The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Horse Collars, Herbs and Other Highly Unusual Homicides

The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme is moving along on our treacherous trip through the alphabet. Our tour leader Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise assures me that there’s still lots yet to see. Thanks, Kerrie, for managing all of our arrangements. Today our group has arrived at the River of H Hotel and Spa and everyone’s eager for a chance to settle in and relax. We’ve heard there’s a particularly good hot wrap here for those interested. While everybody’s booking massages, calling home and taking ‘photos, I’ll share my contribution for the week: horse-collars, herbs and other highly unusual homicides.

I’m sure that we can all think of dozens and dozens of crime novels where the victim dies by stabbing, gunshot wound, drowning and so on. Those are believable ways to murder too. But sometimes it makes for an interesting change when the victim dies in a more unusual way. Of course the risk of that is loss of credibility, but if it’s done well, it can be really effective.

We see an example of this in Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table. In that novel, Hercule Poirot gets an invitation to dinner at the home of the very mysterious and eccentric Mr. Shaitana. This isn’t going to be a typical kind of dinner party though. Shaitana has invited seven other guests. Three, like Poirot, are sleuths. The other four are people Mr. Shaitana believes have gotten away with murder. He hints as much during the meal and everyone feels a little uncomfortable. After the dinner, the group divides into two to play bridge. At some time during the evening, one of the guests stabs Mr. Shaitana. The only suspects are the four people who are possibly guilty of other murders. So the four sleuths work together to find out with of the guests killed their host. Part of this investigation is looking into each guest’s past. That’s how the sleuths discover that one of the guests Anne Meredith was companion to a Mrs. Benson, who died after ingesting hat paint which she thought was her usual dose of Syrup of Figs. At the inquest the death was ruled accidental. But was it??

Of all things, a hiccup turns out to be murderous in John D. MacDonald’s short story Homicidal Hiccup. Johnny Howard and his gang run Baker City. They’ve got a stranglehold on most of the local businesses and everyone’s afraid of the consequences of going up against Howard. That is, until Walter Maybree moves to town and buys the local drugstore. Maybree wants to run a ‘clean’ business and after a time, several other locals stand up for him and help to guard him and his soda shop. Howard is now losing respect and wants desperately to get rid of Maybree. So he and his girlfriend Bonny Gerlacher devise a plan. She’ll go into the drugstore disguised as a teenager from the local high school. Once there she’ll use a drink straw to shoot poison at Maybree when he steps close to her. That’s until a natural human reaction – a hiccup – changes everything…

Arthur Porges’ short story Horse-Collar Homicide features pathologist Dr. Joel Hoffman, who gets a very unusual case. Wealthy Leonard Lakewood has suddenly died and at first it looks as though he had a massive stroke. But some hints in the pathology results suggest that this wasn’t a stroke. So Hoffman decides to talk to the family. It turns out that at the time of his death Lakewood was leading the family in a game called ‘grinning through a horse collar.’ In this game a horse collar is suspended so that it hangs at about the height of a human face. Then, players take turns putting their faces through the horse collar and making the most ridiculous expressions they can. The winner is the player who gets the most laughs. Lakewood died during his turn and when he learns this, Hoffman begins to wonder how a horse collar could kill a man without even touching him. After a little more searching, he finds out how the thing was managed and he discovers that just about everyone in Lakewood’s family had a motive for murder.

There’s also an unusual murder weapon in Louise Penny’s The Cruelest Month. A well-known Hungarian psychic Madame Blavatsky has taken a room at the local B & B in the small town of Three Pines, in rural Québec. She is persuaded to give a séance and plans are made for everyone to attend. Then it comes out that Madame Blavatsky is not who she says she is. Still, it’s decided to go ahead with the séance since the plans are already in place. While the séance is taking place, Madeleine Favreau, who’s recently returned to Three Pines after a serious bout with illness, suddenly dies. At first everyone believes she was frightened to death. But the explanation is both simpler and more complicated than that. It turns out that the victim died of a lethal overdose of an herb called Ephedra, often used in diet drugs. Once it’s proven that Madeleine Favreau was murdered, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team look into her past to find out who would have wanted to kill her.

Could a haunting really kill? So it seems at first in Helene Tursten’s Night Rounds. One night during a blackout at Löwander Hospital, one of the nurses Marianne Svärd is killed. Another nurse Linda Svensson goes missing; her body is later discovered hung in a seldom-used attic in the hospital. Göteborg police detective Irene Huss and her team investigate the hospital, since everything seems to come back to something that’s going on there. One of the leads they follow is the fifty-year-old story of the death of Tekla Olsson, also a nurse. She hung herself in the same place where Linda Svensson’s body is discovered. What’s more, a few people report seeing her ghost just before the blackout. Is Tekla Olsson haunting the hospital? Huss and her team don’t think this case has a paranormal explanation and in fact, they find a very prosaic motive. But the thought that the hospital might be haunted does play a role in the novel.

In Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri comes up against the possibility that a holy being has committed murder. Puri learns through newspapers and TV reports that a former client Dr. Suresh Jha has been killed, and it looks very much as though the murderer is the goddess Kali. Puri can’t resist looking into the case, and soon learns how the murder came about. According to reports, Jha was attending a meeting of The Laughter Club, which uses laughter as therapy. During the meeting, Kali appeared and stabbed him. To a lot of people this murder makes sense, since Jha’s mission in life was to debunk ‘The Godmen,’ religious charlatans who prey on people’s vulnerability. A lot of people believe that Kali really killed Jha in retribution for his being an unbeliever. Puri doesn’t think that’s true though, and he and his team look into the case more deeply. As it turns out, the truth is just about as strange as the story that everyone believes…

 

So you see, not all murderers make use of everyday weapons like knives, rope, lead pipes or revolvers. There are some other, highly unusual, weapons out there. Now, may I offer you a cup of homeopathic herbal tea? 

The Name Game*

Authors, editors and publishers spend quite a bit of time choosing the right titles for books. And that makes sense. A good title can attract a reader’s interest and help make (and keep) a series distinctive. A ‘clunky’ title or a title that has little to do with the story can put readers off or make readers feel cheated.

So what does make for a good title? Everyone has different views about this, and the same sort of title that attracts some readers puts others off. I’m hardly an expert on title choice, but here are a few of my ideas about crime fiction titles and types of titles that work.

Traditional wisdom is that titles should be relatively short, and I can see why. Titles that are too long are cumbersome and annoying, and it’s much harder for people to remember them. There are even some very effective titles of only one word. For example, Deon Meyer’s Trackers is a highly effective title. The novel tells three stories, really. One is the story of professional bodyguard Martin Lemmer, who’s persuaded to help smuggle some rare rhinos across the border from Zimbabwe to South Africa. Another is the story of Millla Strachan, who fled an abusive husband and untenable home life and takes a new job as a journalist. The third is the story of Mat Joubert, recently retired from the police service, who’s now doing private investigation. He takes the case of Tanya Flint, whose husband Danie has disappeared. The three stories are tied together (no spoilers!), and all of them involve leaving traces, tracking those traces, and the ‘footprints’ we leave behind. The novel treats this theme on several levels and the title shows that in only one word.

Gene Kerrigan’s The Rage tells the story of Dublin DS Bob Tidey’s investigation into the murder of Emmet Sweetman. Sweetman was a successful but shady banker who’s shot in his home by two thugs. It’s also the story of Vincent Naylor, who’s recently been released from prison. Naylor, his brother Noel, and some of their friends plan a major heist – the robbery of a security company that transports money among banks and businesses. Figuring in both cases is Maura Cody, a former nun who is trying to live with her own past. As we learn what’s behind Sweetman’s murder, how the planned armed robbery plays out, and what Maura Cody is trying to live with, we see the common theme of rage. There’s rage against those who profited illegally from the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years in Ireland. There’s rage against certain events that happen in the story. And there’s the rage that has come from the revelations about certain priests and nuns in the Catholic Church. The novel’s plot threads are tied together in a few ways, that theme being one of them, and it’s neatly captured in the title.

Titles can also be used effectively to tie a series together. For example, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels all include a colour in the title. There’s The Deep Blue Goodbye, The Lonely Silver Rain and those are just the first and last in the series. And Sue Grafton’s series featuring PI Kinsey Millhone are famously titled by letters of the alphabet. What’s more, each title also includes a crime-related word. I’m not sure what the title of W is For… will be, but according to her Facebook page, Grafton said (as of 22 February) that

 

‘W is for Whew!’

 

and that she has completed the ‘W’ novel. No word on publication date or actual title yet.

Many cosy series titles are linked too, so as to tie the novels together. For instance, Riley Adams’ (AKA Elizabeth Spann Craig) is the author of the Memphis Barbecue series, each novel of which has something related to barbecue in the title. There’s Delicious and Suspicious, Finger Lickin’ Dead, Hickory Smoked Homicide, and (coming soon), Rubbed Out. Not only do those titles link the novels, but they also are short, clever and easy to remember too.

One of the more inventive ways to title novels in a series has come from Martha Grimes, whose Richard Jury/Melrose Plant novels are each titled with the name of a pub. What’s even more effective is that the titles also have something to do with the story itself. For instance, The Anodyne Necklace concerns the murder of temporary secretary Cora Binns, the theft of several valuables, including a particular emerald necklace, and a vicious attack on sixteen-year-old Katie O’Brien. All of these incidents take place or are related to the same village, so it’s a little much for Jury and Plant to think they are unrelated. And they do turn out to be interwoven events. The title in this case gives readers an important clue to the plot and is consistent with Grimes’ other titles.

Titles can also be very effective if there’s something unusual about them – something that makes the reader curious. For example, Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing has a title that makes the reader wonder. And it’s got everything to do with the plot too. This novel concerns the case of Dr. Suresh Jha. One morning, Jha attends a meeting of the Rajpath Laughing Club, instructed by Professor Pandey. The principle behind the club is that laughing therapy provides exercise, healthy breathing and an opportunity to heal both body and soul. The members are involved in their regular laughing exercises when it seems that the goddess Kali appears and murders Jha. The event becomes a media circus and a rallying cry for those who believe that the gods and goddesses have been neglected. It comes out that Jha was the leader of the Delhi Institute for Rationalism and Education (DIRE), which is dedicated to the unmasking of fake gurus and spiritualists – ‘the godmen’ as Jha called them. Many people believe that Kali has attacked Jha in revenge for his diatribe against her worship. Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri gets interested in this case since Jha was a client at one point. He starts to ask questions and follow up leads on what really happened. And as it turns out, this case is, in many ways, not what it seems. But as you can see, the title is not just an attention-getting title. It’s also a solid reflection of what happens in the story.

So, what got me thinking about titles? Another really fascinating title: Nigerians in Space, written by Deji Olukotun. It’s certainly an unusual title and reflects the theme of the novel. This one’s about a Nigerian government official named Bello, who contacts Nigerian scientists around the world. His proposal is that they return to Nigeria and pursue their science in their own country, so as to make Nigeria a technology/science powerhouse. He seems to be bona fide, and a few of his contacts take him up on his offer. But of course, this is a crime thriller, so things don’t go as planned…The plot lines in the novel follow the stories of three people who are affected by Bello’s offer and all are related both to that offer and in a larger way, to the concept of the moon. And no, it’s not science fiction. I’ll confess I’ve not (yet) read this novel. But the title did inspire me to think about this whole question of how we choose titles and what they mean.

What about you? Do you choose a book based on its title? Do you pay close attention to titles? Which titles have you thought were the best/cleverest? If you’re a writer, I’d be really interested in how you choose your titles.

 

ps. Many thanks to Mack at AfricaScreams for the review that led to the inspiration for this post. Folks, do check out this excellent blog. It’s a rich resource for crime fiction from Africa.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Shirley Ellis and Lincoln Chase.

And I Go Where the Ocean is Deep*

For a lot of people there’s something exciting about boats and being on boats. It may be the lure of adventure or it may be the connection with the sea. And of course, there’s the reality that for plenty of people, boats represent their livelihood. Whatever the reason is, we seem to have a fascination with boats and ships. And if you think about it, boats and ships, with their dangers, legends and so on make very effective contexts for crime fiction novels. If you add to that the fact of disparate people being brought together, as can happen on a boat, it’s easy to see how boats and ships could figure into crime fiction. Of course, one post isn’t nearly enough space for me to mention all of the novels where boats and ships figure into the plot, but here are a few to show you what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, newlyweds Linnet and Simon Doyle are on their honeymoon trip – a cruise of the Nile. On the second night of the journey Linnet is shot. The first suspect is Linnet’s former best friend Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ de Bellefort, whose fiancé Simon was before he met Linnet. But it’s soon proven that Jackie could not have committed the crime. Hercule Poirot and Colonel Race are on the same cruise and work together to find out who the murderer is. In this novel, it isn’t the actual boating or the ship itself that figures into the crime. Rather, Christie looks at the interactions of the different personalities who are on the same ship at the same time.

So does Ngaio Marsh in A Clutch of Constables. Painter and sculptor Agatha Troy decides to take a cruise on the Zodiac, but she soon finds that this isn’t going to be the relaxing and enjoyable trip she’d planned. First, one of the passengers is left behind and is later found murdered. Then another passenger is drowned. In the meantime and possibly related to the murders, Troy finds that an international art forger known only as the Jampot may very well be among those aboard the ship. As Troy gets more deeply involved in the mystery, she writes letters to her husband Inspector Roderick Alleyn and in them she tells him what’s happened. In an interesting plot strategy, Alleyn uses those letters to share the crimes and their solutions to a group of students in a class he’s teaching.

John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee lives aboard a boat called The Busted Flush. As we learn in The Deep Blue Goodbye, he won the boat in a poker game (hence its name). McGee calls himself a ‘salvage consultant.’ What that really means is that he helps people recover what’s been stolen from them. For instance, in The Deep Blue Goodbye he agrees to track down something that was stolen from his client Catherine Kerr by the father of her son Davie. The big challenge at first is that Kerr’s not even sure what was stolen. McGee finds out what was taken and is able to track down both the stolen property and the thief. McGee takes in payment half of whatever is recovered for his clients and they are usually more than grateful to pay his fee. What’s interesting is that McGee could probably afford to live in a house if he wanted, but he doesn’t. He prefers his boat and his life on the sea. In several places in that novel (and in the other novels in the series too), we see McGee working on his boat. He paints, cleans, makes repairs and so on. That side of him adds depth to the character.

Carole Sutton comes from a family of boat builders, so it’s only natural that her love of boats should come through in her novels. In Ferryman, we meet Steve Pengelly, who moves to Guernsey to start over, as the saying goes. There, he meets Angela DuPont, who connects him with the seller of a beautiful thirty-eight-foot sailboat that Pengelly happily buys. His new life falls apart when Angela disappears and he is arrested and tried for her murder. There’s forensic evidence against him too and he is in fact convicted and imprisoned. Then, two years later, Angela’s body washes ashore. What’s shocking is that it’s proven that she died only a short time before her body was discovered. This means that Pengelly wasn’t guilty of the crime. Now DI Alan Grimstone has to go back to the beginning to find out the truth of the matter.

In Sutton’s And the Devil Laughed, DS Hannah Ford returns to work after taking some leave for post-traumatic stress. She’s assigned to go to Draper’s Wharf on Australia’s Parramata River to investigate possible drugs activity in the area. Posing as a journalist she settles in and begins to get a sense of the place. She soon discovers that there’s been a recent tragedy in town. Local barmaid Victoria Brown was raped and murdered. Her killer hasn’t been caught, so Ford begins to ask questions about the case even though she hasn’t been officially asked to do so. Part of the reason for her interest in the case comes from her desire to prove herself fit for work. Another part comes from the fact that she was distantly related to the victim. As Ford investigates this case as well as the drugs smuggling, we get a real feel for the local boating and boat-building culture.

Boats have long been used for smuggling of course, and we get a real sense of that in Jeffrey Stone’s Play Him Again, which takes place in 1920’s Los Angeles during the years of Prohibition in the U.S.  In that novel we meet Matt ‘Hud’ Hudson, who makes his money smuggling alcohol on his boat The River Belle. His dream is to become a film-maker in the newly-developing Hollywood scene and at the moment, he’s using his smuggling income until he can. When his friend Danny is murdered, Hud decides to find out who the murderer is. He soon finds out though that he’s up against several forces. First, there are rival smuggling groups and a large criminal gang that’s moving into the area. There’s also the fact that the smuggling Hud’s doing is illegal, so the police aren’t going to be co-operative. But Hud keeps looking for answers and he discovers how Danny’s murder is related to the ‘rum-running’ and to the developing film industry. There are plenty of scenes aboard The River Belle in this novel, so we get a chance to see what a boat that’s been refitted for smuggling is like.

Of course more than just about anything else, boats are used for fishing and that’s the focus of Domingo Villar’s Death on a Galician Shore. Vigo police inspector Leo Caldas and his team are called in when the body of local fisherman Justo Castelo is discovered. At first it looks as though he committed suicide. But little clues suggest that he might have been murdered, so Caldas and his assistant Rafael Estevez look into the case further. As they find out about Castelo’s background, they discover that Castelo’s murder may be related to a 1996 tragedy in which Castelo and two other fishermen José Arias and Marcos Valverde nearly drowned while they were aboard a fishing vessel. Their captain Antonio Sousa did drown and none of the survivors has been the same since then. Caldas and Estevez have to learn exactly what happened that night to get to the truth about Castelo’s death. This novel shows readers what the fisherman’s life is like, from early-morning fish markets to sudden and terrible storms to building and maintaining fishing boats.

We also see the fishing life depicted in Sandy Curtis’ Deadly Tide. Alan ‘Tug’ Bretton is the captain of Sea Mistress, a trawler based in Brisbane. He’s accused of murdering Ewan McKay, the deckhand from another boat. Bretton claims that he’s innocent, but all of the evidence is against him. There’s also a possibility that Bretton and Sea Mistress may be connected to the drugs trade. Bretton’s daughter Samantha ‘Sam’ believes her father is innocent and she wants to find out who killed McKay. Besides, if the family-owned trawler doesn’t go out to sea, the ship may be lost to creditors. So Bretton reluctantly turns the skipper position over to his daughter. Sam begins both to start the fishing season and to try to find out who killed Ewan McKay. What she doesn’t know is that Chayse Jarrett, the deckhand she’s just hired, is an undercover cop who’s been assigned to the McKay murder too. As the two of them, first separately and later together, investigate the murder, we also see what it’s like to live on and operate a fishing trawler.

Whether they’re used for work, sport, relaxation or smuggling, boats and boating have been an essential part of our lives for millennia. Their fascination still lures a lot of people. Do you see the appeal? I know I’ve probably not mentioned the boat-related crime novels you like best because there’s not enough space to mention them all. So now it’s your turn. Which gaps have I left?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s The Downeaster ‘Alexa.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
 
 

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

Short and (Not so?) Sweet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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