Well, Life on the Farm is Kinda Laid Back*

Erm… Not always. I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I did grow up near some of the most fertile land in the U.S. so farms were a big part of the scenery. And if you stop to think about it, farming is a fairly important part of life whether you live anywhere near farm country or not. Besides the delicious fresh food, one of the best things about farms from my perspective (I have never claimed to have a psychologically well-adjusted view ) is that they make terrific settings for murder mysteries. They are filled with good hiding places for bodies, and farm communities tend to be smaller and more close-knit than some other communities, so there are all kinds of opportunities for murder motives. And then there’s the fact that some farms are isolated, so all sorts of things can happen there…

The farm belonging to Rowley Cloade figures in Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood (AKA There is a Tide). Cloade is trying to manage the farm in the financially straitened years during and immediately after World War II and he’s just getting by. He’s not as worried about money as some farmers are though because his wealthy uncle Gordon Cloade has always promised to take care of the family financially. Then, to everyone’s shock, Gordon Cloade marries a young widow Rosaleen Underhay. Before he can alter his will to protect his family, Cloade is tragically killed in a bomb blast. Now Rosaleen is set to inherit all of her husband’s considerable fortune, leaving his family with nothing. Then a stranger calling himself Enoch Arden comes to the area. He drops hints that Rosaleen’s first husband didn’t die as she’d always said but is alive. If that’s true then she can’t inherit. So the Cloades have every interest in finding out whether Arden’s story is true. When he is killed one night, Rowley Cloade and the rest of his family are caught up in both a family squabble and a murder investigation. Hercule Poirot has already heard the story of Cloade’s marriage and of Rosaleen’s first husband, so when two members of the Cloade family approach him to investigate, he’s interested in doing so.

In Ngaio Marsh’s Died in the Wool, New Zealand MP Flossie Rubrick finds out just how deadly farms can be. She goes to an isolated sheep pen on her husband’s farm to prepare an important speech, but doesn’t return. Three weeks later, her body turns up inside a bale of wool. Rubrick’s nephew writes to Inspector Roderick Alleyn asking him to investigate and since this could very well involve matters of national security Alleyn travels to New Zealand to look into the case. When he arrives, Alleyn gets to know the various members of the victim’s family and he finds out that more than one member had a good reason to want her dead. In the end, the murder turns out to be related to an important secret that Rubrick had discovered about one family member in particular.

Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers also shows how deadly farms can be. Johannes Lövgren and his wife Maria have a small farm not far from Ystad. One night they are brutally murdered. Ystad detective Kurt Wallander and his team are called in immediately. It’s too late to save Johannes, but Maria lives for a short time. She recovers consciousness just long enough to say the word foreign before she too dies. There is already simmering anti-immigration sentiment in the area and when the press learns what Maria Lövgren said just before she died, the situation gets even more inflamed and another murder is committed. Now Wallander has to deal with multiple murders as well as the threat of more violence. This case turns out to be simpler than it seems on the surface and one of the clues to the case turns out to be on the farm.

Linda Castillo’s series featuring police chief Kate Burkholder takes place in and around the Amish farming community of Painters Mill, Ohio. In Sworn to Silence, we learn that Burkholder was a member of the Amish community herself until she left it, for very good reasons, sixteen years earlier. Shortly after her return, the body of a young girl is found in a snowy field on a farm belonging to Isaak and Anna Stutz. Then another body is discovered. And another. These murders turn out to be connected to the reason that Burkholder left Painters Mill in the first place, so if she’s gong to catch the killer, Burkholder is also going to have to confront her own past. Besides the murder investigation, this series also gives readers a look at Amish farms and life in an Amish community.

Still interested in Amish farms? I don’t usually discuss films very much on this blog, but do see Peter Weir’s 1985 film Witness. It’s a suspenseful mystery and much of it takes place in the Amish community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In my opinion (so feel free to differ with me if you do), it’s an excellent portrayal of the Amish lifestyle as well as a solid mystery. Oh, and did I mention it features both Harrison Ford and Viggo Mortensen??

Oh, right. Farms.    Farmland turns out to be very important in Patricia Stoltey’s The Prairie Grass Murders. Former Vietnam veteran Willie Grisslejon pays a visit to the Illinois farming community where he grew up. He discovers the body of an unknown man in a field and tries to notify the local sheriff. That’s when he’s locked up as a vagrant and ordered to have a psychiatric evaluation. Willie calls his sister Sylvia Thorn, who at the time of this novel is a Florida judge, and she travels to Illinois to arrange for her brother’s release. When Willie insists on returning to the site where he found the body, they find that it has disappeared and there’ve been obvious attempts to cover up any trace of the dead man’s existence. Now Sylvia and Willie get involved in a mystery involving land disputes, corruption and greed – and a farm that seems to be the focus of a lot of what’s going on. Much of the novel takes place in the beautiful prairie farmland of Illinois.

In Martin Edwards’ The Hanging Wood, we meet Orla Payne, who works at St. Herbert’s, a residential library in the Lake District. Twenty years earlier, her brother Callum disappeared and was never found, but Orla has always believed he was murdered. She wants DCI Hannah Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team to investigate, but at first Scarlett doesn’t take her request seriously. And it’s hard to blame Scarlett for her reluctance. Orla Payne is unstable at the best of times and when she contacts Scarlett she’s been drinking so Scarlett doesn’t make it a priority. Then, Orla Payne’s body is discovered buried in a silo on Lane End Farm. There’s no way to tell at first whether she was murdered or committed suicide, so now, Scarlett and her team have a very new case to solve as well as the cold case of Callum Payne’s disappearance. With help from Oxford historian Daniel Kind, Scarlett discovers the truth about the farm, the history of the area and its families, and what really happened to Orla and Callum Payne.

Farming is a way of life for a lot of people and farms are an important part of the economy. They’re also really interesting settings for murder. I know I haven’t mentioned all of the great farm-related mysteries out there (for instance, I’m only getting acquainted with Nelson Brunanski’s Saskatchewan prairie/farmland novels, so I’m not really equipped to comment on them yet). Which ones have you enjoyed?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from John Denver’s Thank God I’m a Country Boy.

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.

Now We Gotta Run*

One of the staples of a lot of crime fiction novels is the chase scene. I don’t mean necessarily a scene in which one car pursues another (although that certainly happens too). I mean the general sense of chasing. It’s easy to see why such scenes are a part of the genre. They can add suspense to a story. And when they’re done well, they can also be believable. After all, if a culprit is running away, it makes sense that the police would go after her or him. If a criminal thinks someone may have been a witness to a crime, it makes sense that that criminal would go after the witness too. But there’s a caveat here. Chase scenes can be overblown, melodramatic and unconvincing. They’re not as easy to write as they are to film, either, so they have to be not just believable but also written in a way that conveys the tension the author wants to convey. When chase scenes are well-written and used effectively though, they really can be effective ways to ratchet up the suspense of a story.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s The Murder on the Links, Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings travel to the French village of Merlinville-sur-Mer when Poirot gets an urgent letter from Paul Renauld, who has settled there. Renauld’s letter claims that his life is in danger and that he needs Poirot’s help. By the time Poirot and Hastings get to Renauld’s home though it’s too late; he’s been murdered. Poirot works with Hastings and with the French authorities to find out who killed Renauld and why. Towards the end of the novel, Poirot has figured out who the killer is and he makes a plan to trap the killer by offering human ‘bait.’ The killer takes the ‘bait’ and there’s a chase scene in which Poirot, Hastings, and Hastings’ new romantic interest race to get to the killer before that person claims another victim.

In Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives, we are introduced to the Eberhart family. Photographer Joanna Eberhart and her attorney husband Walter have just moved with their children from New York City to the quiet suburban town of Stepford Connecticut. At first the town seems perfect. But slowly Joanna and her new friend Bobbie Markowe begin to suspect that something sinister is going on in Stepford. They both become convinced that the only solution is for the families to get out of Stepford as soon as possible, and they make plans to move at the end of the school year. But then, a frightening incident proves that the end of the school year is going to be too late. Now Joanna has to convince Walter that she’s not crazy and that they must leave Stepford immediately. Towards the end of the novel there’s a very effective chase scene in which Joanna is frantically trying to get away. And what makes this scene so effective (at least to me) is that the suspense doesn’t come from guns, threats and so on. It’s almost entirely psychological.

Michael Connelly’s The Black Ice features another kind of chase scene. L.A.P.D. detective Harry Bosch learns of what looks like a suicide in his territory. He goes to the scene even though he wasn’t officially assigned to do so and discovers that the victim is Calexico ‘Cal’ Moore, a fellow cop. The official explanation for Moore’s death is that he had gone ‘dirty’ and killed himself. Because of the potential embarrassment to the department, Bosch is ordered to leave the case alone. In fact, he’s even given other cases to work on to keep him occupied. But when one of those other cases seems to be related to Moore’s death, Bosch begins to investigate what really happened to his colleague. The trail leads to a small Mexican border town and a nasty drugs ring that’s been pushing a dangerous new drug called ‘black ice.’ As Bosch pursues the leads that took him to Mexico he finds himself up against some dangerous people and there’s a very effective chase scene in which he and a colleague go after the leader of the drugs gang. That chase leads Bosch to the truth about Cal Moore, too.

In Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers, Ystad detective Kurt Wallander and his team investigate the murders of local farmers Johannes Lövgren and his wife Maria. At first it looks like a robbery gone wrong, but there are signs that the explanation isn’t that simple. The last word Maria Lövgren said before her death was foreign, so there is a possibility that the killers were immigrants. That possibility inflames already-simmering anti-immigration feeling in the area and one night, there’s another murder, this time of a Somali immigrant who lives at a camp not far away. Now Wallander and the team have two cases to solve. At one point in the novel, Wallander has deduced who the killer of the Somali immigrant is and tracks that person down. There’s a very effective chase scene in which he goes after the killer; besides adding to the tension, it really reflects the danger of fanaticism.

There’s also Åsa Larsson’s The Blood Spilt. Kiruna police officers Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke investigate the murder of Mildred Nilsson, a local priest. Her death means that the house in which she and her husband lived will revert to the Swedish Church. So attorney Rebecka Martinsson works with the church and with Nilsson’s widower to arrange for the transfer of property; that’s how she gets involved in the murder case. She is able to provide Mella and Stålnacke with valuable information about the murder but the killer finds out that she’s gotten too close. That leads to a chase scene in which Martinsson ends up in a truly perilous situation. She survives (I don’t think it’s spoiling the novel to say that) and it’s Larsson’s credit that the scene is depicted realistically and so is its aftermath. Martinsson does not come out unscathed.

And then there’s Martin Edwards’ The Serpent Pool, in which DCI Hanna Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team re-open the six-year-old drowning death of Bethany Friend. Her death turns out to be related to two more recent deaths which are being investigated by Scarlett’s friend DCI Fern Larter and her team. So the two detectives pool their resources. They also get help from Oxford historian Daniel Kind, who’s pursuing a separate angle of interest in the case. With the insight she gets from Kind, and her own deductions, Scarlett figures out who the murder in all three cases is. She also figures out that another person is very likely going to be killed if she doesn’t get to the killer and the next victim in time. So she goes after the murderer in what makes for a very effective sort of chase. This chase isn’t a traditional ‘one person runs after another’ chase but it adds a great deal of tension to the story.

There are a lot of other really well-done chase scenes too – many more than I have space for in this one post. And in case you didn’t notice, none of the chase scenes I’ve mentioned come from novels that are automatically branded as ‘thrillers.’ It’s easy to find chase scenes in thrillers; it’s a little more interesting to find them in novels that aren’t…

What’s your view? Do you enjoy chase scenes? Do you find them too stereotypical (cue eye-rolling)? If you’re a writer do you use them?

 

ps. Oh, the ‘photo? The room in which my dogs are so kindly modeling chase scenes is soon to become… my ‘Ma’am Cave’/writing room.     The good side of being an ‘empty-nester…’

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from The Dave Clark Five’s Catch Us If You Can.

 

 

Money Makes the World Go Around*

Banking – and I don’t mean only high finance – is such an integral part of our lives that we don’t really think about it unless there’s some sort of problem. And with today’s direct deposit, ATMs and electronic banking transactions we really don’t even need to go into a bank very often. And yet our financial lives are a part of who we are. So when there’s a crime, especially if the crime may have a financial motive, the police waste little time going into victims’ and suspects’ banking histories. And it’s surprising what they can find there. In fact there’s even a forensics specialty in accounting and banking. Detectives and attorneys use things such as ATM transactions and debit card purchases to marshal evidence for and against people too. With the prevalence of banking in our lives it’s no wonder it shows up so much in crime fiction. The topic of banking in crime fiction is quite broad so this post only gives me the space to touch on a few aspects of it. But a quick glance is all you need I think to really see how important banking and finance are to the genre.

Starting from the days of Arthur Conan Doyle and even before, bank robberies have been the subject of crime fiction stories. That’s what’s behind Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Red-Headed League. In that story pawnbroker Jabez Wilson is offered an opportunity that seems to good to be true. He is hired for good pay to copy the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The only proviso is that he cannot leave his new place of employment while he is ‘on duty.’ Happy enough to comply with that rule he begins his job. All goes well until the day he goes to work only to find that his employers seem to have disappeared. Wilson asks Holmes to look into the matter and Holmes begins to investigate. He finds that Wilson was being manipulated by a gang of thieves who wanted to use Wilson’s pawn shop as a base from whence they would tunnel into the nearby City and Suburban Bank.

Bank robberies are also integral to the plots of Robert Pollock’s Loophole or, How to Rob a Bank and Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo. In both of those novels there’s a plan to use underground tunnels as a way to break into a bank. For those who are interested, I recommend reading Pollock’s novel first, since it takes place about thirty years before Connelly’s does, and it’s really interesting (or maybe it’s just me) to see how technology and bank security changed over time.

A bank robbery also plays an important role in Karin Fossum’s He Who Fears the Wolf.  In that novel, Oslo Inspector Konrad Sejer and his assistant Jacob Skarre are investigating the murder of Halldis Horn, who lived alone after the death of her husband. The evidence seems to point to Errki Johrma, who has mental illness and a very troubled personal history. But Sejer isn’t sure at all that Johrma is the killer. And since Johrma has disappeared, there’s no way to question him about the crime. Then, there’s a bank robbery to which Sejer is a sort of eyewitness. He’s passing by Fokus Bank, where he has an account. Not far from the bank he sees a young man who for several reasons makes him uneasy. When the man goes into the bank Sejer goes in too but then chides himself for being overly suspicious. Sejer leaves the bank but he’s only a few blocks away when he hears a shot. He returns to the bank to find out that the man he observed robbed the bank and has escaped. That robbery ends up being related, ‘though in an unexpected way, to the murder investigation.

Bank transactions themselves can provide clues to the motive for a crime and to the person who committed it. We see that all through crime fiction. For instance, under the name Emma Lathen, the writing duo of Mary Jane Latsis  and  Martha Henissart created a very popular series featuring banking vice president John Putnam Thatcher. He is employed by international banking giant Sloan Guaranty Trust. In that capacity, he oversees many of the bank’s transactions and gets involved with banking clients. And because of his knowledge of the way banking works, he’s often able to find financial clues that solve murders. For instance in Going For the Gold, the Sloan has been selected as the official bank of the 1980 Winter Olympics. Thatcher travels to Lake Placid, New York where the games are to be held to oversee the bank’s handling of the myriad transactions the games will generate. When one of the athletes is murdered, Thatcher discovers that the victim was involved in a traveller’s cheque counterfeiting scheme. Another athlete who works at a bank gives Thatcher important information as to exactly how the scheme worked in individual bank branches and he is able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Financial transactions are important, even if only mentioned briefly, in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Wealthy American businessman Samuel Ratchett is on his way across Europe on the world-famous Orient Express train when he is stabbed late one night. Hercule Poirot is aboard the same train and his friend M. Bouc, a company director, persuades him to investigate. It’s soon discovered that Ratchett is not who he appears to be. In his real identity he’s hiding a dark secret that has everything to do with his murder. Ratchett’s past catches up with him in part because his murderer has discovered through his financial transactions exactly how he managed to escape it, so to speak.

Peter Temple’s Bad Debts introduces us to occasional lawyer and private investigator Jack Irish. When he gets a series of messages from a former client Danny McKillop, he doesn’t take them seriously at first. Then McKillop is murdered. Partly out of a sense of guilt for not paying closer attention to the messages, Irish begins to look into what happened to the victim. Eight years earlier McKillop had gone to prison for the hit-and-run killing of Melbourne activist Anne Jeppeson. Irish’s investigation raises the strong possibility that McKillop was framed for Jeppeson’s death and that she was, in fact, deliberately murdered. With help from journalist Linda Hilliard, Irish discovers through financial and banking transactions exactly what the motive was for Jeppeson’s killing. Those transactions are also part of what leads him to the real killer.

A trip to the bank proves to be of vital importance in Henning Mankell’s  Faceless Killers. Johannes Lövgren and his wife Maria are brutally murdered one night and Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team on the Ystad police force investigate the killings. It doesn’t look as though robbery was the motive; the couple was not known to be wealthy and besides, the murders are more brutal than one would expect in a case of robbery gone wrong. Just before she dies, Maria Lövgren says the word foreign, and that raises all sorts of suspicions, to say nothing of controversy. But a thorough investigation turns up nothing to connect the couple to any foreigners living in the area. Meanwhile the team looks in to Lövgren’s bank statements and financial records and uncovers some facts about his past that no-one knew. But Wallander still cannot make a direct connection between the killer and the victims. Then he visits the Union Bank, where Lövgren had a safe-deposit box. During his trip there he gets an unexpected clue and the same person later provides him with the conclusive evidence he needs to catch the killer.

There are plenty of other novels out there where the police trace bank transactions, debit card use and other financial clues that lead them to a criminal and a motive or that exonerate someone. It’s a realistic approach to getting evidence too since virtually all of us use banks in one way or another. When financial detail isn’t overly burdensome, it can add much to a story.  Do you find that kind of investigation interesting? If you’re a writer, do you include banking when you plan motive or clue-gathering?

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Fred Ebb and John Kander’s Money Song.

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Exes

X marks the spot where the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme has stopped today. Just two stops to go after this one, so we are getting close to the end of our journey. And thanks to our tour guide Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, we’re all still together. We’ve arrived safely at the Hotel X, so while everyone’s leafing through sightseeing brochures, I’ll share my contribution: Exes. Yes, I’m thinking laterally – that’s OK, isn’t it, Kerrie?

Fictional sleuths can have extremely stressful lives, and the more devoted they are to their jobs, the more difficult it is for them to balance work and personal life. It’s not always easy to maintain an intimate relationship, especially if one’s a sleuth, so it shouldn’t surprise you that there are several exes in crime fiction.  I’m only going mention just a few of them.

One of the more interesting exes I’ve encountered is Michael Connelly’s Eleanor Wish, former wife of L.A.P.D. cop Harry Bosch and mother of their daughter Maddie. When we first meet her in The Black Echo, Wish is an FBI agent; later she becomes a professional gambler. In The Black Echo she teams up with Bosch when he and his partner investigate the death of an old friend of Bosch’s from his days in Vietnam. That death is connected to a large planned bank robbery, which is how the FBI gets involved. Bosch and Wish begin a relationship that has its ups and downs; yet, they remain together and marry at the end of Trunk Music. Bosch loves Wish very much, but he is passionately devoted to the job and finds it hard to balance everything in his life. It’s partly for that reason that the two end up divorcing. Wish and Maddie eventually move to Hong Kong, where Bosch works with her again when he gets a frantic call from Maddie, saying that she’s been kidnapped.

What makes Eleanor Wish an interesting character is that she is complex and somewhat enigmatic. She’s strong and capable and it’s easy to see why she and Bosch develop a relationship. She’s not the ‘bad guy’ in the divorce either. The two don’t break up because she is malicious, jealous or greedy. It’s a painful experience for both of them and in fact, Bosch never really stops caring for her. Even after the couple ends their marriage, she figures into the way Bosch thinks and remains an influential character.

We meet another interesting ex in Camilla Läckberg’s series featuring crime writer Erica Falck and her husband Patrik Hedström. This series takes place mostly in the small fishing town of Fjallbacka, Falck’s home town, where most people know each other.  When she first moves back to Fjallbacka in The Ice Princess, one of the people Falck is glad to see again is her ex Dan. She and Dan were high school lovers and had planned to stay together. But as it turned out they wanted different things. Falck wanted to leave Fjallbacka, where she felt smothered at the time. Dan, on the other hand, wanted to stay. He was content with the small-town life of fishing, hockey and family.

Dan’s an appealing character in that he’s bright, interesting, and if I can put it this way, comfortable. He’s not pretentious, and it’s easy to talk to him. It makes a great deal of sense that he and Falck would have fallen in love. And even now, ‘though it’s been years since they were a couple, they are still close friends and understand each other. This relationship adds to the series in a few ways. First, it offers some backstory and an interesting perspective on Falck. Dan’s known her for years and that allows readers to get to know her. Second, Dan himself grows and evolves as a character as the series goes on. He’s a ‘regular’ whom we get to know as part of the fabric of the town and of Falck’s life. Third, and perhaps this is just my opinion, so feel free to differ with me if you do, but it’s refreshing to have an ‘ex’ relationship that isn’t full of bitterness and recrimination. Oh, there are some awkward moments, but overall, it’s a relationship that adds to the series.

Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander also has an interesting ex Mona. In Faceless Killers, Wallander is six months into the single life after Mona left him. As we find out though, she didn’t leave him out of greed, spite or infidelity. She found it impossible to live with Wallander’s way of making his job a priority. And the breakup has been hard on her too. As she tells her ex,

 

‘I wish you could understand that it wasn’t your fault. I was the one who felt that the breakup was necessary. I was the one who decided.’

 

She’s not a bad person, and that makes her interesting. She cares about her ex-husband and their daughter Linda and although she is not at all a perfect person, she matters deeply to Wallander. Here’s one of his thoughts about her (from The Troubled Man):

 

‘Even if I were to fall head over heels with another woman today, Mona will always be the most important woman in my life. That is a fact that can never be changed. New love might replace an earlier love, but the old love is always there, no matter what.’

 

Mona may no longer be a daily part of Wallander’s life, but she matters to him and she’s woven into the series.

And then there’s Mick Houghton, ex-boyfriend of Jill Edmondson’s Toronto PI Sasha Jackson. Houghton’s a rocker and he and Jackson met as bandmates. In fact, as we learn in Blood and Groom, they played in the band for several years before they started dating. The two developed a passionate relationship but from Jackson’s perspective, they fought too much and weren’t stable enough as a couple. It was only musically that they were really in harmony – yes, pun intended.    But even though they’ve broken up, Jackson likes and trusts Houghton. They know each other very well and they really are fond of each other. When she needs him most, Jackson knows she can depend on Houghton’s help. Houghton isn’t a bad person and although he’s hardly perfect, we can see how he’d be attractive. That relationship is an interesting thread running through this series and it’s refreshing to see exes who may not have been a good couple but can be friends.

And that’s the thing about well-written exes. Oh, it’s fun to have exes whom we ‘love to hate.’ But the best exes give us perspective on the sleuth and are interesting and likeable enough characters that we can see why the sleuth would’ve loved them in the first place.