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.

Where do the Children Go?*

Of all of the topics that crime fiction treats, one of the most difficult is when harm comes to children. For most of us, there is an instinct that children must be protected and that makes sense. For one thing, that’s how our species keeps going. For another, children are among the most vulnerable among us and they can’t protect themselves the way adults can. That’s part of the reason I think for which many crime fiction fans don’t want to read novels in which children are the victims. I don’t blame them. We can keep a certain amount of emotional distance from a mystery novel in which the victim is an adult, especially if the violence described isn’t gratuitous or brutal. But it’s a different matter altogether when it’s a child. Because of that I think it takes a special skill for a crime writer to create a story that features the loss of a child.

Agatha Christie explores just that point in Murder on the Orient Express. Wealthy American businessman Samuel Ratchett is stabbed on the second night of a three-day trip across Europe on the famous Orient Express. Hercule Poirot is on the same train and is persuaded to investigate the murder. He soon discovers that this death is linked to the kidnapping/murder of three-year-old Daisy Armstrong a few years earlier. In this novel, Christie doesn’t go into lurid detail about the kidnapping and murder and the story is more effective for that. She shows very, very clearly though just how devastating the loss of a child can be.

We also see how devastating that kind of loss is in Johan Theorin’s Echoes From the Dead. Retired sea captain Gerlof Davidsson suffered a terrible tragedy twenty years ago when his grandson Jens disappeared. No trace of the boy was ever found – not even a body. Davidsson’s daughter Julia was so torn apart by her son’s disappearance that she left Øland hoping to pick up her life again. She hasn’t been successful but life has gone on for her and for her father. Then one day Davidsson receives an unusual package – a sandal belonging to Jens. This brings back the tragedy for both Davidsson and his daughter, but it also raises questions that need to be answered. So Julia reluctantly returns to Øland to help her father try to find out what really happened to Jens. Theorin doesn’t dwell in this novel on exactly what happened to the boy but the havoc his loss wrought on the family is woven through the novel.

Even fans of Martha Grimes’ Inspector Jury series find it difficult to read The Winds of Change. Not because it’s not well-written – it is. But this novel deals with the murder of an unknown five-year-old girl who’s found shot in the back. Jury and his friend Melrose Plant look into the case, each in his own way. They find that this murder may be connected to the discovery of the body of a dead woman on the property of wealthy Declan Hughes. It turns out that Hughes’ daughter Flora disappeared three years ago, leaving no trace. As Jury and Plant work to connect these tragedies, we see the effect of the loss of these children. In my opinion (so feel free to differ with me if you do) that fact makes this book especially sad to read.

In Gail Bowen’s The Wandering Souls Murders, Saskatchewan political scientist and academic Joanne Kilbourn gets drawn into a case of multiple murders when her daughter Mieka discovers the body of seventeen-year-old Bernice Morin in a garbage can. Bernice’s death is possibly related to a series of other murders and Kilbourn investigates them when her son Pete’s former girlfriend Christy Sinclair becomes a victim. Little by little, Kilbourn finds out the truth about the murders and how they are connected to Christy’s upbringing at remote Blue Heron Point. One element that adds a level of suspense and real sadness to this novel is that what’s happening near Blue Heron Point has to do with harm to children. Bowen doesn’t describe what happens in gratuitous detail. Instead, she shows just how awful harm to children really is through Kilbourn’s reactions. And this subtlety makes the novel that much more gripping and sad.

That theme of the dreadful effects of the loss of a child is handled very effectively in Paddy Richardson’s Hunting Blind. One afternoon, Minna and David Anderson and their four children attend a school picnic at Lake Wanaka. During the picnic four-year-old Gemma Anderson disappears. A massive search is undertaken, but no trace of her is found – not even a body. The family is shattered by what’s happened, and Gemma’s loss has several profound effects. But everyone keeps living as best as possible. Then, seventeen years later, Gemma’s older sister Stephanie makes the choice to find out what really happened to her sister. Stephanie is just beginning her career as a psychiatrist when she starts to work with a new patient Elizabeth Clark, who tells her a story that’s eerily similar to Stephanie’s own family story. Years ago Clark’s younger sister Gracie was abducted and, like Gemma Anderson, was never found. Stephanie decides to face her own ghosts and find out the truth about both girls’ disappearances. Throughout this novel, we see just how terrible it is to lose a child and Richardson shows us this in an umber of ways, none of which is gratuitous.

That’s also true in Wendy James’ The Mistake in which Jodie Evans Garrow has to face a haunting part of her past that she’s never told anyone, not even her family members. When she was nineteen, Jodie gave birth to a baby girl Ella Mary. When circumstances bring her to the same hospital years later, a nurse remembers her and asks about the baby. Jodie claims she gave the baby up for adoption but there are no adoption records to support that. On the other hand, no child’s body was found and there’s nothing to indicate that the baby was killed. So what happened to the baby? Is Jodie somehow responsible for the child’s disappearance? These questions begin to haunt Jodie as everyone begins to turn against her. People are so horrified at the thought that she might have killed her child that she becomes a pariah. Her family is torn apart and we can see as the novel moves on just how much of an impact Ella Mary’s loss has had on Jodie although she never spoke of what really happened to anyone. The impact of this novel is all that much stronger because Ella Mary was a child.

Arguably one of the most powerful depictions of the loss of a child (well, in my opinion anyway) is Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost. Ten-year-old Kate Meaney wants to be a detective. In fact, she’s already started her own detective agency Falcon Investigations. She spends quite a lot of time at the recently-opened Green Oaks Shopping Center looking for potential crime. But her grandmother Ivy believes she’d be better off going away to school. So she arranges for Kate to sit the entrance exams at the exclusive Redspoon school. Kate doesn’t want to go but her friend twenty-two-year-old Adrian Palmer persuades her to at least do the exams. In fact, he even goes with her on the bus to the school. Tragically, Kate never returns from Redspoon. A thorough search for her turns up nothing, but everyone thinks Palmer is responsible. His life is made so awful that he leaves town, planning never to return. Twenty years later his younger sister Lisa is an assistant manager at Your Music in Green Oaks. One night, she makes an unlikely friend Kurt, who’s a security guard at the mall. Kurt tells Lisa that lately he’s been seeing something odd on the security cameras: a young girl carrying a backpack. The girl looks a lot like Kate Meaney and that brings up very painful memories. But each in a different way, Lisa and Kurt work to find out the truth about the security cameras and the truth about what happened to Kate.  In this novel O’Flynn explores, among other things, the deep scars that are left when a child disappears, and how that loss affects even the most unlikely people.

It’s hard to write about the loss of a child. It was even hard to write this post because of that. So I can see why people don’t want to read about that topic. I give a lot of credit to authors who can handle it well.

 

In Memoriam

 

 

This post is dedicated to the memories of those who were lost in the 14 December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Many of those killed were children. There aren’t any words to describe the sadness and grief that their loss has left behind, so I won’t try. I truly wish their families the strength, peace and hope that they need to rebuild. I also wish for them the privacy they deserve at this time.

 

 

 

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

Can You Imagine Us Years From Today*

As any crime fiction fan can tell you, one of the genre’s appeals is the way in which it reflects society. Whether they do so deliberately or not, crime writers hold up a mirror to society, so we can see our values and assumptions reflected in their work. Just as one example, crime fiction shows us social attitudes towards those who are elderly. And no, this post isn’t going to be only about elderly sleuths such as Mike Befeler’s Paul Jacobson (although I’m going to mention them). Rather, it’s going to be about how age affects the way people see others.

For instance, consider Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. She’s getting on in years when we first meet her in The Murder at the Vicarage, and throughout the twelve novels in which she appears one of the patterns we see is that people sometimes dismiss her because of that. In 4:50 From Paddington for instance, Miss Marple’s friend Elspeth McGillicuddy witnesses a murder while she’s on a train. She tries to alert the conductor but there is no dead body, nor has anyone reported a missing person. Because of that, but mostly because of Mrs. McGillicuddy’s age, the whole thing is dismissed as a bad dream she had. Miss Marple believes her friend though and goes with her to the police station. That doesn’t get them very good results either. Again the two are dismissed mostly because they are ‘of a certain age.’ It’s not until Miss Marple demonstrates with the help of her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow that there really is a body that anyone pays close attention. And then there’s The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (AKA The Mirror Crack’d), in which Miss Marple is recovering from a bout of illness. She’s got a live-in nurse who treats her with the indulgent condescension that must be extremely frustrating for the elderly. But Miss Marple finds a way to outwit Miss Knight and gets the chance to take a walk on her own. That’s how she gets drawn in to the case of the killing of new resident Heather Badcock…

It is a deeply-entrenched part of the U.S. Southern culture to treat one’s elders with respect. ‘Yes, Ma’am’ and ‘No, Sir’ become automatic responses when children speak to adults, and even adult children know better than to be rude to their parents and other elders. And yet we can still see that underlying assumption that ‘older’ means ‘feeble and unable to think clearly.’ That’s certainly frustrating to Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Myrtle Clover, whom Craig introduced in the first edition of A Dyeing Shame: Death at the Beauty Box.  Myrtle Clover is an octogenarian former teacher who lives in the small town of Bradley, North Carolina. She may be elderly, but that doesn’t mean she wants to be put out to pasture so to speak, and little frustrates her more than to be treated with condescension. For instance, in Pretty is as Pretty  Dies, Myrtle’s son Red, the local police chief, tries to manage his mother’s life and ‘volunteers’ her to join a local woman’s church group. Myrtle gets very angry at this condescension but she goes off to the church to meet with the other members of the women’s group. When she gets there she finds the body of recently-arrived real-estate developer Parke Stockard. Red does everything he can to keep his mother out of the murder investigation and is dismissive about her input. That doesn’t stop Myrtle though. Craig has a light touch, so we can smile at the way the locals so easily dismiss what Myrtle Clover has to say. But at the same time it highlights what must be a deep source of resentment for those who may be physically elderly but have an awful lot worth sharing and heeding.

We see this same kind of issue in Tarquin Hall’s series featuring Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri. Puri is a very dutiful son in many ways and always treats his mother Mummy-ji with courtesy. He has a genuine affection for her too. But even that is somewhat indulgent and condescending. For instance, in The Case of the Missing Servant, Puri and his team investigate several cases. At the same time, Puri seems to have made an enemy who takes a pot shot at him. When Mummy-ji hears of this, she wants to find out who is responsible. Puri of course makes it clear that she can’t do that and definitively (although politely) dismisses her input. And yet, it’s Mummy-ji who finds out who is responsible. It’s not just Puri who treats her with that kind of polite condescension. In The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, Mummy-ji and her daughter-in-law, Puri’s wife Rumpi, attend a kitty party, where a group of women get together for food, drink, and conversation. A big part of the kitty party is a prize draw. Each woman puts a little money into a kitty. Later one woman’s name is drawn and she wins the kitty. At this party though there’s a robbery and the money is stolen. Mummy-ji thinks quickly and manages to scratch the robber. Later, she and Rumpi go to the local forensics laboratory to try to find out who stole the money. Here’s a bit of what happens there:

 

‘They had spent the last couple of hours inside the…building, where the son of one of Mummy’s oldest friends worked as a laboratory technician…
When Mummy-ji had asked him to run a DNA test on her fingernail cutting he’d responded: “Auntie-ji, I think you’ve been watching too much of CSI on Star TV, isn’t it?”’

 

We see in this reaction both the courtesy that young people are taught to use towards the elderly, and the underlying assumption that Mummy-ji hasn’t much of use to add to the investigation. Of course, people who feel that way about Mummy-ji do so at their own peril…

Chris Well’s retired bus driver Earl Walker is treated dismissively too. When we first meet Walker in Nursing a Grudge, he is a resident of the Candelwick Retirement Community. Grieving the loss of his wife Barbara and bitter about the shooting that left him disabled, he’s content to keep to himself. Then one day another resident George Kent suddenly dies. At first Kent’s death is put down to natural causes. But Walker begins to suspect that Kent was murdered, and with good reason too. Still, nobody believes Walker at first. He’s not taken seriously and neither are any of the other residents. They’re elderly and some are in poor health so the authorities aren’t inclined to pay serious attention to what they have to say. Walker knows that the other residents have important information and he uses it to piece together what really happened to George Kent. But it’s clear that although the staff and authorities are courteous enough to the residents, they dismiss them at least at first.

Mike Befeler’s Paul Jacobson is not only elderly but he also deals with short-term memory loss. So even though he hasn’t lost any of his intelligence, shrewdness or ability to think, he has to compensate for that memory loss and he does so by writing down everything that happens every day. That way he can remember what happened when he reads his journal the next day. And that’s in part how he and some friends solve the mystery of the death of Marshall Tiegan in Retirement Homes Are Murder. What’s interesting is that although Jacobson and his friends are thoroughly familiar with what goes on at the retirement home where they live in this novel, they’re not taken seriously at first. In fact, Jacobson is even suspected of the murder. It’s a very interesting look at how society sees those who live in retirement homes.

Of course not all fictional elderly folks are treated this way. In Johan Theorin’s Öland Quartet for instance we meet Gerlof Davidsson. He’s an elderly former fisherman who’s lived on Öland all his life. Davidsson knows everyone and he knows the island’s history very well. So he is a rich resource for modern-day mysteries connected with the past. And he is respected as such by the younger members of his family. We see that same kind of respect in Tony Hillerman’s novels. His Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn have been raised to regard the elderly as having a lot of wisdom and much to offer and that’s how they treat the elderly characters in this series.

And that’s one thing I really like about crime fiction. It lets us see who we are and what our societies are like. And that includes the assumptions we make about the elderly and how that affects the way we treat them.

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Simon and Garfunkel’s Old Friends/Bookends.

On an Island in the Sun*

As any crime fiction fan can tell you, the setting for a novel can add as much to the suspense of a story as anything else. Take islands for instance. There are lots and lots of crime fiction novels that take place on islands and if you think about it, it’s not really surprising. Islands offer a kind of “closed” atmosphere that can add to the suspense of a story. After all, if there’s a murderer on an island there aren’t as many places to escape as there on a mainland. And an island also offers a sense of claustrophobia that can add to the suspense in a story too. Islands are also subject to weather extremes and that can add a layer of tension as well. There isn’t space in this one post to mention all of the “island-themed” crime fiction there is; I’ll just make reference to a few novels to show you what I mean.

Agatha Christie uses the island setting in several of her novels and short stories.  Perhaps the best-known are A Caribbean Mystery, And Then There Were None (AKA Ten Little Indians) and Evil Under the Sun. In all of these novels a disparate group of people is brought together for what’s supposed to be a holiday or at least a break from normal life. In A Caribbean Mystery Miss Marple’s generous nephew arranges for her to take a holiday in the West Indies. There she meets Major Palgrave who tells her the story of a man who was married twice and lost both of his wives to what was said to be suicide. The next morning Major Palgrave is dead and it’s not long before Miss Marple suspects that someone on the island is connected with the case Major Palgrove was describing and doesn’t want the truth to come out. In And Then There Were None, arguably the darkest of the three novels, ten people travel to Indian Island off the Devon coast, each for a different reason. When everyone arrives and settles, they are all accused of having been responsible for the death of at least one other person. Then one by one the guests begin to die. The survivors now have to figure out who the murderer among them is before everyone is killed. Evil Under the Sun is the story of the murder of Arlena Stuart Marshall, a well-known actress with a reputation as a “man eater.” This novel takes place mostly at the Jolly Roger Hotel on Leathercombe Bay, where Marshall, her husband Kenneth and her stepdaughter Linda have gone for a holiday. Hercule Poirot is staying at the same hotel and as it happens he’s possibly the last one to see the victim alive. So he works with Colonel Weston to find out which of the other guests is the murderer. In all of these novels the island setting brings together a group of people who otherwise might not be gathered (that’s even specifically mentioned in Evil Under the Sun). That fact adds much to the plots actually. So does the “closed” setting. And although the weather isn’t a major plot point in Evil Under the Sun or A Caribbean Mystery, it certainly is in And Then There Were None.

A great deal of the action in Ellery Queen’s The King is Dead also takes place on an island, in this case a private island owned by Kane “King” Bendigo. In that novel Queen and his father Inspector Richard Queen are summoned peremptorily to Bendigo Island to investigate a series of threatening notes that Bendigo has received. Neither Queen really wants to go but it’s made clear to them that this is a “command performance” because Bendigo’s a very powerful munitions dealer and has quite a lot of “clout” with various governments. When the Queens arrive on Bendigo Island they discover that it’s virtually an armed encampment. Bendigo lives there with his wife Karla and his brothers Judah and Abel. The rest of the residents are closely-supervised factory workers and a large and well-supplied security force. One night Bendigo is shot while he and his wife are closed up in his private office which is hermetically sealed and seemingly impregnable.  The most likely suspect is Judah Bendigo, who had already threatened his brother and who actually fired the weapon used in the shooting. But Judah was with Queen at the time of the murder. Besides, the gun he fired wasn’t loaded when he fired it. Now the Queens quite literally have a locked-room mystery to solve. Queen discovers that the root of the mystery lies in the Bendigos’ home town of Wrightsville so he travels there to uncover the past events that led to what happens on Bendigo Island and in the end, he puts together the pieces of the mystery.

Ann Cleeves’ Shetland Quartet is a set of novels set in different places in Scotland’s Shetland Islands. The novels feature Inspector Jimmy Perez, who was worn and raised on Fair Isle but lived and worked in Aberdeen until he returned to the Shetlands. In all four of the novels Raven Black, White Nights, Red Bones and Blue Lightning, Cleeves makes use of the tendency for islands to become insular. There’s a real gulf between the locals, many of whom have lived there all their lives, and incomers. And because of the insularity of islands they also often hold secrets. Those secrets and the network of relationships among the islanders play important roles in this series. So does the unpredictable weather. Storms, snow, autumn rain and fog all figure into the ways in which this set of stories play out.

Another series that takes place on an island is Johan Theorin’s Öland series. Those novels (so far Echoes From the Dead, The Darkest Room and The Quarry) all have to do with past tragedies and other mysteries that affect the present. They also feature a focus on the inter-relationships among the islanders and the realities of living in a place that depends heavily on the sea. Oh, and there’s the delightful Gerlof Davidsson, who’s lived there all his life and who knows just about everyone. In fact he’s what you might call a repository of island history and his knowledge is often key to solving the mysteries in this series.

Simon Beckett’s Written in Bone plays out on Runa, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides. In that novel forensic anthropologist David Hunter is called to Runa when the remains of a woman are found in a burned out building. Her death was meant to look like a tragic accidental burning but Hunter soon establishes that she was murdered. Now the task is to identify her and find out who murdered her and why. As he investigates, Hunter discovers that the island of Runa is hiding several secrets and as an incomer, he’s not going to be privy to them without digging deeper.

There are lots of other novels and series that feature islands (I’m thinking for instance of Roderic Jeffries’ Inspector Enrique Alvarez novels which are set on Mallorca).  It’s easy to see why. Island settings can be exotic and even when they aren’t they offer a “closed” context, some terrific opportunities for deep, dark secrets and good places too for all sorts of people to gather. Which are your favourite “island mysteries?”

 

ps. The ‘photo was taken on the lovely island of Aruba, which I can recommend for a quiet holiday. I promise – when I was there, there were no murders.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Weezer’s Island in the Sun.

And Keep the Memory Alive*

One of the most enduring ways of relaying events and teaching history is the art of storytelling, often called oral histories. In many cultures, those who tell stories are held in very high regard. Others know that they can learn a lot from those who can remember and tell about sometimes long-ago events. And such people play an interesting role in crime fiction too. It’s often those people who for instance can link a current investigation to something that happened a long time ago. They can also give a lot of background on an area and its inhabitants or on a family, and that can be useful to the sleuth too.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness (AKAPoirot Loses a Client), Hercule Poirot receives a letter from wealthy Miss Emily Arundell. She wants to consult him on a delicate family matter but won’t specify what it is. Poirot is intrigued enough by the letter that he and Hastings travel to Miss Arundell’s home in Market Basing. By the time they arrive there though it’s too late. Miss Arundell has died of what appears to be liver failure. Poirot is not so sure though and he begins to ask questions. It turns out that he has good reason for suspicion, too. Miss Arundell had a large fortune and several relations who were desperate for money. One of the people Poirot and Hastings interview is Miss Caroline Peabody, who’s lived in Market Basing all her life and is about the same age as Miss Arundell was. Miss Peabody knows all about the history of the area and about the history of the Arundell family, and she’s able to tell Poirot quite a great deal. And in the end, it’s partly that information that helps Poirot get to the truth about Miss Arundell’s murder.

Storytelling is often associated with indigenous groups of people and we see that in crime fiction. For instance, in Tony Hillerman’s The Ghostway, Navajo Tribal Police officer Jim Chee is investigating the murder of Albert Gorman, a Los Angeles Navajo who’s moved to the Big Reservation. Chee’s also been assigned to find sixteen-year-old Margaret Billy Sosi, who left the school she’s attending and hasn’t been seen since. Chee suspects that her death may be related to the Gorman case since the two are distant kin. So as he searches for Sosi he also follows leads on the other case and the trail for both cases leads to a dilapidated area on the outskirts of Los Angeles. That’s where he meets Bentwoman, who is an elderly kinswoman of both Gorman and Sosi. Bentwoman tells Chee a little of the family’s history and her daughter fills in a little more. That information helps Chee to understand the Gorman family better and that in turn helps Chee to understand who would have shot Gorman and why.

We see a similar kind of indigenous storytelling/oral history in Gunshot Road in which Adrian Hyland introduces us to Eli Japanankga Windmill. He’s an elderly member of the Kantulyu Aboriginal group who are presently camping at a place called Stonehouse. He’s old and in ill health but he’s considered a leader. That’s mostly because he remembers all of the old stories and memories of the group. Hyland’s sleuth, Aboriginal Community Police Officer (ACPO) Emily Tempest meets Windmill and his group while she’s investigating the murder of former prospector Albert “Doc” Ozolins who was supposedly killed as the result of a drunken quarrel. Tempest isn’t so sure that’s what happened and she begins to ask questions. Her search for the truth leads her to a place that the Kantulyu call Irinipatta and the Whites call Dingo Springs. Windmill is so thoroughly familiar with his people’s history and with the land that he’s able to lead the group to Dingo Springs from their camp at Stonehouse even though he’s completely blind.

But of course storytellers aren’t necessarily just members of indigenous peoples. For instance, in Johan Theorin’s Echoes From the Dead, we meet retired sea captain Gerlof Davidsson, who’s lived on the island of Øland all his life. Years ago Davidsson’s six-year-old grandson Jens disappeared leaving no trace. Not even a body was discovered. Now, twenty years later, Davidson has received an eerie package – one of Jens’ sandals. Devastated by the loss of her son, Jens’ mother Julia left Øland and has tried unsuccessfully to start life again. When her father Gerlof calls her to tell her about the sandal she doesn’t even want to discuss it at first. Then she listens to his story about the package and reluctantly returns to Øland to help him find out what really happened to Jens. Together, they discover that Jens’ disappearance is related to the island’s history and past events. In The Darkest Room, Davidsson’s grand-niece, police officer Tilda Davidsson, investigates two cases. One is a tragedy that has befallen the Westin family, a successful family who moved to Øland to get away from the stress of city life, or so they tell themselves. The other case has to do with a group of drug users and dealers who’ve been breaking into local houses. Tilda Davidsson finds that both of these cases are related to Øland’s history and the relationships among the people there. In both of these novels Gerlof Davidsson proves to be an invaluable resource. He knows the island’s history and most of the people who live there. His ability to remember and tell those stories from long ago is an important part of the solutions to the cases in both of these novels.

Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Quilt or Innocence features another storyteller Miss Sissy. Miss Sissy is one of the elderly residents of Dappled Hills, North Carolina. A member of the Village Quilters guild, she’s done quilting for most of her life and is an expert. She’s prickly, even pugnacious at times, and she can be very difficult. But she also knows just about everything that’s ever gone on in Dappled Hills. That knowledge proves critical when another member of the Village Quilters guild Miss Judith is murdered. The guild’s newest member is retired art exhibitor Beatrice Coleman. When she discovers Miss Judith’s body, she starts to ask questions and then begins to receive threatening notes. Later she herself is attacked. Miss Sissy’s knowledge of the history of Dappled Hills is important to the solution of this case, and she’s willing to tell her story. The only problem is that she suffers from mental confusion at times, so it’s hard to tell her lucid moments from her less lucid times. Besides, she doesn’t have a lot of patience so it’s hard for her to wait while others put together the pieces of what she says. But when Beatrice makes sense of the things Miss Sissy tells her, she’s able to put together the motive for the murder and she realises that Miss Sissy’s known something important about the killer all along.

We rely so often sometimes on what we learn through reading and research that it’s easy to forget how much knowledge and history there is in storytelling. I think that’s probably a lot of the appeal in audio books; it’s a kind of storytelling. And when storytellers appear in crime fiction it can be a good reminder of that source of knowledge.

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway).