The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Cars

Well, let’s C…I think the 2013 Crime Fiction Alphabet meme has reached – yes, it has reached – the third stop on our crime-ridden journey. Thanks as always to Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise for being such an excellent tour guide. My contribution (appropriate, I think, for a journey) is cars.

We all know that cars can be very dangerous. That’s why there are laws against drink driving, mobile ‘phone use while driving, and speeding. It’s why we’re always told to buckle up and stay alert. But if you look at crime fiction, you also see that cars aren’t just deadly because of accidents. They can be very effective murder weapons.

Agatha Christie mentions car-related deaths a few times in her work. One incident is part of the plot of And Then There Were None (AKA Ten Little Indians). A group of people is invited for a stay at Indian Island, off the Devon Coast. For a variety of reasons they all accept. When they arrive, they’re a little surprised that their host has not yet made an appearance. Still, they settle in. That night after dinner, each guest is accused of being responsible for the death of at least one other person. Everyone is shocked at this accusation and at first there’s a round of denials. But then one of the guests Anthony Marston suddenly dies of what turns out to be poison. Later that night there’s another death. Now the guests begin to see that they’ve been lured to the island by a murderer. As one by one the guests die, the survivors try to discover who the murderer is and stay alive. And what was the death of which Anthony Marston was accused? A hit-and-run car crash that killed two children.

Mickey Spillane’s My Gun is Quick also features deadly use of a car. In that novel, PI Mike Hammer is in a coffee shop when he meets Nancy Sanford, a young woman down on her luck who’s turned to prostitution. Hammer gives her some money to try to help her escape ‘the life’ and it seems that she will be able to start over. A few days later, though, Hammer learns that Nancy has been killed in a hit-and-run incident. There is no evidence that she was murdered but Hammer doesn’t believe her death was an accident. So he begins to investigate. He discovers that Nancy was trapped in a major prostitution ring. Before she was killed, she was collecting evidence against the ring leaders in hopes that they would be arrested. Needless to say, Hammer takes it on himself to finish what Nancy Sandford started.

In Elizabeth George’s A Traitor to Memory, twenty-eight-year-old violin virtuoso Gideon Davies is terrified one night when he finds himself unable to play. He seeks out psychological help to try to figure out what is causing this block and starts digging into his past. In the meantime, his mother Eugenie faces a very ‘here and now’ danger. One night, she is killed in what looks like a hit-and-run accident. As Inspector Thomas Lynley and Sergeant Barbara Havers soon discover, this was no accident. Eugenie Davis’ death is related to her son’s inability to play, and both are related to a long-ago tragedy in which two-year-old Sonia, Gideon’s sister, was drowned. At the time of her death, her nanny Katja Wolff was imprisoned for the drowning and has recently been released. As the novel evolves we see how this too relates to the rest of the story.

Melbourne activist Anne Jeppeson finds out the hard way just how dangerous cars can be in Peter Temple’s Bad Debts. She is killed in a hit-and-run incident and Danny McKillop is arrested for it. There’s a lot of evidence against him, too. After serving eight years in prison, he’s released and one of the first things he does is contact the lawyer who defended him Jack Irish. Irish was, to put it mildly, not at his best at the time of the trial; he was using alcohol to ease the pain of his wife Isabel’s murder and did a poor job of defending McKillop. So when McKillop calls him, Irish feels a sense of obligation. But by the time he gets around to meeting with his former client it’s too late; McKillop has been murdered. Irish decides to find out why and by whom, and slowly he pieces together what happened. McKillop was framed for Anne Jeppeson’s murder and the truth about what happened to both victims is bound up with politics, greed and corruption.

And then there’s Phil Smedway, whose life and death are part of the plot of Catherine O’Flynn’s The News Where You Are. Smedway was a beloved regional TV presenter who ‘hit it big.’ He was also a mentor to his successor Frank Allcroft. Then one day Smedway was killed in a hit-and-run incident during his regular jog. Everyone, including the police, thinks that this was a tragic accident. But Allcroft begins to wonder when he is drawn to the place where Smedway died. The road at the site is straight and clear of obstacles, so it would have been easy for even a drunken driver to see and avoid Smedway. What’s more, it wasn’t raining or snowing the weather wasn’t a factor. Allcroft decides to start asking questions about Smedway and his death. As he slowly finds out the answers, he also learns quite a bit about Smedway’s life.

Oh, and lest you think that the only danger from cars comes from hit-and-run incidents, consider Ellery Queen’s The Dragon’s Teeth. In that novel, wealthy and eccentric Cadmus Cole hires Ellery Queen and Beau Rummell, who’ve just opened up a detective agency. Cole wants to find his only living relations. One is Margo Cole, who’s been living in Paris. The other is Kerrie Shawn, an aspiring actress who’s trying to make a success of herself in Hollywood. The two women are no sooner found than word comes that Cadmus Cole has died at sea. According to the provisions of Cole’s will, both Kerrie and Margo will have to move into Cole’s upstate New York mansion and live there in order to claim his considerable fortune. Not long after the young women move in, Kerrie is trapped in the mansion’s garage and is nearly killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from a running car engine. Later she’s accused when Margo is shot. Kerrie learns that not only is it dangerous to inherit a lot of money, it’s very dangerous to be around cars.

 

See? Cars may be necessary for a lot of people’s lives, but they do carry high risks. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

 

Oh, and if you want to ride along with us as we continue our crime fiction journey, we’d love to have you. Check out the meme details 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.

 

There Was Fifty-Seven Channels and Nothin’ On*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 
 

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

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.