings are comfortable and welcoming. So Weaver decides to stay there. Then as he’s signing the guest book, he makes an odd discovery. There are two other signatures there that somehow seem familiar to him. Bit by bit he works out who they are, but by then, well…read the story for yourself.

Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher has to deal with a case involving arsenic in Cocaine Blues. She travels from London, where she’s been living, back to her native Melbourne at the request of an acquaintance Colonel Harper and his wife. They’re concerned about their daughter Lydia, who hasn’t been at all well lately. What’s more, they suspect that their son-in-law is shady enough to be up to no good. So they ask Fisher to look into the matter. She agrees and when she gets to Melbourne, she starts circulating among the social group that includes Lydia. Slowly she uncovers what’s really going on with Lydia and her husband, and that it involves arsenic. She also finds out how that case is linked to illegal cocaine trafficking.

And then there’s Barry Maitland’s Dark Mirror. In that novel, KI Kathy Kolla and DS David Brock investigate the case of Marion Summers, a young undergraduate student who suddenly collapses and dies at the London Library in the West End. As they begin their work they find out several unusual things about the victim. She’d left – escaped, really – a difficult home life to try to make it on her own in London. That of course brings up the question of whether someone in her family might be involved in her death and the detectives discover some unhappy truths about the family. Then there’s Marion’s research into Victorian artist Gabriel Rossetti. At first the fact of her research doesn’t seem to mean much beyond explaining her presence at the library. But then the coroner’s report shows that she died by arsenic poisoning. In today’s world that’s unusual although it was common in the Victorian Era. So Kolla and Brock have to look through Marion’s research work and life as a student as well as her complicated personal life to find out who the killer is.

 

See what I mean? Arsenic as a theme runs through a lot of crime fiction; I’ve just scratched the surface here really. While you think of your own suggestions, may I get you a cup of coffee??
 

As you can tell, this is a really exciting journey! Want to come along?? You know you do. Get your own ticket and join the meme right here.

Oh, Well! Just Leave Me My Coffee!*

Today (or yesterday, depending on when you read this) would have been Johann Sebastian Bach’s 328^th birthday. That may be interesting in itself to people who love classical music and Bach’s work in particular. But why mention it on this crime fictional blog? Because classical music (and Bach’s work) feature in crime fiction. And that’s not surprising considering the profound influence that Bach’s music has had both in the world of composing and performing and in the larger world. Not everyone has really listened to Bach’s work, but most people at least know the name. That’s how much of an impact he had. So it makes sense that we’d see classical music, including Bach’s work, in crime fiction.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Curtain, we learn that Styles Court (which Christie fans will know is also the setting for The Mysterious Affair at Styles) has been turned into a Guest House. Hercule Poirot writes to Hastings asking him to come to Styles Court and Hastings complies. When Hastings gets there, he discovers that one of the seemingly inoffensive guests may be a killer who has already gotten away with five murders. Poirot’s own health is failing, so he wants Hastings to be his ‘eyes and ears’ and help find the killer, whom Poirot identifies only as X. While they’re investigating, another murder occurs and it seems that X has struck again. Hastings uses Poirot’s guidance and, after several neat plot twists, finds out who X really is. One of the other guests at Styles Court is Elizabeth Cole, who as it turns out knows some interesting history about some of the rest of the guests, and has some secrets of her own. In one scene,

 

‘Poirot had been brought down…and been ensconced in the drawing room. Here, Elizabeth Cole had joined him and was playing the piano to him. She had a pleasant touch and played Bach and Mozart – both favourite composers of my friend’s.’

 

The scene in which Bach is played doesn’t solve the case. But it’s an interesting glimpse of Poirot’s character.

Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey enjoys Bach’s music, too. Both Whose Body? and Clouds of Witness include scenes in which Wimsey plays or whistles Bach. A different opinion, though, is expressed in Have His Carcase, in which Wimsey investigates the murder of Paul Alexis. Harriet Vane is taking a hiking holiday near Wilvercombe when she finds Alexis’ body. It turns out that Alexis was a professional dance partner at a nearby hotel, so Vane and later Lord Peter Wimsey look there for suspects. At one point, Wimsey is talking with Henry Weldon, the son of Alexis’ fiancée. Here’s what Weldon has to say about a concert he attended:

 

‘…I wasted a good bit of time listening to a tom-fool classical concert – my God! Bach and stuff at eleven in the morning!’

 

Of course, Wimsey differs with Weldon’s view of Bach…

We also see the power of classical music (including Bach’s work) in Elizabeth George’s A Traitor to Memory. Twenty-eight-year-old Gideon Davies is a musical genius – a world-class violinist. Then one frightening night, he finds himself unable to play. After recovering from his initial panic, Davies decides to undergo psychotherapy to find out what is blocking him from making music. Here is one of the things he says to his therapist about music:

 

‘I associate everyone with music…Dad is Bach, the solo violin sonata in G minor.’  

 

At the same as Davies is mentally digging through his past to find out what is behind his music block, he has to face another tragedy. His mother Eugenie is killed one night in what looks like a hit-and-run accident. Inspector Thomas ‘Tommy’ Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers investigate and find that both that death and Gabriel Davies’ psychological difficulties are related to the twenty-year-old drowning death of Davies’ two-year-old sister Sonia. Although Bach per se is not the reason for what happens in the story, there is an important thread in it of Davies’ way of thinking musically.

Peter Robinson’s Inspector Alan Banks is also a fan of Bach’s music. As we learn in Bad Boys, Banks’ mobile ‘phone plays Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 when he gets a call. In that novel, Banks is away on holiday, so it’s Annie Cabot who takes on the case when Juliet Doyle comes to the police station to report that her daughter Erin has a gun. It turns out that the gun is connected with Erin’s boyfriend Jaff, who is definitely not the kind of person parents want their children to bring home as dates. What’s worse, Banks’ own daughter Tracy is Erin’s best friend and knows full well the kind of person Jaff is. When Jaff talks her into going on an adventure with him, she’s excited at first, but everything soon gets out of control. Here is a bit of the description of Banks’ flight into London’s Heathrow Airport after his holiday:

 

‘…he took out his iPod and listened to Angela Hewitt playing Bach’s Keyboard Concertos…The music came out loud and clear while everything else was a distant background hum. Somehow Bach managed to calm and relax him on a flight in a way that most other music didn’t.’

 

And that’s just as well.  When Banks returns home, he’s got to cope with a fatal accident, the shooting of a colleague and the fact that his own daughter has been taken hostage.

And then there’s Louise Penny’s A Rule Against Murder. In that novel, Inspector Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie go on their annual wedding anniversary trip to Manoir Bellechasse for what is supposed to be a relaxing getaway. It turns out to be quite different. Also staying at the lodge is the Finney family: Thomas and Sandra Finney, Thomas’ elderly parents and his sisters Julia and Marianna and Marianna’s child. We soon learn that Thomas Finney has musical talent. Here’s just a bit of a scene that takes place in the lodge’s Great Room where there is a piano:

 

‘Thomas sat on the bench, raised his hands, and sent the strains of Bach lifting into the night air.
‘He plays beautifully,’ said Julia. ‘I’d forgotten.’
Gamache agreed.

 

It’s certainly not because of Bach, but all is hardly well with the Finney family and their dysfunction becomes more obvious as the reunion goes on. Then, there’s a murder. As Gamache investigates, he also finds an unexpected connection to the rural Québec town of Three Pines, and a relationship of this case to someone Penny fans know well.

What about you? Do you listen to Bach? If you do, which is your favourite piece?

 

ps. Thanks to ClassicalArchives.com for the terrific image. Check out their treasure trove of all things classical music.
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the translation of a line from Bach’s Coffeehouse Cantata. Really, did I have a choice?

I Admire You so Much*

Writers put a lot of themselves into their work so it means a great deal when people like what they write and say so. Praise from fellow writers has a special meaning because fellow writers truly understand what it’s like to create a story. And when that praise comes from a fellow writer whose work you also admire? That’s happened to me once and without gushing I’ll have to content myself with saying, ‘Wow!’  That’s why I was really interested when about a month and a half ago I had a suggestion from Bryan at The Vagrant Mood about doing a post on authors and the work they admire. Before I go on, I should tell you that The Vagrant Mood is a blog well worth following for commentary on books, poetry and writing in general. G’head – give it a try.

Bryan’s well-taken point was that it’s very interesting to learn about authors’ favourite writers. It shows something about both the author and the writers whose work s/he admires. For example, Agatha Christie was said to be a great admirer of Elizabeth Daly’s novels. Of course there are differences between the two writers’ characters, styles and so on. However, Daly’s Henry Gamadge is, like Christie’s own Miss Marple, an amateur sleuth. Daly’s plots are different to Christie’s but the plotting is one of the main elements in Daly’s work, just as it is in Christie’s. It’s not difficult to see why Christie liked Daly’s work.

Christie fans will know that she was also a fan of P.G. Wodehouse’s novels. In fact, Hallowe’en Party is dedicated

 

‘To P. G. Wodehouse–whose books and stories have brightened my life for many years. Also, to show my pleasure in his having been kind enough to tell me he enjoyed my books.’

 

The dedication also shows that this admiration was mutual.

Tony Hillerman’s novels featuring Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee have won millions of fans. But HIllerman himself had a list of authors whose work he admired. For example, he was a fan of Margaret Coel, whose Vicky Holden/Father John O’Malley series takes place on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation. Like Hillerman, Coel has great respect for the indigenous people who feature in her novels (in Coel’s case it’s the Arapaho people). And it’s easy to see why Hillerman admired Coel’s skilled depiction of the land on which this series takes place. Readers get an authentic sense of context and setting in these novels.

A great number of people are fans of Michael Connelly’s work (I’m one of them). And it shouldn’t be surprising that his admirers include some well-known authors who are talented in their own right. For instance, Connelly and Robert Crais are mutual admirers They’ve even had their sleuths pay ‘visits’ to each other’s series. Crais’ PI sleuth Elvis Cole has a cameo appearance in Connelly’s Lost Light and in turn, Harry Bosch ‘stops in’ in Crais’ The Last Detective.

Another famous fan of Michael Connelly’s work is James Lee Burke, who calls Connelly,

 

‘…one of the best.’

 

Burke is also, by the way, a fan of James M. Cain and Dennis Lehane. He’s also said that Elizabeth George

 

‘…writes some really nice prose.’

 

For her part, Goerge has said that she is an admirer of the work of John Fowles.

As I said, Connelly has millions of admirers. He also has his favourites. Among them are Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald and it’s not hard to see the connection. Like Connelly, both authors show Los Angeles at its best and its seamy, gritty worst. They also feature essentially good characters caught up in a sometimes corrupt system.

Ruth Rendell also has won millions of fans both under her own name and as Barbara Vine. She in turn has her own favourites. For instance, she is a fan of Iris Murdoch’s work. She’s also said that P.D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh is

 

‘…the most intelligent detective in contemporary fiction.’  

 

Rendell is also said to greatly admire Charles Dickens. Granted Dickens isn’t usually considered to be a crime fiction writer. But his novels do address questions of crime, law and order and justice.

For her part, P.D. James has said that she’s been very much influenced by the work of Dorothy Sayers, among other authors. And she has been a profound influence herself on many writers.

Any talented author will tell you that part of good writing is lots of reading. So it makes a great deal of sense that the best crime writers would have a list of authors whose work they admire. And it’s a truly special thing when the admiration is mutual.

Now it’s your turn. Do you see the influence of certain writers on the work of others? If you’re a writer, which authors do you admire? Do they influence your work?

Thanks, Bryan, for the excellent suggestion!

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Rivers Cuomo.