The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Falls

The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme has gotten through the first five stops on our treacherous tour and now we’re heading to our sixth destination, the historic F Falls. Our tour guide Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise has been doing a fantastic job keeping us all together and safe; thanks, Kerrie. It’s rather opportune that we’re visiting the Falls today actually because, well, that’s my contribution for this stop: falls.

Falls from heights (buildings, cliffs, etc.) can be very dangerous. In fact they’re often fatal. In a mystery novel they’re extremely useful though. A fall can look like an accident or a suicide, so it’s relatively easy to ‘cover up’ the fact of murder. And given the right circumstances, nearly anyone can arrange for someone to have a tragic fall. A good hard push in the right place is all it takes. So it’s really no wonder we see this plot point so often in crime fiction.

One of the most famous falls in crime fiction occurs in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Final Problem. Sherlock Holmes is about to get hold of the evidence he needs to put his nemesis Professor Moriarty and Moriarty’s criminal gang into jail for a long time. But Moriarty finds out and Holmes and Watson are forced to flee England. They end up in Switzerland where Morarity manages to track Holmes to the Reichenbach Falls. In a dramatic scene, the two enemies grapple and both go over the falls. Of course, as Holmes fans know, that’s hardly the end of the great detective’s story…

There’s a tragic fall in Agatha Christie’s short story The Edge. Clare Halliwell is one of the ‘pillars of the community’ of Daymer’s End. She’s a parish worker with a reputation for being a ‘very good sort.’ Clare and Gerald Lee have been friends for a long time, and in fact, Clare thinks their relationship is more than friendly. But then Gerald shocks her by marrying Viven Harper. Viven isn’t much liked in the village but at first Clare tries to get along with her. It’s not a successful attempt though and as time goes by, Clare dislikes Vivien more and more. Then she accidentally discovers that Vivien has been having an affair. Now Clare is faced with a decision: should she tell Gerald what she knows? Vivien begs her not to, and Clare soon finds that she rather enjoys having Vivien in her power so to speak. The tension between the two women mounts, and it results in a tragic fall from a cliff. An interesting question this story raises is: what really caused the fall?

In Anthony Berkeley’s Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery (AKA The Mystery at Lover’s Cave), writer and newspaper correspondent Roger Sheringham is preparing for a holiday with his cousin Anthony Walton when business changes his plans. Sheringham’s employer The Daily Courier wants him to go to Ludmouth Bay in Hampshire to report on the investigation into the death of Elise Vane, whose body has been found at the bottom of a cliff. There are now clues that her death was neither an accident nor suicide, so Sheringham is assigned to follow the story. That’s how he meets Inspector Moresby, who’s staying at the same inn and who is in charge of the investigation. Bit by bit, and each in a different way, the two men get to know the various people in the victim’s life, and they find that more than one of those people may have had a good motive for murder. Elise Vane was an unpleasant person with a large fortune to leave. In the end, Sheringham and Moresby find out who wanted the victim dead badly enough to actually murder her.

Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow (AKA Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow) begins with the funeral of Isaiah Christiansen, a ten-year-old Greenlander who fell from the roof of the Copenhagen apartment building where he lived. His death has been ruled an accident and most people are quite satisfied with that. But Smilla Jaspersen, who also lives in the building and has befriended Isaiah, is not. As a half-Inuit who grew up in Greenland, she has a strong sense of snow, and she can see by the snow on the roof that someone else was involved in Isaiah’s death. So she begins to ask questions. The trail leads to an expedition that Isaiah made to Greenland with his father and the events that happened there, so Jaspersen travels to Greenland to search for answers. That’s where she finds the connection between a little-known piece of scientific research, the glaciers of Greenland, and the boy’s death.

In Helene Tursten’s Detective Inspector Huss, wealthy and powerful Swedish financier Richard von Knecht dies after a fall from the balcony of his posh penthouse. Göteborg police inspector Irene Huss and her team are called to the scene for what is supposed to be a ‘rubber stamp’ determination that von Knecht committed suicide. However there are two problems with this theory. First, as the team learns, von Knecht was not the kind of person who would have done such a drastic thing. And there had been no signs that he was unhappy enough to take his own life – and certainly not in this manner, as he was very much afraid of heights. What’s more, the forensic evidence suggests that someone else might have been present on the balcony and could have pushed von Knecht over the edge of it. As the team gets to know von Knecht’s widow, son, daughter-in-law and friends/business associates, we learn that there are several people who might very well have wanted von Knecht dead.

Maryanne Delbeck learns how dangerous falling from heights can be in Angela Savage’s The Half Child. She came to Thailand from Australia to volunteer at the New Life Children’s Centre in Pattaya. One night she is pushed, or jumps, or falls to her death from the roof of the hotel where she’s living.  The official police report is that Maryanne committed suicide but her father Jim doesn’t believe it. So he hires Bangkok PI Jayne Keeney to find out the truth about his daughter’s death. Keeney travels to Pattaya and goes undercover at the children’s centre to find out everything she can about Maryanne’s life and work. She discovers that the centre has its own secrets and that Maryanne may have known about them. What’s more, she learns that Maryanne’s life was more complicated than it seems on the surface. In the end Keeney and her partner Rajiv Patel find out what really happened to Maryanne Delbeck.

 

See what I mean? Falls from high places aren’t always very easy to prove as murder, even if they are. And sometimes what looks like murder ends up having been an accident. Or suicide. No wonder there are so many of these unfortunate run-ins with high places in crime fiction. Now, what do you say we take a nice walk to the top of that lovely cliff to see the falls? It’s a beautiful view…

I See the Place Lives*

Any crime fiction fan can tell you that a good, atmospheric setting can add a lot to a novel. And a well-written post from Annette Thomson has got me thinking of the way that old buildings can be rich with history and character. Annette’s blog, by the way, is an excellent writing blog and Annette is a talented poet and writer. Check it out. Old buildings like the one Annette describes have their own stories to tell, and when they’re woven into a crime novel, this can add layers of atmosphere to a story.

There’s a building like that in Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral. When wealthy family patriarch Richard Abernethie dies, his family gathers for his funeral and the reading of the will. At this gathering, Abernethie’s younger sister Cora Lansquenet says that he was murdered. Everyone is quick to discount what she says and Cora herself asks everyone to forget she’s said anything. But privately, everyone wonders whether she might have been right. After all, Richard Abernethie had a fortune to leave and a family full of relations who are eager for their shares of it. When Cora herself is brutally murdered the next day it seems more and more likely that she was right. Family lawyer Mr. Entwhistle visits Hercule Poirot and asks him to investigate. As part of his search for answers, Poirot visits Enderby Hall in the guise of a representative of a foundation that wants to buy the old house. During his visit, he hears some important conversations and remarks, and gets some vital clues as to what really happened to both Richard Abernethie and Cora Lansquenet. The house itself has a rich history and we see that mostly through the eyes of the family butler Lanscombe, who’s been there for decades. As he goes about his duties we get a sense of the way an old building like this one can have memories.

There’s a very atmospheric, history-laden building featured in John Dickson Carr’s Hag’s Nook, the first in his Gideon Fell series. Tad Rampole has just completed his university studies and has decided to travel a bit. On the advice of his mentor, he seeks out Dr. Gideon Fell, who lives in Chatterham. On his way to visit Fell, Rampole meets and becomes smitten with Dorothy Starberth. When he meets Fell, Rampole hears the story of the Starberth family. Beginning with Anthony Starberth, two generations of Starberths were governors of nearby Chatterham Prison. The prison then fell into disuse and hasn’t housed any convicts for a hundred years. And yet the Starberth family still maintains a prison-related tradition. On the night of his twenty-fifth birthday each Starberth heir spends the night in the old Governor’s Room at the prison. While there, he opens the safe in the room and follows the instructions in a note left in the safe. Now it’s the turn of Dorothy Starberth’s brother Martin to follow the ritual and he duly prepares for his stay. Sometime during the night Martin Starberth dies from what looks like a fall from the balcony of the Governor’s Room. But it’s soon clear that he was murdered. As Fell, Rampole and Chief Constable Sir Benjamin Arnold investigate, we get a real sense of the rich and eerie history of the prison building. The old building adds much to the story in terms of atmosphere.

So does the Palace Theatre in Christopher Fowler’s Full Dark House.  When Arthur Bryant of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU) decides to write his memoirs, he makes a shocking discovery about the first case the unit solved. He’s following up on this finding when a bomb blast destroys the PCU offices and takes Bryant with it. Bryant’s police partner John May decides to find out who set the bomb. To do that, he’ll have to revisit the 1940 case that Bryant was reviewing. Through flashbacks we learn that in that case, the PCU investigates the murder of dancer Tanya Capistrania, who was part of the cast of Orpheus, which is scheduled to open at the Palace Theatre. As the team looks into what happened to the victim, preparations continue for the production, but they are marred by another murder, followed by a disappearance. It turns out that there was one question about that case that was not resolved. Bryant found out the answer to that question and when May does too, we find out how that 1940 case is connected to the modern-day blast. Throughout this novel, the Palace Theatre provides a rich, atmospheric and history-laden setting for much of what happens. Just the building itself adds much to the story.

We also see that sense of atmosphere in Patricia Stoltey’s The Desert Hedge Murders. Retired Florida circuit court judge Sylvia Thorn reluctantly agrees to accompany her mother Kristina Grisseljon’s travel club the Florida Flippers on a sightseeing and gambling tour of Laughlin, Nevada. Everyone settles in and all begins well enough. But shortly afterwards the body of a man no-one seems to know is found in the bathtub of the hotel room that two of the club members are sharing. Then one of the tour group members disappears. She is later found dead in the abandoned Lone Cactus gold mine. With help from her brother Willie and from the other members of the Florida Flippers, Sylvia finds out what the connection between the deaths is, and how they relate to some nasty secrets that someone has been hiding. One part of the story takes place in Oatman, Nevada, a ghost town near the mine. There are a few very effective scenes there, especially in the Oatman Hotel, which is full of history and character. As a matter of fact, there’s talk that a ghost haunts the hotel. The ghost town setting and the old mine really add atmosphere to this novel. Oh, and so do the burros.

And then there’s the Löwander Hospital, which features strongly in Helene Tursten’s Night Rounds. This private hospital has been in the Löwander family for a few generations and is now directed by Sverker Löwander. One night there’s a blackout at the hospital during which a nurse Marianne Svärd is killed. Another nurse Linda Svensson disappears and is later found dead. Eerily enough, her body is discovered in the same place where fifty years earlier, another nurse Thekla Olsson hung herself. Göteborg police inspector Irene Huss and her team are called in to investigate the nurses’ murders and another death that occurs. Since the three deaths all seem to be connected to the hospital in some way, the team spends its share of time there. The place is full of history and stories and that atmosphere adds to the novel.

There’s only room in this one post for a few examples of the kind of rich atmosphere and history that old buildings can add to a story (I know, I know, fans of Johan Theorin’s Öland novels). They can either provide an interesting contrast to a light story, or add a real layer of eeriness and mystery to a darker one. Which old buildings do you wish could tell you their stories? If you’re a writer, do you use old places as an inspiration?

Thanks, Annette, for the post that inspired me. And thanks, Elizabeth Spann Craig, for another post with a ‘photo of a great atmospheric Southern Gothic building. That inspired me too.

ps. The ‘photo is of Old Main, the heart of the campus of Knox College, Galesburg IL.  It is a building full of history and all sorts of stories. Among other things, the building is the site of one of the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858. Oh, and the winsome model on the steps is my daughter when she was a few months shy of her seventh birthday.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Mount Eerie’s The Place Lives.

Wonderful Food, Marvellous Food, Glorious Food*

An interesting comment exchange with Jan Morrison has got me thinking about food. Now, while I heat up something to eat, go check out Jan’s excellent writing blog. I always get a better perspective on my writing when I visit.

OK, so, back to the table… Eating is such an essential part of life that it resonates with us even if we don’t think much about food, or care much what we eat. One of the interesting things about food is how culturally contextual it can be. Of course you don’t have to be from Thailand to enjoy Thai food and you don’t have to be Pennsylvania German to enjoy shoo-fly pie. But our attitudes towards food, the kind of food we eat and the way we eat do say a lot about us. Just a peek at crime fiction should be enough to show you want I mean.

Agatha Christie’s Chief Inspector Japp comes from a working-class English background. Not for him the gourmet food his friend Hercule Poirot prefers. That’s too ‘Frenchified’ for Japp’s taste. He’s a steak, potatoes and beer kind of person. And that taste in food fits his character as well. He’s practical, down-to-earth and gets to the point. He doesn’t use flowery language or dress in expensive clothes either. His taste in food not only suits his personality, but actually shows us what he’s like without wasting words. It’s an interesting contrast too to Poirot’s preferences. Poirot is from a different culture and background entirely. So it makes complete sense that he’d have different tastes in food.

There’s an interesting look at food, culture and eating in Riley Adams’ (AKA Elizabeth Spann Craig) Memphis Barbecue series. This series features Lulu Taylor, who owns and runs Aunt Pat’s Barbecue, a popular Memphis restaurant. Aunt Pat’s specialises in traditional Southern U.S. food and drink such as spicy corn muffins, pulled pork, sweet tea and red beans and rice. And of course, fine barbecue. Oh, and there are recipes at the end of the novels; in what I consider an excellent choice of title, the section is called ‘Put Some South in Your Mouth.’ The food at the restaurant is an important part of placing the reader in the American South. This series works in part because the food, people’s eating preferences and so on all reflect the setting and culture.

Anthony Bidulka’s series featuring his Saskatoon PI Russell Quant also shows clearly the way that food, culture and people’s eating choices are related. Quant’s mother Kay is Ukrainian, and cooks in the traditional Ukrainian way. Quant grew up with this kind of food so for him, it’s ‘comfort food’ (a separate topic in itself). Kay also has traditional ideas about how much to cook and the role that food should play in life. So it makes for a very interesting situation when she temporarily moves in with her son over the Christmas holidays in Flight of Aquavit. Quant has become accustomed to a very different kind of diet and his lifestyle doesn’t give him a lot of time for eating. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate well-cooked food, but it’s not the focal point of his life. So when his mother joins him there’s an interesting difference about food and eating that they have to resolve.

Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Salvo Montalbano lives and works in a seaside town in Sicily. So what could be more natural than his love of properly-cooked seafood? Of course he enjoys other food too, but if you read this series, you’ll notice quite a lot of seafood mentioned in the series. It’s no surprise when you think about his culture. Another thing that’s interesting about Montalbano when it comes to food and eating is that he doesn’t eat fast food. Part of this of course is Montalbano’s own personal taste. But the ‘fast food culture’ that’s so popular in parts of the U.S. and other places is not a big part of life everywhere. For many people, food is more than just what you put in your mouth. It’s the experience of stopping the rest of one’s life to enjoy a meal. It’s the ritual that goes with choosing food, eating it and taking the time to savour what you eat. And we see that clearly in this series.

We also see that culture of taking time for food in Teresa Solana’s series featuring Barcelona PI brothers Eduard and Josep ‘Borja’ Martínez. In those novels, meals might be eaten at home or they might be eaten at a restaurant. But they’re not generally bought through a drive-through window and eaten in the car. That’s not the way the people tend to feel about food in that culture. In fact, Solana refers to a funny ritual about eating lunch with a friend in A Not So Perfect Crime. The Martínez brothers are following the wife of a client because he thinks she’s being unfaithful. At one point, she has lunch with a female friend but before that, she makes sure to go shopping. Why? So that she can show up at the lunch with the right kind of designer-label shopping bags. In this particular case, the food matters, but the cultural ritual of showing one’s social status during a meal matters more.

What about all of those fictional cops and PI sleuths – and they are legion – whose food and eating habits consist mainly of going to fast food places or heating up frozen meals? And what’s interesting about that phenomenon is that it seems to cross borders. You see that kind of eating whether a sleuth is American, English, Norwegian, Australian, or from somewhere else. The type of food may vary but the habit of eating on the go, with little attention paid to the food’s quality, doesn’t seem to vary much. My guess (and mind, I’m not a sociologist) is that there is arguably a ‘cop culture.’ That culture places emphasis on long hours and the kind of work that simply doesn’t usually allow a person to stop for a few hours to eat. It does happen in some cases but not in many of them. That kind of schedule, together with emphasis on the job, is tailor made for a lot of fast-food wrappers and pizza boxes. Even Helene Tursten’s Irene Huss, who is married to a chef, takes part in her team’s pizza-fueled evening meetings.

It’s easy to see the connections between food, culture and people’s lifestyles. And it makes sense too. What, when and how we eat reflect our backgrounds, attitudes and a lot more. So it makes sense that it would do the same for crime fictional characters.

 

ps   The ‘photo is of a Seder plate used during the Passover ritual meal. The plate has a place for each of the special foods that are eaten and it’s an important part of Jewish culture and eating customs.

 

On Another Note…

 

If you’ve been celebrating Passover this week, I hope you’re having a special time with family, friends, good food, the old stories and that special feeling of connectedness.

If you’re celebrating Easter, have a joyous Easter holiday. May it give you a sense of renewal and purpose.

Even if you’re not celebrating anything in particular, I wish you good food and good people at your table.

 

Thanks, Jan, for the inspiration!

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from  Lionel Bart’s Food, Glorious Food.

Can’t You See I’m Smart?*

Research during the past few decades has shown us some fascinating things about the way we think and know. It used to be believed that intelligence could be measured on a single dimension. The assumption was that everyone had a certain amount of this one ‘thing’ called intelligence. But work by Howard Gardner and other researchers has changed all that. Gardner conceived of several different intelligences. According to this theory, there are several different ways of thinking and knowing; Gardner called them multiple intelligences. We each have some of each of the intelligences, but in each of us, at least one (and usually more than one) is particularly strong. Hold on – I’ll get to crime fiction in just a second.

Gardner’s ideas about multiple intelligences make a lot of intuitive sense if you think about it. Some people are naturally good at, say, art, music, athletics or languages. And research has supported his theory fairly consistently. We can even see these multiple intelligences woven all through crime fiction. If you look at the way various sleuths go about solving cases, you can see how different ways of thinking and knowing come through in the genre.

For instance, one of Gardner’s multiple intelligences is what he called logical-mathematical intelligence. People with a high degree of this kind of intelligence find it easy to recognise patterns and algorithms. They find numbers and codes and puzzles interesting and their skill is in deduction. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is like that. As Holmes fans know, he looks for patterns and focuses on deduction and logic.

There’s also what Gardner called visual-spatial intelligence. People with visual-spatial intelligence tend to be talented at art. They notice colour and design and respond to what they see. In a very obvious way we see that kind of intelligence in Ngaio Marsh’s Agatha Troy. She’s an artist who responds to what she sees and can create in several different media. For instance in both Final Curtain and Tied Up in Tinsel (and other novels too), Troy is commissioned to paint portraits. So she’s on the scene when murder happens at the homes where she’s staying. Although it’s technically her husband Roderick Alleyn who officially solves the cases, Troy’s skilled eyes are very helpful in finding clues. We see that especially in A Clutch of Constables in which she goes up against an international art forger known only as Jampot. Hercule Poirot also has this kind of intelligence. He’s quite observant about his visual surroundings and of course, fans know how important the appearance of his clothes and moustaches are to him.

Some people have a great deal of linguistic intelligence. Novelists, poets, journalists and other writers often fall into this category. If you love words, play a lot of word games and notice the way people use language, you’ve got a solid dose of this kind of intelligence. For instance, John Dickson Carr’s Dr. Gideon Fell is a lexicographer. Words and languages are his specialty. That’s how he finds out the truth in, for instance, Hag’s Nook, where a cryptic poem turns out to be key to a murder. Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse has a dose of this kind of intelligence too. He does after all solve crossword puzzles with a pen and is a stickler for certain kinds of language use.

People with a lot of kinesthetic intelligence have a solid sense of where their bodies are in space. Actors, athletes, dancers, and people who can parallel park on the first try show this kind of intelligence. People with kinesthetic intelligence like to learn by doing and using their hands and bodies. For example, Helene Tursten’s DI Irene Huss has a share of kinesthetic intelligence. She is a former judo champion who uses the principles of judo to keep herself in shape as well as to clear her mind and cope with the stresses of her life as a cop. And interestingly, we several instances in this series where Huss gets bored and tired of paperwork and the other ‘desk routines’ that are part of a cop’s life. Although she’s hardly rash, Huss prefers to be out doing things to sitting at her desk. She also enjoys going for runs and exercising the family dog. All of those are hallmarks of kinesthetic intelligence and it serves Huss well.

Gardner also proposed interpersonal intelligence. People with interpersonal intelligence are skilled at interacting with others. I don’t mean that they are necessarily manipulators; rather, they work well with all kinds of people. And that is a critical skill for a sleuth. So, most fictional sleuths have at least some degree of it. G.K. Chesterton’s Father Paul Brown for instance is highly skilled at communicating with others, at forming bonds with them and understanding their perspectives. That’s how he learns as much as he does from suspects and witnesses. Karin Fossum’s Oslo police inspector Konrad Sejer is like that too. When he’s investigating a crime, one of his talents is the ability to see things from a variety of other perspectives and ‘get in people’s heads’ to understand why and how they do what they do. People tend to become comfortable talking with him and he often finds himself better able to get information through his interactions than he would through simply reading police reports.

There are also people with a lot of what Gardner called intrapersonal intelligence. Reflective people, people who keep journals and those who are really aware of themselves show this kind of intelligence. And being aware of one’s own reactions  – one’s sense of self – can be very useful for a sleuth. For example, James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux has a keen self-awareness. That self-knowledge and reflection have helped him cope with some of the traumas he’s had to face, especially his Vietnam-era experiences. For instance in A Morning For Flamingoes, Robicheaux agrees to go undercover as a ‘dirty’ cop to try to trap New Orleans crime boss Tony Cardo. Part of his assignment is to get close to Cardo but that proves increasingly difficult for Robicheaux as he becomes aware that he has sympathy for his target. Throughout this novel, Robicheaux keeps himself as grounded as he can by ‘checking in with himself.’

Another of the multiple intelligences people have is musical intelligence. Obviously singers, composers and musical artists have a healthy dose of this kind of intelligence. But it’s more than just being able to sing or play music on key. It’s also a sense of rhythm and a keen awareness of sound. If you like a soundtrack when you work, or if you find yourself singing or whistling when you weren’t aware of it, or if you can’t help walking in time to the music when you walk past a car with its radio on, you know what I mean. And if you don’t, just ask Jill Edmondson’s Toronto PI Sasha Jackson, who used to be a rock singer and still does occasional gigs. Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus has musical intelligence as well although he’s hardly a famous rocker. His music collection matters a lot to him and there are lots of scenes in the Rebus novels (including a really well-done scene in Exit Music) in which he gets or listens to music.

Naturalist intelligence is actually pretty self-explanatory. People who are attuned to nature and its rhythms and who just ‘fit in’ in natural environments have a lot of naturalist intelligence. Garden enthusiasts, park rangers, those who are comfortable with animals and those who simply like to be outdoors are examples of those with naturalist intelligence. There’s a lot of it in crime fiction too. Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee, Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest, and Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon are all examples of people who learn from and use nature as they solve crimes. So does Arthur Upfield’s Napoleon ‘Bony’ Bonaparte. These sleuths can tell much from weather patterns, animal activity, ground marks and other natural phenomena. In fact, they often find clues where others can’t.

Finally there’s what Gardner called existential intelligence, the most recent of his proposals. The big questions – the ‘why’ questions – appeal to people with a lot of existential intelligence. Philosophers and members of the clergy often wrestle with these larger questions. And sometimes getting philosophical can be helpful to a sleuth. It is to Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie, who is the editor of Review of Applied Ethics. She doesn’t go out looking for physical clues, and she doesn’t search for patterns. Rather, she looks at the larger motivations people have, and considers the larger issues of morality.

You may be thinking, ‘But don’t all these sleuths also have other intelligences?’ They do indeed. That’s the thing about multiple intelligences. We’ve all got all of the intelligences to some degree. And what’s most interesting is that we can develop the ones we choose to develop.

Interested in taking a look at your own intelligences? Try this Multiple Intelligences Survey. It’s got 40 questions and took me about 10 minutes or so to complete.  By no means is it definite – it’s just one look at the way we learn and know. If you’re a writer, what intelligences does your protagonist have?

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from The Undertones’ Smarter Than You.

I’m Just Another Statistic on a Sheet*

A lot of sleuthing is devoted to finding out the reasons for a victim’s murder, and that often involves slogging through records. And just about everyone leaves records of some kind. Some of them can be fascinating (e.g. old letters and diaries). Some of them take more perseverance (e.g. making sense of property transfers, powers of attorney, deeds, business and corporate documents). But any one of those documents could hold the key to a murder, so going through them is an important part of a murder investigation. That’s why it makes sense that we’d see plenty of record-searching in crime fiction. And as long as it’s not drawn-out so as to lose the reader’s interest, record-searching can add a realistic touch to a novel.

In Agatha Christie’s The Murder on the Links, for instance, Hercule Poirot gets a letter from Paul Renauld, who lives with his wife Eloise and son Jack in Merlinville-sur-Mer. Renauld’s letter says that his life is being threatened, and in it, he begs Poirot to come to France and investigate. Poirot and Hastings go to Merlinville but by the time they get there it’s too late; Renauld has been stabbed on the grounds of his own villa. Together with the French authorities, Poirot and Hastings investigate the murder. One thing about the murder that strikes Poirot is that it seems familiar in some way – as though it reminds him of another case. So he goes to Paris to look up old records. His search is rewarded when he comes across a case from years earlier. The older case has some of the hallmarks of this most recent case and that gives Poirot an important clue as to why anyone would want to murder Renauld. And in the end, it’s exactly that past that leads Poirot to the killer.

Records are also helpful in Arnaldur Indriðason’s Jar City. In that novel Reykjavík police detective Erlendur and his team are called in when the body of Holberg, a seemingly inoffensive elderly man who lived by himself, is discovered in his own home. At first there seems no motive for the murder. Holberg was well-enough liked at work, didn’t have quarrels with neighbours, and wasn’t involved with anyone. So at first it looks as though the murder was a robbery gone wrong. But some clues suggest that there was a very personal reason for this murder, and a little digging soon brings to light what that reason might have been. Police records show that Holberg was accused of rape years earlier. No charges were filed, but this little piece of information opens up a whole new angle in the investigation. Further digging reveals that there might have been more than one accusation against him. Other records, including business ownership records and hospital records, add pieces to this puzzle. And in the end, Erlendur and his team are able to find out who killed Holberg and why.

There’s a really effective use of records in Peter Temple’s Bad Debts, in which part time lawyer/part time investigator Jack Irish investigates the murder of Danny McKillop. McKillop was once one of Irish’s clients, so when he is murdered, Irish feels a particular sense of obligation to find out the truth. Irish soon suspects that McKillop’s murder is connected to a hit-and-run incident eight years earlier that ended in the death of activist Anne Jeppeson. McKillop was convicted of the incident, but Irish learns that he was probably innocent. So Irish works with journalist Linda Hilliard to find the real killer. To do that, they look through newspaper records and public records. They also make use of a data collection company to learn the truth about property ownership, sales and corporate connections in the area. And that information is what leads Irish to the murderer.

Family records turn out to be useful in Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo. Wordsworth scholar Jane Gresham has always believed that Wordsworth left behind at least one unpublished manuscript. If she’s right, then finding that manuscript could make her career. So when she hears of the discovery of an old set of remains in a Lake District bog, she’s eager to find out if those remains belong to Fletcher Christian, as many people think. If so it would mean that Christian didn’t die on Pitcairn Island, but made it back to his Lake District home. And if that’s true, it would make perfect sense that he’d tell his longtime friend Wordsworth what really happened on the H.M.S. Bounty and that Wordsworth would write about it. So Gresham travels to the Lake District, where she herself was brought up, and begins to ask questions. Her hunt for the unpublished manuscript leads her through all sorts of records of marriages, offspring and so on and she discovers that the truth about it may lie within one family. With help from fellow scholar Dan Seabourne Gresham uses those records to try to track down the manuscript. But then one of Gresham’s interviewees dies shortly after the interview. Then there’s another death. And another. The police begin to suspect that Gresham herself may be involved in the murders so in order to clear her name and find the manuscript, Gresham tries to find the killer.

Helene Tursten’s Night Rounds is focused on a private facility, the Löwander Hospital. One night, there’s a blackout at the hospital during which one of the nurses Marianne Svärd is murdered. Then, another nurse Linda Svensson disappears. Her body is later discovered in the same place where, fifty years earlier, another nurse Tekla Olsson hung herself. Göteborg police inspector Irene Huss and her team investigate the happenings at the hospital. Part of the team’s task is to look through patient records, hospital ownership records, staff records and the like. And it’s in those records that they find an important clue as to what’s going on at the hospital.

Much of Stephen Booth’s Dying to Sin takes place at Pity Wood Farm in the Peak District. When two sets of female remains are found on the property, Hampshire police are called in to investigate. DS Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper are assigned to look into the case. The farm had been owned for years by brothers Derek and Raymond Sutton. However, Derek Sutton has died, Raymond Sutton has moved to a nursing care facility and the property’s been sold to Manchester attorney Aaron Goodwin. So one task the members of the team have to face is finding out exactly who owned the property at the time of the young women’s deaths. That requires going through sales and property ownership records. Another task is to find out exactly who the young women were and what they were doing at the farm. That too requires going through records, this time reports of missing persons. It takes a lot of time but in the end, Fry and Cooper finds out who the young women were, what they were doing at the farm and why they were killed.

Financial records, police records, and historical records provide many of the answers to the mystery in Jørn Lier Horst’s Dregs. In that novel, Stavern, Norway police inspector William Wisting and his team investigate the bizarre discovery of left feet that wash up in various places. Wisting starts the identification process by trying to link the feet to anyone who might have gone missing. Records show that most of the people who went missing at the right time to be matches for the feet were residents at the same care home. And more records searches show that the relationships among the people who’d disappeared go back to the post-World War II era. That inter-connection among the missing people proves important. So does a financial angle that is discovered in a search of banking records. In the end it’s really those searches as much as anything else that helps Wisting and the team figure out what’s behind this case.

Record searches can be a thankless task. One may search for hours or longer and not find anything. But they are important to real-life investigations and they’re an important part of the authenticity of a crime novel.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Bob Seger’s Feel Like a Number.