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.

Can’t You See I’m Smart?*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
 
 

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

Follow Me Now to the Vault Down Below*

Today would have been Bram Stoker’s 165^th birthday. Interesting enough factoid, but why bring it up on this crime-fictional blog? After all his most famous novel Dracula isn’t, strictly speaking, crime fiction. And no, I’m not going to mention novels with vampires in them. Promise. The fact is, Dracula is a very well-known example of the Gothic tradition in literature, and it’s interesting to see how elements of that tradition have found their way into crime fiction. People disagree about what counts as the Gothic tradition, but a quick look at crime fiction will show I think that it’s a definite presence in the genre.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, for instance, is the story of the Baskerville family. Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead one day in the park of the family manor. Family friend Mr. Mortimer believes that Baskerville fell victim to an old family curse: a demon in the shape of a hound. The curse is said to have been brought on the family by an ancestor Sir Hugo Baskerville, who sold his soul to the Powers of Evil in exchange for a young woman with whom he’d become infatuated. Mr. Mortimer is afraid that the curse will claim another victim when Sir Henry Baskerville comes from Canada to claim his title. Mortimer asks Sherlock Holmes to look into the curse and the family history, and he agrees. At Holmes’ request, Dr. Watson travels to Baskerville Hall to do the ‘legwork’ on the case, and later, Holmes himself goes there. In the end, Holmes discovers that Sir Charles’ death had nothing to do with a family curse. In this novel, we have the family history, the dark atmosphere and so on that we see in a lot of Gothic novels. And the family home Baskerville Hall is, in my opinion anyway, a Gothic setting:

 

‘The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare and there where a window or a coat-of-arms broke through the dark veil.’

 

While Conan Doyle’s work isn’t always thought of as Gothic, there are certainly some elements of that tradition in this novel and in some of his other stories too.

John Dickson Carr’s Hag’s Nook also has elements of the Gothic in it. That’s the story of Tad Rampole, an American who’s just finished his university studies. On the advice of his mentor, he travels to England to meet famous lexicographer Dr. Gideon Fell, who welcomes him warmly. When Rampole arrives, Fell tells him the story of the Starberth family. Beginning many years earlier, two generations of Starberth men were governors of Chatterham Prison until it fell into disuse. It’s now a crumbling ruin, and of course the Starberths haven’t worked at the prison for a very long time. But they are still associated with it through a ritual that each Starberth heir goes through on the night of his twenty-fifth birthday. Each heir must spend that night in the Governor’s Room at the old prison, open the safe in that room, and follow the instructions he finds there. A few Starberths have died mysteriously, and there is talk that the family is cursed. Now it’s the turn of Martin Starberth and Rampole takes a special interest in this ritual because he’s fallen in love with Martin’s sister Dorothy. When Martin dies tragically during his night at the old prison, Rampole works with Fell to find out how and why he died. There’s no real curse involved in this novel, but there are elements of the Gothic novel here. There’s the crumbling building, the hint of romance, the family history and the dark atmosphere.

Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca isn’t really thought of as crime fiction, but if you think about it, it has so many elements of mystery fiction that I think it ‘counts.’ And it’s definitely got elements of the Gothic novel in it.  Maxim de Winter marries for the second time and brings his new bride to his home at Manderley, where both are hoping to be happy. It’s not long though before the new Mrs. de Winter is made to feel very unwelcome. Housekeeper Mrs. Danvers was fanatically devoted to de Winter’s first wife Rebecca, now deceased, and does everything in her power to undermine the new lady of the house. Even Manderley itself seems haunted by the ghost of Rebecca. De Winter’s second wife, whose name we aren’t told in the novel, begins to wonder if she’s imagining things or if she really is unwelcome in the house. Although she begins to doubt herself and her husband’s love for her, we find that there was more to Rebecca’s life and death than it seems. Manderley has the brooding, dark presence that we see in many Gothic novels. There are also the elements of family history, troubled romance and horror, too.

Agatha Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence has several elements of the Gothic novel about it too. In that novel, we meet the Argyle family. Two years before the events in the novel, matriarch Rachel Argyle was murdered. Her adopted son Jacko was arrested for and convicted of the crime and has since died in prison. At first, the family thinks the matter is settled. But then they get a visit from Dr. Arthur Calgary, who’s recently recovered from a bout with amnesia. He alone can prove that Jacko Argyle was innocent, and when he arrives at the family home Sunny Point (an ironic name, really) he plans to do just that. But as it turns out, no-one in the family wants him to re-open the case. Only Rachel Argyle’s son-in-law Philip Durrant seems to have any interest in pursuing the matter, so he and Calgary work together to find out who really killed Rachel Argyle. This novel has the atmosphere and the setting we often associate with Gothic novels. There’s the family history element too, and a touch of the question of one’s own motives and sanity that we sometimes find in Gothic novels. There’s a hint of romance too.

You might not think of ‘hardboiled’ PI novels as having Gothic novel elements, but they can. One example that comes to my mind is Ross Macdonald’s The Far Side of the Dollar. PI Lew Archer is hired by Dr. Sponti, head of the Laguna Perdida boarding school. Sponti is concerned because one of the school’s pupils Tom Hillman has run away. Tom’s parents Ralph and Elaine are wealthy and influential and are going to make Sponti’s life miserable and possibly ruin his school if their son’s not found. Archer is just about to leave to begin his investigation when Ralph Hillman bursts in, claiming that Tom’s been kidnapped and that his abductors have contacted the Hillmans. Archer returns to the Hillman home and begins to work with them – or try to – to find out where Tom is and return him safely. The truth isn’t as simple as a kidnapping for money, though. For one thing, the Hillmans are not as co-operative as you’d expect frantic parents to be. For another, hints come up that suggest that Tom may have joined the kidnappers of his own free will. Then one of the people Tom’s with is killed. Then there’s another death. Now Archer is looking into not just the disappearance of a teenager, but two murders. The element of family history figures strongly in this novel. So does the element of brooding and atmosphere that’s been associated with Gothic novels. The Hillman house is not the crumbling castle or mansion of traditional Gothic novels, but it’s no less forbidding for that.

In her own name and under the name of Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell has written a number of novels that have strong Gothic elements. One that stands out (at least to me) is A Dark Adapted Eye, Rendell’s first novel as Barbara Vine. Investigative journalist Daniel Stewart wants to do a story on the long-ago execution of Vera Longley Hilliard for murder. He wants to know about the history of the Longley family and what led to the murder for which Vera Hilliard was hanged. Stewart approaches Faith Longley Severn, Vera’s niece, and asks for her help with the family history. As the two work together, we learn of what the Longley family was like, the secrets hidden beneath the family’s oh-so-respectable exterior, and the story of Vera Longley Hilliard. This Longley family home isn’t a castle but it is full of brooding, of family secrets and of atmosphere. There’s a strong Gothic element here of psychological suspense too.

Not everyone enjoys Gothic novels but there’s no denying the effect of the Gothic tradition on crime fiction, from the days of Edgar Allan Poe to now. What do you think? Where do you see Gothic elements in today’s crime fiction? If you’re a writer do you include those elements in your stories?

 

See? Told ya. No vampires

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from The Alan Parsons Project’s The Cask of Amontillado. Yes, it’s a tribute to Poe’s short story.

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?

Does Anything Last Forever?*

An interesting post at Fair Dinkum Crime (You really should be following that blog if you’re not) has got me thinking about what happens as we expand our reading horizons. Reading more widely introduces one to all kinds of ideas, themes, and authors that one wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. It also gives debut authors and authors who are less widely known the chance to get their work ‘out there.’ So I for one think it benefits readers, authors and the genre (in this case crime fiction) when readers stretch themselves. Of course, let’s not talk about what expanding one’s reading horizons does to one’s TBR list… But there’s another consequence to branching out: one sees one’s old favourites in a different light. Sometimes that’s a positive experience, and sometimes it isn’t. As we evolve in our reading habits, we do get a different perspective and that affects the way we look at the authors and books we always loved before.

For example, authors such as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr created memorable novels that feature mostly a focus on plotting as opposed to deep character development. Of course one can point to exceptions in each of these authors’ back catalogues but in general their novels feature intellectual puzzles. That’s their appeal for millions of crime fiction fans. But for those of you who loved those puzzles, what happened to your view when you first read, say, Ruth Rendell’s work or P.D. James’ work? Those authors certainly feature solid mystery plots but their focus is also on deep interesting characters and psychological study. Did expanding your horizons that way change your perception of the ‘whodunit’ kind of intellectual exercise?

Many readers fell in love with the hardboiled PI novel along the lines of Raymond Chandler and later, John D. MacDonald, Peter Temple, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton. It’s easy to see why too. A well-written ‘hard boiled’ novel has a solid blend of realism, action, compelling plot and suspense. And the very well-written ones also develop the characters so that they aren’t ‘cardboard cutouts.’ But if you’re the PI-novel type, what happened to your perception when you expanded your horizons to include quieter series such as Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series? Did you change your view of the level of violence and grit in the series you’d always loved? If you’ve broadened your reading to include some traditional ‘country house’ or ‘English village’ series such as Ngaio Marsh’s or Caroline Graham’s work, have you returned with the same interest to the PI sub-genre?

Very often crime fiction fans experience these ‘growing pains’ if you want to call it that when they broaden their reading to include the work of authors from other countries. Each country has a different culture – sometimes several different cultures – and that’s reflected in the crime fiction that comes from that country. So suppose you’ve been a fan of L.A. crime fiction such as the work of Michael Connelly. What happened to your perception of that sort of crime fiction after you expanded your reading to include work such as Håkan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren novels or Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache novels? Those series reflect the cultures of their authors and thus expose readers to those cultures. After experiencing those different cultures did you return to Connelly’s work with the same enthusiasm?

There are also many crime fiction fans who originally fell in love with historical crime fiction such as Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series. If that describes you, what happened to your perception of that context and those authors when you began to read crime fiction set in the modern day? Do you still enjoy virtually returning to medieval times? What about when you began to read historical crime fiction set in different eras, such as Rebecca Cantrell’s Hannah Vogel series which is set just before World War II? Did that change your perception of the historical crime fiction you’d always loved?

Sometimes of course we broaden our reading only to realise how much we really do enjoy the novels we’ve always loved. In those cases, returning to a favourite author’s work is like re-uniting with a dear friend. Yes we’ve matured but that doesn’t change our feelings about that author’s novels. I know I have my favourites whose writing I always enjoy. It doesn’t always work out that way though, even if the author has continued to innovate and create well-written books.

When that happens – when we see that our tastes have simply changed – it can be a little sad, especially if we have some very good memories of a particular author or series. But people grow and expand their horizons and sometimes that simply means that our favourite clothes if you will simply don’t fit any more.

Has that happened to you? What’s happened to your perception of your favourite authors’ novels as you’ve widened the scope of your reading? If you’re a writer, has your writing changed as your reading has changed? Just wondering…

Thanks to Bernadette at Reactions to Reading for the inspiration for this post. Folks, you really should be following her superb blog. I know it’s one of my must-reads.
 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Kenny Loggins’ Heart to Heart.