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!

It’s the End of the World as We Know it*

It’s 21 December 2012 and despite all the speculation, the world hasn’t ended. All of the discussion of the Mayan calendar and the end of the world shows though just how fascinated people are with the future and what would happen if the world as we know it now ended. There’s been of course a lot of interest in real life and we certainly see it in crime fiction too.

In Agatha Christie’s One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (AKA The Patriotic Murders and An Overdose of Death) for instance, we meet Howard Raikes. Raikes is a radical activist whose goal in life is to tear down the existing institutions and infrastructure and build completely new ones. To him, the established institutions are The Enemy; they stand in the way of a better world. Raikes is dating Jane Olivera, whose uncle Alistair Blunt is the embodiment of The Establishment. Blunt is a successful and powerful banker who stands for stability, order and prudence. Although Jane agrees with Howard about some things, she isn’t as radical as he is, and she is fond of her uncle. Their debates form a sub-plot to the major plot of this story, in which Blunt’s dentist Henry Morley is shot. Because Blunt is so influential, he’s made several dangerous enemies who might very well try to get at him at the dentist’s office, so at first it’s thought that Morley’s death might be a attempt-gone-wrong to get at Blunt. Chief Inspector James ‘Jimmy’ Japp is assigned the case and works with Hercule Poirot, who is also one of Morley’s patients, to find out who the killer is. The case gets complicated when another patient dies of an overdose of anaesthetic, and another patient disappears. The larger question of what the world should and could be like forms an interesting debate in this novel.

In Ellery Queen’s The Origin of Evil, Queen takes a house outside Hollywood so he can get some writing done. His dream of peace and quiet is ended when he gets a visit from nineteen-year-old Lauren Hill. Her father Leander has recently died of a heart attack that she suspects was deliberately brought on. She tells Queen of a series of macabre ‘gifts’ her father received and claims that he must have had a secret enemy. What’s more, Hill’s business partner Roger Priam has been receiving ‘gifts’ too. At first Queen doesn’t want to get involved but the strange nature of the puzzle intrigues him. So does Priam’s absolute refusal to co-operate in any way. So Queen begins to investigate Hill’s history as well as that of Priam. Then there’s an attempt on Priam’s life. Now Queen and the local police begin to get more involved. Queen finds that the key to Hill’s death and the other events in the story lies in the two men’s history. In the course of this novel we meet Roger Priam’s stepson Crowe ‘Mac’ McGowan. Mac lives in a tree on the Priam property where he’s built himself a house. He wears as little as possible, and much of the time nothing at all. Mac’s claim is that the world is about to end because of nuclear attacks, so he wants to be prepared for life after The Bomb.

Isaac Asimov speculated a great deal about what the future might hold if life as we know it ended. For instance, his The Caves of Steel takes place in and near a futuristic New York City in which humans have divided into two groups: Earthmen and Spacers. Spacers are the descendents of people who left the planet to explore other worlds. They look to other planets as the best chance for the survival of the species and their technology reflects that. They’ve also developed sophisticated positronic robots that are an active part of their society. Earthmen on the other hand are the descendents of people who never left the planet. They live in extremely large domed mega-cities and look to making more use of Earth’s resources to ensure the survival of the species. Earthmen and Spacers dislike and distrust each other; in fact, they live in separate communities. So when famous Spacer scientist Dr. Roj Nemennuh Sarton is murdered, the Spacers believe an Earthman is responsible. In order to ease the tensions between the two groups, New York Police Commissioner Julius Enderby assigns Earthman homicide detective Elijah ‘Lije’ Baley to investigate. He also assigns Baley to work with a new partner R. Daneel Olivaw. At first Baley treats this like any other investigation. But then he discovers to his dismay that Olivaw is a positronic robot. If there’s anything Earthmen hate and fear more than Spacers, it’s robots. So the two detectives have to overcome several barriers in order to find out who killed Sarton. In this novel, not only do we see Asimov’s speculation at work; we also see the fear of the future reflected in the Earthmen’s attitude towards space exploration, robots and other developments.

In John D. MacDonald’s The Green Ripper, ‘salvage consultant’ Travis McGee loses his beloved girlfriend Gretel Howard to a mysterious illness. When it turns out to be deliberately induced, McGee decides to go after whoever is responsible for her murder. He traces her death to a Northern California group called the Church of the Apocrypha, This group is committed to the tearing down and destruction of civilisation because the members believe that’s the only way that humans can be saved. McGee infiltrates the group so that he can find out why Gretel was targeted and take vengeance.

Alex Scarrow’s Last Light and Afterlight both depict the end of life as we know it when the world’s supply of oil is deliberately shut off. In the first book Andy and Jenny Sutherland and their two children happen to be in different places when the oil supply stops. They try desperately to survive and re-unite and although the main plot in this novel concerns the reason the oil’s been shut off, I honestly think the Sutherland family and the way they cope is the more interesting aspect of this novel. But that’s only my opinion, so feel free to differ with me if you do. The second novel takes place ten years after the events of the first. By this time Jenny Sutherland has become the leader of a small group of survivors who have made a home for themselves on a former North Sea oil rig. The novel concerns what happens when they discover another badly wounded survivor in a nearby town, and when they learn that another group of survivors, who live in the Millennium Dome in London, may have fuel. In both of these novels Scarrow takes a look at a harsh new world in which everything we take for granted has changed.

And then there’s Ben Winter’s The Last Policeman. In that novel, a meteor will hit Earth in approximately six months. Most people are giving up on life, quitting jobs, using drugs and in general living as though the world will end. For them, it will. And different people are reacting to it in a number of ways. But police detective Hank Palace is unique; he’s still trying to do his job. That’s why he takes a special interest when Peter Zell dies.  Everyone thinks Zell’s death is a suicide like so very many others. But Palace doesn’t think so and investigates just as though there were no oncoming meteor. I confess I’ve not yet read this book, but it’s just too good an example for me not to mention it.

There are other examples too of course. Everyone’s got a different view of when and how life as we know it will end and it’s both fascinating and scary to speculate on it. No wonder authors face this demon in their novels.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know it (and I Feel Fine).

I Can See Clearly Now*

In many crime fiction novels there’s a point in the story where we learn who the criminal (usually the murderer) is. Of course, a lot of crime fiction fans try to figure it out from the very beginning, but there’s often a point where the killer is named. That point’s sometimes referred to as the big reveal. It’s a crucial point in a story too for a few reasons. The obvious one of course is that that’s where the reader learns the answer to a central question in the story. If that point in the novel doesn’t mesh with the rest of the story, or if the criminal isn’t believable, the reader can get pulled out of the novel and be left frustrated and disappointed. Another reason the big reveal is important is that the circumstances surrounding it can add to the suspense in a novel. That can keep the reader engaged.

In a lot (but certainly not all) of classic and Golden Age crime fiction, the sleuth gathers the suspects together and names the killer. Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot is particularly fond of showing off that way – even he admits that about himself. But Miss Marple has her own ‘big reveal’ moments too. In 4:50 From Paddington (AKA What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!)for instance, Miss Marple’s friend Elspeth McGillicuddy witnesses the murder of an unknown woman while en route by train to St. Mary Mead. The only problem is that there is no evidence for what Mrs. McGillicuddy says that she saw. No body is discovered and no-one has reported a missing person who fits the description of the victim. So almost no-one is inclined to believe Mrs. McGillicuddy – except Miss Marple. She deduces that the body must be on the grounds of Rutherford Hall, home of the Crackenthorpe family, and with help from her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow, she finds out she’s right. When the body is discovered, the police get involved and all of the members of the Crackenthorpe family come under suspicion. At the end of the novel, Lucy arranges for Miss Marple and Mrs. McGillicuddy to come to tea at Rutherford Hall. That’s when Miss Marple catches the killer through a clever trick in front of the suspects. It works, too.

Margaret Maron’s Sigrid Harald uses a variation on this technique in One Coffee With. She and her assistant Detective Tilden are assigned to investigate the poisoning murder of Riley Quinn, deputy chair of the Art Department at New York’s Vanderlyn University. In the process of the investigation Harald and Tilden learn a lot about the inner workings of the department, including its rivalries and the cold reality of funding issues. It turns out that many of the department members had a motive for murder. So did some of the students. But bit by bit, Harald and Tilden find out who the killer is. Towards the end of the novel Harald makes an arrangement with another character and together they lure the killer out of hiding as the expression goes. That’s when the reader finds out for sure who murdered Quinn and why. Then Harald goes on to explain how the clues led her to the truth.

Of course, not all authors use that plot point of gathering a group of suspects together for the big reveal. In Ellery Queen’s The Fourth Side of the Triangle for instance, Inspector Richard Queen investigates the murder of noted fashion designer Sheila Grey and of course his son Ellery gets involved too. The first most likely suspect is wealthy businessman Ashton McKell, with whom Grey’d been involved. When McKell is cleared of suspicion, his wife Lutetia becomes a suspect and then so does his son Dane. There are other suspects too. Grey left a cryptic clue though, and the killer has unwittingly left a ‘calling card.’ When Ellery discovers this ‘calling card,’ he’s able to identify the killer. In this novel we learn who the killer is as the Queens confront that person. That is, it’s not a dramatic reveal in front of a circle of stunned faces. Rather, it’s a more personal encounter.

That’s what happens in Ann Cleeves’ Raven Black too. In that novel, sixteen-year-old Catherine Ross is found murdered in a field not far from the home of local misfit Magnus Tait. Tait’s the most obvious suspect since he saw the girl on the day she was killed, and since he was implicated in the disappearance of a young girl several years earlier. But Inspector Jimmy Perez doesn’t think it’s that simple and he is proven right. To find Catherine’s killer, Perez has to look into all of the relationships among the residents of Ravenswick, Shetland, where Catherine lived. Bit by bit he uncovers the complex network of relationships and history. He also learns quite a lot about Catherine’s personality along the way. In the end he deduces who the killer is and confronts that person. And in keeping with the nature of this novel, that confrontation isn’t an overly-dramatic scene involving a car chase or gun battle. It has its own drama, but that drama is more psychological and that’s an effective fit with the novel.

Sometimes authors don’t use a big reveal as such. They may include a confrontation between sleuth and criminal but that’s not when the killer’s identity is revealed. Instead, those authors show how the sleuth finds out who the criminal is. In other words the reveal comes as the sleuth figures out what really happened.

We see that for instance in Arnaldur Indriðason’s Jar City. Reykjavík police inspector Erlendur and his team are called to the scene when the body of a seemingly inoffensive elderly man named Holberg is discovered. At first there doesn’t seem much motive for murder. Holberg wasn’t wealthy and the place hadn’t been robbed, so money doesn’t seem to be involved. And Holberg didn’t have any obvious enemies either. But as the team gets to know more about the victim, we learn that Holberg was hiding a dark past. He’d been accused of several rapes, although he’d never been convicted. So it becomes quite possible that one of his victims chose to take revenge. Bit by bit Erlendur and team find out who the killer is and that’s how we learn that person’s identity. At the end of the novel, Erlendur confronts the killer with what he knows, so there is a scene between them. There’s a great deal of psychological tension in that scene too. But it’s not the stereotypical ‘big reveal.’

Some authors don’t really include a confrontation between sleuth and criminal in their reveal. That doesn’t mean the reveal can’t be highly effective though. For instance in Donna Leon’s Through a Glass, Darkly, Commissario Guido Brunetti and Ispettore Lorenzo Vianello investigate the suspicious death of Giorgio Tassini, night watchman at a local glass-blowing factory. Before his death Tassini had claimed that the glass-blowing industry was illegally dumping toxic waste. So there are several suspects including the local factory owners and their powerful supporters. Little by little Brunetti and Vianello find out who killed Tassini and that’s revealed in a more understated way. In that sense, there isn’t a big dramatic reveal. Brunetti never actually hauls the criminal away in handcuffs. But the reader knows who the killer is and at the very end of the novel, Brunetti gets the one piece of evidence he needs to make sure the killer faces consequences.

The big reveal can be dramatic or subtle. It can involve a violent confrontation or none at all. The best ones though have in common that they make sense given the characters and the kind of novel. Which big reveals have you liked best?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a Johnny Nash song.

But Now You Just Don’t Remember All the Things You Said, and You’re Not Sure That You Want to Know*

It’s not hard to imagine how frightening it would be to wake up and discover you’ve lost a big chunk of time. Blacking out itself is scary enough; blacking out and then waking to discover you might have done something horrible while you were blacked out is far worse. Not being able to trust one’s own memory is disorienting and sometimes truly frightening. So it’s no wonder that scenario is used in crime fiction novels. First there’s the suspense and tension as the character becomes aware that she or he might have committed a terrible crime. Then there’s the suspense that comes from the questions a blackout raises. Did that person commit the crime? Was that person framed? It can all make for a very effective plot thread so long as it falls out naturally and isn’t ‘soap opera’ contrived.

In Agatha Christie’s Third Girl, for instance, Norma Restarick has that kind of frightening experience. She believes that she may have committed a murder. She has hazy visions of the crime and doesn’t remember how she got to the scene of the crime. She’s not sure she’s guilty but the possibility is strong enough that she visits Hercule Poirot to see if he can help. Just after she meets him though, she loses her nerve and leaves in confusion, not even giving him her name. With help from his friend mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver, Poirot finds out who the young woman is and tries to find her. By then, though, she has disappeared. So Poirot and Oliver work to find out where she is and whether she really did kill someone. Then there’s another death and again it seems that Norma may have been responsible. It turns out that that the real culprit manipulated Norma with drugs and led her to think she is responsible for both deaths.

In Ellery Queen’s Ten Days Wonder, we meet Howard Van Horn, son of wealthy business entrepreneur Diedrich Van Horn. Howard’s been having troubling blackouts, and when he wakes up after one of them with blood on him, he is sure that he must have done something terrible. So he visits his college friend Ellery Queen and asks Queen to help him find out what might have happened. Queen agrees and he and Van Horn start to investigate. The trail leads to Van Horn’s home in Wrightsville, a small New England town, so the two friends go there to find out what might have happened. While they’re there Van Horn has another blackout. This time, he recovers to find that his stepmother Sally Van Horn has been murdered. There’s a very real chance he committed the crime and in fact, that’s the immediate assumption. But Queen isn’t convinced, so he continues to investigate. He discovers the truth about Sally Van Horn’s murder, but not before Howard Van Horn’s assumption of his own guilt has tragic consequences.

Lawrence Block’s The Sins of the Fathers introduces us to twenty-one-year-old Richard Vanderpoel. He had a very unhappy childhood that included the tragic death of his mother when he was young. But he’s made a life for himself and now works at an auction gallery. He shares an apartment with twenty-four-year-old Wendy Hanniford, who has her own sad history. One afternoon Wendy is murdered. Shortly afterwards Vanderpoel is seen wandering in the streets covered in her blood. The police arrest him almost immediately and he’s assumed to be guilty. Wendy’s father Cale Hanniford wants to know what led to Wendy’s death; he’s been estranged from her for quite some time and wants to know the kind of person his daughter had become. So he approaches former NYPD cop Matthew Scudder and asks him to find out. Scudder agrees and begins to look into Wendy’s life. As he does so he begins to wonder whether Richard Vanderpoel is actually guilty of her murder. He interviews Vanderpoel, who seems to have only very vague memories of what happened. Shortly after that interview Vanderpoel commits suicide. But Scudder continues his investigation. The more he learns about both young people the more he comes to believe that Richard Vanderpoel was innocent, despite the young man’s inability to remember what happened that afternoon.

Håkan Nesser’s Mind’s Eye is the story of the murder of schoolteacher Eva Ringar. Late one night she is killed and her body left in her bathtub. Her husband Jurgen Mitter is the most likely suspect for a number of reasons. Their marriage was by no means perfect. Besides, on the night of the murder he was extremely drunk and doesn’t remember what happened to his wife. He is sure he didn’t kill her but he blacked out and doesn’t remember enough to account for himself. It’s not impossible that he killed her in a drunken rage without being aware of it. So he’s arrested, tried and convicted. Because he has no memory of the night of the murder, Mitter is remanded to a mental facility instead of prison. While he’s there he slowly begins to recall the events that led up to Eva’s death. In fact he even remembers who killed his wife. When he does he contacts that person and ends up being murdered himself. Now Inspector Van Veeteren, who’s been having doubts about Mitter’s guilt, brings his team fully into action and they investigate the lives of both victims to find out who the killer is.

Maureen ‘Mauri’ O’Donnell has a similar experience in Denise Mina’s Garnethill. At the time of this novel, she’s a Glasgow ticket-taker who’s just decided to break things off with her married lover Douglas Brady. She goes out one night with a friend and after a long night of drinking goes home and falls asleep. She wakes up the next day to discover Brady’s body in her living room. She was very, very drunk that night and doesn’t remember much about coming home. She has no memory of inviting Brady over, and certainly no memory of killing him but it is possible that she’s the killer. That’s at least what detective Joe McEwan, who’s investigating the case, thinks. O’Donnell can’t really prove her innocence but she doesn’t think she’s guilty. So to clear her name, she starts asking her own questions. In the end, we learn that someone took advantage both of her drunkenness and her already-fragile mental state to frame her for the crime.

In Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza’s December Heat, his Rio de Janeiro Inspector Espinosa has to find out the truth about a crime possibly committed by someone he knows. Another police officer Vieira goes out one evening with his girlfriend Lucimar, who calls herself Magali. He gets very drunk and more or less blacks out. The next thing he’s aware of is waking up in his home to find that his belt, his wallet and his police identification are missing. Then he learns to his shock that Magali has been murdered and his belt has been found in her apartment. He doesn’t think he killed her although it might have happened that way. Inspector Espinosa, who’s working on the case, doesn’t think Vieira would have committed this kind of murder. So even though Magali was ‘only a prostitute,’ Espinosa digs deeper to find out who else would have had a motive and would have been able to frame Vieira so successfully.

Blackouts have to be handled carefully in crime fiction. Otherwise they can seem contrived and pull the reader out of the story. But they do happen. And when an author handles a blackout in a skilled way, the result can add a lot to the tension in a novel as both the sleuth and the suspect who’s blacked out have to figure out what’s really behind a crime.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Big Shot.

Short and (Not so?) Sweet

If you’re kind enough to have read my blog at least a couple of times you may have noticed that I like crime novels. And I do. A lot. Let’s face it; there’s nothing like getting lost in a well-written novel. But here’s the thing. Good stories about crime and mystery don’t necessarily have to be in the form of a full-length novel. Of course, novels allow for the slow buildup of tension that can make them impossible to put down. They also allow for in-depth character development, sub-plots and more as well. But well-written short stories add a lot to the genre as well. Short stories are excellent ways to get to know an author one hasn’t ‘met’ before. And a well-constructed short story anthology gives the reader very welcome variety. Short stories pack a ‘punch’ too that isn’t always possible to sustain over the length of a novel.  And they’re just the right length for a short train or bus ride, a wait to pick a child up from school or a walk. And lest you think that short stories are easier to write than novels are, think again. They require real skill at ‘telescoping’ a character’s personality and backstory. They also require the ability to ‘fill in gaps’ in terms of the setting and so on with just a few verbal ‘brushstrokes.’ Not an easy thing to do.

Lots of crime writers have become known for their short stories, too. I’ll just mention a few. As Arthur Conan Doyle fans know, the Sherlock Holmes canon is mostly made up of short stories (there are 56 of those if I’m right about that). And that makes sense as they were originally published in The Strand Magazine. The short story lends itself quite well to the magazine format. What’s interesting is that by the time A Scandal in Bohemia was published, The Strand had already published two of Conan Doyle’s novels (A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four). Those novels were well-enough received but it wasn’t until the short stories were published that Conan Doyle (and Sherlock Holmes) became truly popular. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Agatha Christie is well-known of course for her novels, but she also wrote a wide variety of short stories. Some are Hercule Poirot cases, some involve Tommy and Tuppence Beresford and some involve Miss Marple. Her other familiar characters Mr. Parker Pyne and Mr. Harley Quinn also appear in several of her stories. Christie also created many short stories that don’t feature any of her well-known sleuths. Some of them are psychological in nature, some are suspense, some are romance and some explore other themes. In my opinion (so feel free to differ with me if you do), Christie’s short stories allow the reader to see Christie’s breadth as a writer, possibly more than her novels do.

Dorothy Sayers also wrote several short stories. Busman’s Honeymoon was the last Lord Peter Wimsey novel that Sayers herself wrote. But interestingly she continued to share the lives of Wimsey and his wife mystery novelist Harriet Vane through a series of short stories that take place after the events in Busman’s Honeymoon. Of course not all of Sayer’s short stories feature those characters, so in those stories we get the chance to see the variety in Sayer’s writing.

Many other authors such as the ‘Ellery Queen team,’ Michael Collins, John Dickson Carr and John D. MacDonald also wrote collections of short stories as well as full-length novels.

Today, the short story format is more than alive and well. For example, Patti Abbott’s Monkey Justice is a collection of noir stories that explore a whole range of themes including family dysfunction, tragic miscalculation, ‘down and outers’ and karma. The stories take a variety of perspectives including children’s, young adults’ and retirees and feature a focus on psychology and characterisation.

Another deliciously creepy (Whoops! There’s my opinion coming through again….) collection of noir short stories is Rob Kitchin’s Killer Reels. All of the stories feature Jimmy Kiley, a crime boss you simply don’t want to run afoul of – at all. Kiley is a film buff who has – er – unusual taste in what he likes to see and this collection is a set of his encounters with different people he meets in the course of his business.

And then there’s Martin Edwards, who’s written quite a few short stories. One of his collections is Where Do You Find Your Ideas and Other Crime Stories. In this collection Edwards includes several stories featuring his sleuth Liverpool attorney Harry Devlin. But there are also several other stories of psychological suspense, some historical mysteries and even some Sherlock Holmes pastiches. And that’s part of the beauty of short stories for an author: it allows the author to experiment and to show the breadth of her or his repertoire.

Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen’s short story collections Candied Crime and Liquorice Twists feature stories that run the gamut from light, cosy mysteries to humour to darker and grittier stories. They feature a wide variety of themes too, from whodunits to family secrets to psychological suspense and more. Some of them feature the characters from fictional Knavesborough, a Yorkshire town that’s the setting for her novel The Cosy Knave.

Of course, you don’t have to confine yourself to collections by only one author. Short story anthologies can be excellent ways to get to know the crime fiction from an era, a sub-genre, or a particular country or region. For instance, a group of Australian writers has come together in Crime Factory’s Hard Labour. It’s a collection of fourteen noir criminal stories from all over Australia. All of them are gritty, realistic stories that give the reader a real sense of what’s happening in Australian crime fiction.

There’s also 100 Malicious Little Mysteries, which is a very wide and varied selection of short stories that range from a sci-fi sort of theme to a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Lots of prominent authors such as Isaac Asimov, Edward D. Hoch and Judith Garner are represented, and each story has a slightly different bent. Collections like this one allow the reader to get a sense of how diverse the crime fiction genre really is.

There are many, many other collections of short stories out there of course – many more than I have space to mention. Short stories are diverse and flexible. They show the breadth and variety of the genre and of individual authors. They allow the author to experiment and the reader to ‘meet’ all sorts of different authors. But what’s your view? Do you like dipping into short stories? Which collections have you really enjoyed? If you’re a novelist, do you also write short stories? How does it compare with writing novels?