Honesty is Hardly Ever Heard*

Most of us keep certain things to ourselves. Lots of times it’s because they’re private, and sometimes we keep things to ourselves because they are embarrassing or could cause hurt and a rift in a relationship. So it may not always be such a bad thing to keep certain things quiet. But there also comes a time when not being forthright does a lot more harm than good. We definitely see plenty of that in crime fiction. If you’ve ever had the urge to shake a character and say, ‘Well if you’d only told ___ about everything, none of this would have happened!’ you know what I mean. It’s not easy to add that plot point to a novel without making a character either not credible (i.e. Really? You’re hiding that?) or not likeable. But when it’s done well, those points where characters aren’t honest when they should be can add tension to a crime novel. And in some cases, there really wouldn’t be a solid plot without those moments.

For instance, in Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone, George and Jacqueline Coverdale hire a new housekeeper Eunice Parchman. Jacqueline doesn’t bother to check her new employee’s references particularly well but at first, it doesn’t seem to matter. Parchman does her job well enough and the busy Coverdales don’t really notice a problem. But Eunice Parchman has not been honest with the Coverdales. She is keeping a secret that she’s desperate for them not to discover, and goes to great lengths to avoid telling them. When her secret is accidentally found out, this seals the Coverdales’ fates although they don’t know it at the time. And what’s tragic about it all is that if she had simply told the Coverdales the truth from the outset, a lot of tragedy could have been avoided.

In Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, Kindle County’s chief deputy prosecutor Rožat ‘Rusty’ Sabich is assigned to investigate the murder of a colleague Carolyn Polhemus. There is a lot of pressure to solve this case quickly and Sabich gets to work right away. What he doesn’t tell his boss is that he had a relationship with Polhemus that ended just a few months before she was murdered. On the one hand, one can understand why Sabich might not exactly trumpet the news of his affair. On the other, it’s not surprising that the news of it comes out anyway, and when it does, Sabich is in far more trouble than he might have been had he simply been honest at the beginning. Soon, pieces of evidence begin to turn up that implicate Sabich in the murder and before long he finds himself arrested for the crime. Now he’s on the ‘other side,’ so to speak, and hires attorney Alejandro ‘Sandy’ Stern to defend him. Together they work with Sabich’s friend detective Dan Lipranzer to find out the truth about Carolyn Polhemus’ death and clear Sabich of the charges against him. In this novel, the fact that Sabich isn’t honest with his boss at first doesn’t change the fact of who killed the victim. But it does add a really interesting and believable layer of tension to the story.

Linwood Barclay’s Bad Move is the story of science fiction writer Zach Walker and his family. Walker believes that his family isn’t safe in the city so he moves everyone to a new home in a suburb called Valley Forest Estates. They’re not there long when they learn that their house has all sorts of problems with it, so Walker goes to the housing development’s sales office to get someone to make repairs. While he’s there, he witnesses a loud argument between a Valley Forest sales executive and environmental activist Samuel Spender. Later, Walker finds Spender’s body in a local creek and gets drawn into finding out who killed him. And that’s where Walker begins to cover up too much, especially from his wife Sarah. For instance, at one point he and Sarah are shopping when he notices a handbag left in a shopping cart. Thinking it’s his wife’s he grabs it and puts it in the car. When he sees that it’s not hers, instead of telling her he took the wrong handbag, Walker says nothing and tries to secretly return the handbag (in which, by the way, he finds quite a lot of money) to its owner. Without telling his wife what he’s doing, he goes to the owner’s home where he finds another body. The more Walker tries to stay out of trouble, the more his dissembling and hiding things gets him into trouble. Still, he finds out who committed both murders and he finds out some other interesting secrets about the housing development. On the one hand, simply telling everything right from the start would have saved Walker an awful lot of trouble. On the other, his less-than-honest choices make for some funny moments in the books and Barclay handles them well (at least in my opinion).

There’s a much less humorous look at lack of honesty in Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal. Eva Wirenström-Berg and her husband Henrik have hit an unhappy point in their marriage. Eva thinks it’s temporary until she discovers that her husband has been unfaithful. Instead of openly and honestly discussing what’s happened, both Eva and Henrik hide things. Henrik won’t be honest with his wife about his new lover and Eva isn’t honest about the course of action she takes after she finds out about her husband’s infidelity. Their choices, and most importantly their decision not to be honest with themselves and with each other, lead to real tragedy. First, Eva’s course of action leads her in a direction she never could have anticipated. Then, Henrik too makes a choice that has an unhappy and unintended consequence. The result is devastation that could have been prevented if this couple had only been honest in the first place.

In Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri learns from news broadcasts and newspapers that a former client Dr. Suresh Jha has died in a bizarre incident. According to witnesses, the goddess Kali appeared and killed Jha in revenge for his ongoing efforts to debunk spiritualism. Jha was the founder of the Delhi Institute for Rationalism and Education (DIRE), a group committed to unmasking scams committed in the name of spiritualism, and he had dedicated his life to convincing people not to believe ‘the Godmen.’ The doctor’s report, witness statements and other pieces of evidence seem to suggest that Jha’s death has a supernatural cause and a lot of people believe that. Puri, though, is not convinced. It’s not that he’s not spiritual, but he is quite certain that Jha died at very human hands. So he begins to investigate. The trail leads to a famous magician, a cult leader and other members of Jha’s organisation. Then, two more murders happen. Little by little, Puri finds out what really happened to Dr. Jha. And when he does, we learn of a few people who could have prevented the murders if they had just been honest from the start, when Puri began his investigation. Their reasons for not doing so are believable, but one still wants to ask them why on earth they didn’t simply tell Puri the truth in the first place.

And then there’s Katherine Howell’s Silent Fear, in which Sydney police detective Ella Marconi and her team investigate the shooting death of Paul Fowler. One of the first paramedics on the scene is Holly Garland, who sees to her dismay that her brother Seth is among the people who were with Fowler at the time of his death. Holly has several reasons to keep as far away from Seth as she can but when Marconi interviews her, Holly isn’t completely forthcoming about why. Holly has a past that she doesn’t want to share with anyone, least of all the people with whom she works. So she’s taken to saying nothing. The problem is that her silence begins to cause her serious trouble when one of her colleagues remembers her from another time. At first Holly dissembles, hides things and does everything she can not to tell the truth to anyone. At the end though, she finds that if she had simply told the truth, she’d have saved herself a lot of stress and trouble. Holly’s secret isn’t the reason for Paul Fowler’s murder, but it makes for an interesting and tense sub-plot.

All of us keep things to ourselves; it’s a fairly natural impulse. But there comes a time when not being honest has much more serious consequences than simply telling the truth in the first place. In real life that can cause heartache and worse. In crime fiction it can spin things deliciously out of control and cause fascinating tension.

 

 
 

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

‘Cause Nothing’s Going Right and Everything’s a Mess*

For the past seventy years or so, noir has been an important part of the world of crime fiction. Today it’s considered a significant sub-genre; a quick glance at blogs, online and traditional literary magazines and of course, new crime fiction titles is all it takes to see that noir is a force to be reckoned with in the genre.  Noir fiction is by its nature bleak and sometimes very depressing. And noir deals with the ugly, the dirty and the unpleasant. So why do we read it? What is it about noir that appeals to readers? Of course, we choose what to read for a whole constellation of reasons. But here’s my thinking about what makes noir a part of so many people’s reading diets.

As I mentioned, noir is dirty and gritty and sometimes unpleasant. It turns over rocks and takes a look at what’s under them. And that’s just what some people like about it. Because it’s unflinching, noir addresses issues that aren’t as easy to address in other sub-genres. For example, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me is the story of Central City, Texas deputy sheriff Lou Ford. Ford is well-enough liked, although no-one would exactly call him scintillating. But Ford is carrying a dark secret which comes out slowly as the novel moves on. First, local prostitute Joyce Lakeland is brutally beaten. Then there’s a murder. As we follow along in this investigation, we find out that Ford is not the nice, if a bit dull, guy that everyone thought he was. In fact, he himself refers to this as ‘the sickness.’ So on that level Thompson takes an unflinching look at mental illness. This novel also explores prostitution and domestic violence as well as the ugly reality of the effect of violence and murder on a small town. The story takes up difficult and challenging issues.

So does Roger Smith’s Dust Devils. Former journalist Robert Dell, his wife Rosie and their two children are taking a drive one afternoon when their car is ambushed not far from Cape Town and sent over an embankment. Dell survives but the other members of his family are killed. Soon he’s accused of the murder and imprisoned. He’s been framed, but at first he doesn’t know why or by whom. His father Bobby Goodbread engineers his escape and together the two go in search of the person who killed Dell’s wife and children and framed him. This novel addresses several difficult but very real issues that would be hard to treat honestly in another kind of novel. For instance, one of the themes in the story is the reality of race relations in modern South Africa. That’s a complex and sometimes unpleasant topic. So are corruption and nepotism, which are also treated in this novel.

In Gene Kerrigan’s The Rage, Dublin police detective Bob Tidey is part of the team that’s investigating the murder of Emmet Sweetman, a crooked banker who made a fortune during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years. At the same time, Vincent Naylor, a young thug who’s recently gotten out of prison, is planning his own master stroke – an armoured car robbery. Drawn into both of these cases is Maura Cody, a former nun who has her own history. As Kerrigan tells the story of these three people, he also explores some unpleasant issues that it would be hard to do justice to without some grit. In the story behind Emmet Sweetman’s murder we see how greed and poor planning played roles in the Irish financial collapse of 2008 and how that collapse started a chain reaction of real misery. In the story of Maura Cody we learn of the wrenching horror of some of the abuses some Irish priests and nuns committed. This too is an ugly issue that would be hard to address in a different kind of novel.

But it’s not just the fact that noir explores difficult issues that makes it appealing. It does so in an honest way – no sugarcoating or glossing over the truth. And that realism resonates with a lot of readers. For example, Megan Abbott’s Die a Little is the story of Pasadena schoolteacher Lora King. She is devoted to her brother Bill, so she is quite concerned when he marries Alice Steele, a former Hollywood dressmaker’s assistant. For Bill’s sake Lora tries to get along with her new sister-in-law but bit by bit she discovers some unsettling things about Alice. The more she learns, the more Lora has to face the fact that at the same time as she’s repulsed by Alice’s seamy world, she’s also drawn to it. Then there’s a murder. Lora wants to find out just how involved Alice may have been in this killing so, telling herself she’s doing so to protect her brother, she begins to ask questions. As she slowly finds out the truth, readers get a very realistic picture of 1950’s Hollywood. Underneath the glitter there really was a lot of abuse, corruption and other ugliness and Abbott doesn’t gloss over that. Nor does she make light of what can happen when one person becomes obsessed with another person.

The tragedy of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia cannot be overstated. Andrew Nette takes a very realistic look at the devastation left behind in Ghost Money. Madeline Avery hires Australian former cop Max Quinlan to find her brother Charles. His last known address is in Bangkok so Quinlan starts there. When he arrives he finds the body of Avery’s business partner Robert Lee. He also finds evidence that Lee has fled to Cambodia. So Quinlan’s next stop is Phnom Penh. There, he learns that Avery may have been involved in some shady business deals and could have made some very nasty people angry. As Quinlan traces Avery to northern Cambodia, he discovers the brutal reality of life in Cambodia. War, mistrust, greed, corruption and prejudice have all taken heavy tolls and Nette doesn’t sugarcoat any of it. But (and this is just my opinion, so feel free to differ with me if you do), not to be realistic about these issues would mean not doing them justice.

That sense of authenticity adds a layer of suspense to Karin Alvtegen’s work as well. In Betrayal, she looks at the ugly reality of lies. Eva Wirenström-Berg and her husband Henrik have been happy enough until Eva discovers that her husband has been unfaithful. Blaming him entirely for their marital problems, she makes a fateful choice that doesn’t seem like a problem at first. Then she finds out who Henrik’s lover is. That prompts Eva to a course of action that also has a tragic consequence. As things begin to spin out of control, Alvtegen shows us honestly what happens to a marriage when the people in it lie to each other and to themselves.

Noir is unvarnished, gritty and sometimes really ugly. But it looks at important issues that are hard to address in any other way. And it does so in an honest way. I know I haven’t mentioned all of the noir greats, but they’ve added to the genre. What do you think? Do you read noir? Why? What’s its appeal for you? If you write noir, what draws you to it?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Avril Lavigne’s I’m With You.

There’s No Time to Cry, Happy, Happy*

One of the themes we see a lot of in crime fiction is the family that seems very nice and pleasant on the surface – even enviable – but is hiding a different reality. And that plot point makes sense when you think about real life. It’s the custom in a lot of places to put on a nice, pleasant front no matter what’s going on privately. For example, when acquaintances ask, ‘How are you?” one’s first reaction is often a version of, ‘I’m fine, thanks.’ Except to friends and family members, people don’t generally reveal what’s going on under that ‘happy’ exterior. And perhaps that’s just as well. After all, do you really want to know that a work colleague had a fight with her partner this morning? Do you really want to tell the neighbour down the block that your spouse overdrew the bank account – again?  We have this tendency to appear as though all’s well, even when it isn’t, and that may be part of why we identify with that theme in crime novels. And of course, it can add to the tension and interest in a novel when the sleuth has to uncover those layers of ‘Everything’s just fine’ to get to the truth about a crime.

We see that for instance in Agatha Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. When a local charwoman is murdered, everyone in the village of Broadhinny is just as well pleased that her lodger James Bentley is convicted of the crime. In the first place, they really believe he’s guilty. In the second, this is a village of ‘very nice people’ who like to give the appearance that all’s well and they’re happy. But Hercule Poirot finds that these families are not at all the ‘nice, happy’ people they seem to be. He’s persuaded to travel to Broadhinny and re-open the investigation and it’s not long before he finds that several of Broadhinny’s families are not at all happy. There’s greed, jealousy, questionable pasts and other things going on under the peaceful and friendly surface. Mrs. McGinty found out one family’s truth and it turned out to be knowledge that was too dangerous for her to have. But what’s just as interesting is that in the main, the rest of the families are simply doing what’s expected: being polite and ‘happy’ regardless of what’s really going on.

We see a similar kind of tendency in Ross Macdonald’s The Far Side of the Dollar. In that novel, we meet Dr. Sponti, head of Laguna Perdida, a private (and expensive) school for troubled students. He hires private investigator Lew Archer to find Tom Hillman, a student who seems to have run away from the school. Sponti doesn’t want the boy’s wealthy and well-connected parents to make trouble, so he’s interested in having the boy found as soon and as quietly as possible. Archer agrees and is just about to leave Sponti’s office when Tom’s father Ralph Hillman bursts in saying that Tom’s been kidnapped. Archer immediately changes his plans and begins working on the kidnapping angle. But he soon learns that beneath the polite, ‘everything’s just fine’ exterior, the Hillman family is troubled. In fact, there is even evidence that Tom may be with his alleged kidnappers by choice. Neither Ralph Hillman nor his wife Elaine will really confide in Archer so bit by bit he has to uncover what’s going on for himself. In the meantime, one of the people Tom’s with is murdered. And then there’s another death. Archer finds out the truth about the murders and about what happened to Tom Hillman and in the process, takes off the Hillmans’ ‘happy’ mask.

In Anthony Bidulka’s Tapas on the Ramblas, Saskatoon private investigator Russell Quant is hired by wealthy heiress and business executive Charity Wiser. She believes that someone in her family is trying to kill her and wants Quant to find out who it is. She’s planned a family getaway cruise and arranges for Quant to go along so that he can sleuth everyone. As Quant gets to know the various family members, he finds out all sorts of things about them – things that this ‘happy’ family don’t generally reveal to just anyone. He also finds out that several members of the family have reasons to want to kill Charity Wiser. After two attempts at murder and another successful murder, Quant finds out who’s behind everything that happens. As he does we find out how important it is to several members of the Wiser family to pretend publicly that everything is just fine.

In Gail Bowen’s The Endless Knot, Canadian journalist Kathryn Morrissey writes a controversial book about the way certain wealthy and celebrated families treat their children. In doing so, she blows the proverbial lid off of the lives of these ‘nice’ people. And one of them, Sam Parker, is so incensed by what Morrissey has done that he shoots at her, wounding but not killing her. Parker is arrested and put on trial for the crime, with Zack Shreve as his attorney. Shreve’s lover is political scientist and academic Joanne Kilbourn, who covers the trial for Nation TV. When Morissey is later murdered, both Kilbourn and Shreve get involved in the investigation. As they do, we find out how important it is to many people to appear to be happy and doing well, even when they are neither.

We also see that in Wendy James’ The Mistake. Jodie Evans Garrow is living what most people think of as a happy life. She’s in a lasting marriage to a successful attorney, she has two healthy children and she herself is as you might say ‘just fine.’ Then her daughter Hannah is injured and taken to the same Sydney hospital where years before, Jodie herself gave birth to another child Ella Mary. When a nurse at the hospital remembers Jodie, she asks what happened to the baby. Jodie says she was given up for adoption but there are no adoption records. It’s not long before other people also start wanting to know what happened to the baby. That leads to the question of whether Jodie herself might have had something to do with Ella Mary’s disappearance. Matters steadily spiral out of control until Jodie is an outcast. One of the worse ‘sins’ she commits, from the viewpoint of both her husband Angus and his mother, is letting anyone suspect that everything isn’t fine and happy in the Garrow family. For both of those people it’s extremely important to preserve the ‘happy family’ front. In the end, as we find out what really happened to Ella Mary, we also find out how removing that mask has torn the family apart.

Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal also addresses this theme. Eva Wirenström-Berg and her husband Henrik appear to be a happy family where things are ‘just fine.’ They have a healthy son Axel and good jobs. And that’s just exactly the safe, happy life Eva always wanted. Still, Henrik’s been distant lately and Eva can’t get him to tell her why. Then her world falls apart when she discovers that Henrik’s been unfaithful. Not only is she personally devastated by his betrayal, but she also sees it as a real threat to her happy family life – the one she’s always dreamed of having. Eva takes a fateful (I know – cliché – but it fits here) decision and that choice, plus her reaction when she finds out who Henrik’s mistress is, lead to a chain reaction of tragedy. Through most of this, Eva maintains publicly the illusion that everything is fine with her family, especially to her parents. That ‘cover’ adds to the suspense of this novel.

One of the most powerful examples of the importance of ‘everything being fine,’ is in Kishwar Desai’s Witness the Night (at least in my opinion). Social worker Simran Singh gets a call from an old college friend Amarjit, who is now Inspector General of the state of Punjab. He wants Simran’s help in finding out the truth about a terrible crime. Fourteen-year-old Durga Atwal has been accused of poisoning all of the members of her family and stabbing some of them. There’s evidence against her, but there is also evidence that she was bound and raped, so although everyone wants to believe it’s a clear-cut case, there are some questions. Durga has been silent about the tragedy so Amarjit wants Simran to interview Durga, to get to know her and try to get her to talk about what happened on the night of the murders. Bit by slow, dangerous, painful bit, Simran learns about the wealthy and well-connected Atwal family. She learns about how nice and happy the family appeared in public, but she also learns some harrowing truths about what the family was really like. As the novel goes on, we also see how several other people Simran interviews give the appearance of being nice, happy people and how very important that appearance is. It turns out that the need for everything to be ‘just fine,’ plus the social prominence of the Atwal family, have helped to cover up an awful reality.

Of course most of us aren’t hiding horrible secrets. But most of us do have the habit of showing a pleasant public ‘face.’ It’s an interesting socio-psychological phenomenon and it can be a really effective tool in crime fiction.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from REM’s Shiny Happy People.

Every Step You Take I’ll Be Watching You*

One of the facts of life about modern technology is that we arguably have a lot less privacy than we used to have. Today, when you sign a lease or apply for a job (at least in the U.S.) it’s not uncommon to include a credit and criminal background check in the process. And computer and Internet technology has made it increasingly easy to get very private information without waiting weeks or longer. Even if you move from one country to another, it’s still fairly straightforward to find out if, for instance, you have a criminal history. And with so many people using social networking such as Facebook and Twitter, it’s not hard to find out private things about people – who their friends are, where they eat, how they vote in elections and lots more.

On the one hand you can say that having less privacy has benefits. It’s easier for police to catch criminals because they have access to information that they didn’t used to have. People who are not guilty of crimes can more easily support their claims, too (e.g. travel and credit card records that show someone was in another place at the time of a crime). On the other hand, a lot of people see this trend as a violation of their privacy. Whose business is it really what you buy, where you go (so long as you don’t commit a crime) or how you vote? And today’s ability to track people makes it frighteningly easy to follow someone – ask anyone who’s been stalked. Identity theft and fraud are scary realities too now that today’s criminals can find ways to get credit card and ID numbers. In that sense, we have to be more careful than we used to be.  For better or for worse, we do seem to have less privacy and it shouldn’t be surprising that this trend shows up in crime fiction.

For example, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock Holmes gets a visit from the King of Bohemia, who is planning to get married soon. The king is worried because his former lover Irene Adler has a compromising photograph of them and he’s afraid of the scandal that would get around if that photograph is ever published. He hires Holmes to get the photograph and return it so that his reputation will be protected. Holmes fans know of course that Irene Adler is a formidable opponent. In fact, she manages to elude Holmes and ends up keeping the photograph, promising never to use it unless she is forced to do so. The science and art of photography were relatively new at the time of this story; it’s interesting that if it had been written just a few decades earlier, there might not even be a compromising photograph. As it is, we can see how the limitations of technology meant the king was only worried about that one photograph. He had no worries about members of the press or his fiancée’s family getting hold of private telephone conversations or other communication between the two lovers. The limitations of technology also make it difficult for Holmes to track Irene Adler. In part it’s because he decides not to, but it’s more than that. The technology of the time meant that there were very few fingerprint records and the records that were available were not easily accessible. And of course there were no credit cards, no telephone records or other ways to track Adler. So she was able to maintain her privacy a lot more easily than she would be able to do in today’s world.

By the time Agatha Christie was writing, people already had less privacy because technology had evolved. In Death in the Clouds (AKA Death in the Air) for instance, Hercule Poirot investigates the poisoning death of Marie Morisot, a well-known French moneylender who did business under the name of Madame Giselle. The only possible suspects are the other passengers with whom she shared a flight from Paris to London. As a part of the investigation, Poirot and Inspector Japp look into all of the other passengers’ backgrounds. They also find out as much as they can about Madame Giselle’s past. Part of what they learn comes from personal interviews, which were not new. But part of what they learn comes from police and other contacts in other countries. By the time of this novel, photographs could be sent by cable from place to place, and the telephone had made communication easier. So it was beginning to be much harder for people to hide their pasts and that is what puts the proverbial nail in the coffin for the killer in this novel.

In Cat Connor’s Killerbyte, FBI special agent Gabrielle ‘Ellie’ Conway and her lover Cormac ‘Mac’ Connelly track down a vicious killer through the use of modern technology among other things. Conway and Connelly are both members of an Internet chat room called Cobwebs, which is devoted to poetry. When one of the members Carter McLaren is banned from the chat room, he tracks Conway down and threatens her. He’s arrested but disappears after he makes bail. When he’s later found dead in the trunk of Conway’s car, it’s clear that this is more than just a chat room member who took revenge too far. Then there’s another death. And another body is found. At each crime scene, police find a Post-It note with a poem, and before each murder, Conway and Connelly get cryptic taunting emails. It’s soon evident that the killer is targeting chat room members and that the killer is someone who knows Conway personally. As Conway and Connelly slowly put the pieces together, they and the FBI use modern computer surveillance and other high-tech equipment to track down the killer. In the end, it’s a simpler clue that leads the two sleuths in the right direction, but technology plays an important role in stripping away the killer’s privacy.

But this novel also shows the negative side of that loss of privacy. It turns out that the killer is technologically very adept at covering up ‘footprints’ and tracking down victims. Individual computer IP addresses, bugging devices and even tracking software are all part of what this killer uses to follow Conway and Connelly and to stalk victims.

We also see that kind of electronic violation of privacy in Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal. Eva Wirenström-Berg and her husband Henrik have been having marital difficulties, but so far they’ve stayed together. Then, Eva discovers that Henrik has been unfaithful. When she finds out, she takes a decision that turns out to have consequences she couldn’t possibly have imagined. At first her decision doesn’t seem so fateful though and she continues her life with Henrik and their son Axel. Then she learns the identity of Henrik’s mistress. Eva decides on a particular plan for revenge that also has consequences she hadn’t imagined. This plan involves a real violation of privacy. I can say without spoiling the story that it involves breaking into an email account, which Eva is able to do with frightening ease actually. In the end, you could say that Eva and Henrik have betrayed each other and their choices end up causing real tragedy.

There’s an interesting and chilling case of violation of privacy in Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff’s Some Kind of Peace. Stockholm psychologist Siri Bergman is still coping with the death of her beloved husband Stefan, but she’s functioning if not exactly functional. Then she gets a letter that makes it clear that she’s being stalked. What’s worse, someone seems to have gotten access to her private client information. That violation puts not just her but her clients at risk. There are other incidents too that seem designed to damage her credibility. Then the body of one of Bergman’s clients Sara Matteus is found in the water on her property. The death is set up to look like a suicide; there’s even a suicide note implicating Bergman in this client’s decision to kill herself. But it’s soon proven that this was a murder. Bergman herself is briefly a suspect until she’s able to show that she’s not guilty. Now the threats from this stalker become even more ominous and it’s clear that Bergman’s life is in danger. She’ll have to find out who the killer is in order to re-establish her credibility, protect her clients’ privacy and stay alive.

Today’s technology has made it easier than it ever was to catch criminals, and harder to avoid getting caught if one is a criminal. But it’s a double-edged sword as you might say. It’s also easier than ever to violate an innocent person’s privacy. Information is easier and easier to find, and today’s crime novels reflect that. Dozens and dozens of crime fiction stories (there really isn’t room here for me to list them) include cases where cops or private investigators trace criminals through their emails and social networking, even if the criminal leaves the country. Others depict people who’ve had their emails and banking accounts compromised. So do we have less privacy than we did? I’d say so. Is it a problem? For a lot of people, yes. For cops and private investigators, I’m not so sure.  What do you think?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Police’s Every Breath You Take.

There’s Someone Around Me Just a Step Behind*

Humans can be very self-protective. And that makes sense; it’s part of the reason our species has survived. If we weren’t self-protective, we would take far too many dangerous risks. That instinct to protect ourselves especially comes out when we feel threatened. I don’t just mean physically threatened (although of course that’s a very real phenomenon). I mean other kinds of threats too. For example, we see how self-protection can work when a person is blackmailed. If one’s position, marriage, financial stability, reputation, etc. are at risk, that can cause all sorts of reactions, just as feeling physically threatened can. It’s just as true in crime fiction as it is in real life and feeling threatened can add a very effective thread of tension to a story even if that threat isn’t the main plot.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Death in the Clouds (AKA Death in the Air), Hercule Poirot is traveling by air from Paris to London when one of his fellow passengers Marie Morisot dies of what turns out to be poison. The only possible suspects are the other passengers, so Poirot works with Chief Inspector Japp and the French authorities to find out which passenger is the murderer. The victim was a well-known moneylender who did business under the name Madame Giselle. The ‘collateral’ she used for her loans was information she got about her clients. The arrangement was that if the client didn’t pay up when the debt was due, Madame Giselle would reveal what she knew. The social consequences of that possibility are enough that almost all of Madame Giselle’s clients paid what they owed. As Poirot and the police investigate, they discover that more than one passenger felt threatened by Madame Giselle and it’s not hard to understand how that feeling of being threatened could have led someone to kill.

There’s a stark portrayal of what happens when a person feels threatened in Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone. George and Jacqueline Coverdale hire Eunice Parchman as their new housekeeper. At first, everything goes well enough. Parchman is a little eccentric, but she does her job very well and doesn’t cause any real problems. But the truth is that she is hiding a secret that she is desperate not to reveal. It doesn’t help matters that the Coverdales are wealthy and well-educated and quite accustomed to the class differences that separate them from their new housekeeper. They’re not bad people but they do take their ‘social superiority’ for granted in a lot of ways. Then Parchman begins to fear that her secret will be found out. She becomes even more evasive about her background and nearly paranoid that the Coverdales will discover what she’s hiding. When George Coverdale’s daughter Melinda actually does find out what the housekeeper’s been hiding, Eunice Parchman takes extreme and horrifying action to protect herself. Among other things this novel really shows the effect of the perception of threat.

In Martin Clark’s The Legal Limit, we meet Commonwealth of Virginia prosecutor Mason Hunt. He survived an abusive childhood to go to law school and make a success of himself. But he’s hiding a secret from his past. Years earlier, his older brother Gates murdered his (Gates’) romantic rival Wayne Thompson. Mason helped his brother hide the evidence mostly out of his sense of loyalty to Gates. Now the past has as you might say caught up with Mason Hunt. Gates has been imprisoned on cocaine trafficking charges and begs his brother to help him get out of prison. Mason refuses and Gates threatens him, promising to implicate him in Thompson’s murder, which was never solved, if he doesn’t help. When Mason continues to refuse to help, Gates makes good on his threat. As Mason and his deputy prosecutor Custis Norman try to find ways to deal with this threat, we see how much it affects Mason Hunt’s attitudes, perceptions and choices. That feeling of being threatened adds real suspense to this novel.

It also adds suspense to Anthony Bidulka’s Flight of Aquavit. In that novel, Saskatoon PI Russell Quant is hired by successful accountant Daniel Guest. Guest has had a few private relationships with men but he’s ‘in the closet’ as the saying goes, and is very much afraid his private life will be revealed. The threat becomes more real to Guest when he’s blackmailed. He hires Quant to find out who the blackmailer is and make that person stop. Things turn even uglier when the blackmail turns deadly and Quant finds that there’s more to this case than it seems on the surface. Throughout the story, Daniel Guest’s sense of being threatened has several consequences. At first, all he wants to do is pay off the blackmailer to make that person go away. Then, when he hires Quant, he doesn’t want the blackmailer arrested; that might let too much information be public. There are other places too in the novel where we see Guest’s sense of feeling threatened and his fear adds a solid layer of tension to the story.

In Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal, Eva Wirenström-Berg and her husband Henrik have been having some marital problems. Henrik’s been distant for some time, and Eva becomes worried that the life she’d created for herself and her family will fall apart. She’s always wanted a successfully married life in a nice home with a healthy family and up until now that’s what she’s had. When Eva discovers that Henrik has been unfaithful, this threat to her peaceful, ordered world is more than she can stand. She goes to a pub one night where she meets Jonas Hansson, who has his own personal issues. After their meeting, things quickly spiral out of control for both of them, especially when Eva discovers who the ‘other woman’ in Henrik’s life is. Throughout this novel, we see what a powerful force the feeling of being threatened is.

We also see that in Katherine Howell’s Silent Fear. New South Wales police inspector Ella Marconi is part of the team that investigates the murder of Paul Fowler. He and some friends were tossing a football around in a park on a hot summer’s day when he suddenly collapsed. When it’s discovered that he died of a bullet wound Marconi and the members of her team begin to look into Fowler’s background to find out who would have wanted to kill him. One of the paramedics who respond to the emergency is Holly Garland. She’s hiding some secrets from her past, but she’s done well as a paramedic and has made a good reputation for herself. She has a loving fiancé Norris Sanderson and a life that’s finally settled and positive. But everything she’s worked for is threatened by this case. First, she’s paired with an obnoxious paramedic Kyle who knew her in her past life and who she’s afraid will remember her. If he does, she has no doubt he’ll reveal what he knows and she’ll face real consequences. What’s worse, one of Paul Fowler’s friends is Holly’s brother Seth, who knows all about her past life and whom she doesn’t trust. This case re-unites them and makes Seth a real threat to Holly’s new life. Her feeling of being threatened adds a solid layer to this novel.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention the many novels that include physical threatening. That would’ve been too easy.     But certainly that’s a part of crime fiction too. The perception of being threatened gets at the very core of our sense of self-protection and can lead to elemental fear. Little wonder it’s such an important source of suspense in crime fiction.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from The Offspring’s Gotta Get Away.