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.

I Want a Shot at Redemption*

None of us is perfect. Well, at least I hope I’m not the only one who’s made mistakes. I’m not am I? Am I?  Many times when people have made mistakes, disappointed others or been self-destructive, they want to make up for it. You can call it the desire to redeem oneself if you want. Sometimes the plan works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But what I like about the idea of trying for redemption is that it speaks well of the human spirit (at least to me). It shows that we want to be better and to me, that’s reason for hope. And in crime fiction stories, where we so often see real sadness (and sometimes utter unwillingness to reflect and grow), it’s nice to see characters who at least try to redeem themselves. Along with everything else, it makes them more human.

In Agatha Christie’s Death in the Clouds (AKA Death in the Air), Hercule Poirot is traveling by air from Paris to London. One of his fellow passengers is Marie Morisot, a French moneylender who does business under the name Madame Giselle. In exchange for the money she lends, Madame Giselle finds out secrets about her clients that she uses as leverage to make sure she is repaid. During the flight, Madame Giselle suddenly dies of what is first thought to be heart failure. When it’s proven that she was poisoned, Poirot works with Chief Inspector Japp to find out who the killer is. The only possible suspects are the other passengers, so Poirot and Japp pay special attention to their backgrounds and possible relationships with the victim. One of the suspects is Lady Cecily Horbury, who borrowed from Madame Giselle and then couldn’t pay back what she owed. Poirot also finds out that she is unhappily married to Lord Stephen Horbury, who is in love with someone else. She won’t grant her husband a divorce because she doesn’t want to give up his income and yet, she doesn’t love him and treats him very selfishly. In the course of the investigation, Poirot convinces Lady Horbury to re-think what she’s done. Although her change of heart isn’t the reason for the murder, it’s an interesting example of a very selfish, greedy person who takes, if you will, a small step towards redemption.

Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder feels a strong need for redemption, especially at the beginning of the series that features him. As we learn in The Sins of the Fathers, Scudder was a cop with the NYPD until he made a tragic mistake. He was shooting at two holdup men but instead accidentally shot and killed a little girl Estrellita Rivera. He left the force and drank himself out of his marriage. Now, in part as a way to redeem himself, he ‘does favours’ for people by helping them find answers. Eventually he sobers up and gets a PI license. He even rebuilds his personal life. His path to redemption isn’t easy but it makes his character more believable. And throughout his journey, he never forgets what happened, although he does come to terms with it. Whenever he gets the chance to stop into a church, he lights a candle for Estrellita.

Vicki Delany’s Constable Molly Smith also feels the need to redeem herself. In her first outing, In the Shadow of the Glacier, Smith and her boss Sergeant John Winters investigate the murder of wealthy resort developer Reginald Montgomery. Along with this main plot, there’s an interesting sub-plot involving Smith’s best friend Christa Thompson. Christa is being stalked by Charlie Bassing and Smith advises her friend to swear out a complaint and try to get a restraining order. That plan doesn’t go well and Bassing’s stalking turns extremely ugly. Smith feels responsible for not doing more to protect her friend. She believes that if she’d been more attentive and not so wrapped up in her job she’d have been able to prevent any trouble. Christa blames her too, so there is a very serious strain on the relationship. That plot becomes a story-across-stories as Molly and Christa slowly re-build their friendship. At the same time as Molly tries to redeem herself, Christa slowly learns to see what really happened and that blaming Molly entirely hasn’t solved anything.

Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman series frequently features characters (sometimes even the main culprits) who get a chance at redemption.  For instance, in Earthly Delights, we meet Andy Holliday, who’s recently moved into the building where Chapman lives and has her bakery. Holliday doesn’t exactly cause trouble but he is miserable and spends as much time as he can getting or being drunk. Eventually Chapman finds out that it’s because he feels responsible for the fact that his daughter Cherie ran away and hasn’t been in contact. When we learn why she left we can see why he feels that way (and no, this isn’t the stereotyped abusive-parent-repents kind of story). When Holliday gets the chance to redeem himself, he does so eagerly albeit nervously. The end result is a reunion with his daughter and although they’re a bit awkward around each other at first, we see how being together nourishes both of them. We also see redemption in the character of Jason Wallace, Chapman’s apprentice. When we first meet Jason, he’s a teenage street kid and heroin addict who’s recently ‘gotten clean.’ Against what most people would consider her better judgement, Chapman hires Jason to clean her bakery and do other chores. Then he shows himself to be not just interested in baking but very good at it. So gradually he gets more and more responsibility as the series goes on. Jason has his share of setbacks and more than once, he needs to redeem himself. But at heart he’s a good kid who fairly blossoms when he gets the chance to show his talents. In fact, Chapman soon nicknames him The Muffin Man because of his special ability to create irresistible muffins.

And then there’s Holly Garland, whom we meet in Katherine Howell’s Silent Fear. Holly left behind a life she doesn’t exactly broadcast. She’s a former prostitute and heroin addict who decided to ‘go clean.’ So she and her friend Caryn left the life together and tried to make a fresh start. They were doing very well until Holly allowed her brother Seth back into her life after a serious falling-out. The result was tragic and although Holly knows she isn’t entirely to blame, she does feel she owes Caryn’s memory a debt if I can put it that way. So she’s become a very skilled paramedic. But her skills don’t keep her safe when she gets drawn into the murder of Paul Fowler, who was throwing a football around with some friends when he was shot. Detective Ella Marconi and her team investigate the murder. They find that Fowler had a secret life that got him mixed up with some ruthless people and eventually got him killed. They also find a connection between him and Seth.

It’s a natural wish I think to want to make up for mistakes – to redeem oneself. And even though people don’t always succeed, it’s a hopeful thing that they try. I’ve only mentioned a few examples here. Now it’s your turn…

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al.

I Call Your Name But You’re Not There*

An interesting comment exchange with Rebecca at Ms. Wordopolis Reads has got me thinking about fictional missing people. Before I explain, let me give you a moment to go visit Rebecca’s terrific blog and follow it if you’re not already doing so. It’s well worth reading.

Right. About missing people. Rebecca made the well-taken point that it’s difficult to feature a missing person in a plot. On the one hand, the author wants to ‘hook’ the reader so there has to be some information about the person who’s disappeared. On the other, giving away too much at once can spoil the story and take away the suspense that keeps the reader engaged. When it’s done well, though, and the author integrates ways to keep up the tension, a story that includes the missing person motif can be compelling.

For example, Ruth Rendell’s Simisola begins with Dr. Raymond Akande and his wife realising that their twenty-two-year-old daughter Melanie is missing. Akande asks DCI Reg Wexford, one of his patients, to look into the matter. At first Wexford isn’t overly concerned. Melanie is, after all, a young adult who could have any of a number of reasons for not coming home for a few days. But when more time goes by and she doesn’t return, Wexford begins to ask some questions. It turns out that she was last seen right after an appointment with a job counselor at the local employment bureau. So Wexford and the team start the investigation there. Shortly afterwards, Annette Bystock, Melanie’s contact at the bureau, is found murdered. Then the body of a young woman is found in a local wood. At firstWexford is sure it’s Melanie’s body. When it turns out not to be, Wexford and his team are faced with two murders and a disappearance. In this novel, the tension is maintained as the various threads of the story come together. There’s added tension too because the team is working on more than one case.

The same is true in Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. In that novel, Mma. Precious Ramotswe has just opened her own detective agency. She’s breaking into the business so to speak when she gets a letter from schoolteacher Ernest Pakotati, whose eleven-year-old son has gone missing. Mma. Ramotswe is particularly distressed by this case and it doesn’t help matters that the boy’s disappearance may well have to do with local witchcraft. That’s a politically very sensitive issue and the people involved in it have a certain amount of power so Mma Ramotswe is not looking forward to what she may find out. That possibility adds to the interest in this case, as does the Botswana setting and the characters. It also adds to the tension that the missing person here is a child.

In Katherine Howell’s Violent Exposure, the missing person is Connor Crawford, who with his wife Suzanne owned a Sydney nursery. One night, Suzanne Crawford is murdered and her husband disappears. One likely possibility is that her husband is the murderer. They had argued violently and it’s discovered that Connor had been keeping a secret that his wife was desperate to find out. But of course that’s not the only possibility. Things turn out to be more complicated than that as police detective Ella Marconi and her team soon discover. And when there’s another disappearance, it’s clear that something much more than the tragic end to a domestic dispute is going on. Many, if not all, of the answers in this case depend on finding Connor Crawford. If he’s innocent, he may be in grave danger. And even if he’s not in danger he may be able to provide helpful information that would tie everything together. If he’s guilty, the team will have solved the case. The fact that Connor Crawford and the secret he is keeping are critical adds to the suspense in this story.

Anthony Bidulka takes a different approach to building suspense in Amuse Bouche. In that novel, wealthy entrepreneur Harold Chavell is heartbroken and worried because his fiancé Tom Osborn disappeared right before their wedding. He believes that Osborn has gone alone on their planned honeymoon trip to France, and he wants Quant to follow their itinerary and locate Osborn. Quant agrees and begins to track Osborn through the various stops he and Chavell had planned. The tension is raised when Quant gets a note saying that Osborn doesn’t want to be found. Chavell decides to give up his search and Quant returns to Saskatoon. That’s when Osborn’s body is discovered in a local lake. When Chavell is accused of having murdered his fiancé, he asks Quant to find out the truth and clear his name. In this story Bidulka keeps the tension and suspense strong by the timing of the events and by adding the unexpected in a few places.

Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Mercy (AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes) also depicts a search for a missing person, made all the more frantic by the fact that the person who’s disappeared could be in real danger. Carl Mørck is returning to work as a Copenhagen homicide detective after recovering from a line-of-duty injury. Even at his best Mørck is not exactly a pleasant, outgoing person and now he’s dealing with the trauma of what happened when he was shot. He soon becomes so difficult to work with that he’s ‘promoted’ to Department Q, which is set up to investigate ‘cases of special interest.’ Mostly the department is a politically-motivated response to media concern that the police aren’t doing enough to solve certain cases. Mørck knows this but he takes the job and prepares to do as little as he can get away with doing. Then one case gets his attention: the five-year-old disappearance of promising politician Merete Lynggaard. She went missing during a ferry trip and it was always believed that she went overboard in a tragic accident. But little pieces of evidence suggest that she may still be alive. That possibility and the chance that she could be in grave danger if she is alive add to the suspense in this novel.

In Surrender, Donna Malane introduces us to missing person expert Diane Rowe, who sometimes works with the Wellington police. What’s interesting about this novel is that it follows the case of a missing person almost backwards if I could put it that way. Instead of a friend or loved one discovering that someone is missing and then frantically searching (or having the police do so), this novel starts with the discovery of the headless remains of a ‘John Doe’ found in Rimutaka State Forest. Rowe is hired by Inspector Frank McFay to try to identify the remains. So she works with pathologist reports, interviews people and does her own research as she tries to discover who the dead man was. The suspense in this novel is built up in several ways. One of them is that the novel doesn’t just concentrate on the more routine work involved in matching unidentified remains with the right missing person. There are also trips into the Rimutaka State Forest, interesting discoveries, a cryptic message and even some important clues from a boot manufacturer. There is also the fact that Rowe is trying to find out the truth about the murder of her sister Niki, who was murdered a year earlier. In this novel, the pace adds to the level of interest. So does the slow revealing of the person who was ‘John Doe.’

Andrew Nette’s Ghost Money takes place mostly in Cambodia, where Australian former cop Max Quinlan travels to find Charles Avery. Quinlan’s been hired by Avery’s sister Madeleine mostly because he has a talent for finding people who don’t want to be found. Quinlan starts at Avery’s last-known address in Bangkok but when he discovers the body of Avery’s business partner Robert Lee in that apartment, he knows that this is going to be a complicated case. He follows up on clues he’s found and goes on to Phnom Penh, where he picks up the trail once more. He soon learns that some very powerful and brutal people do not want him to find out what happened to Avery and where he is. Still, he continues to look for answers. He and journalist’s assistant Heng Sarin follow up on every lead they can and in the end, they trace Avery’s whereabouts and they find out the truth about him. In this novel, the pace, the slow reveal about what Avery was really doing in Cambodia, and the action keep the suspense strong.

Building a plot, even in part, around a missing person is a challenge. Reveal too much and you spoil the story. On the other hand, make the pace too slow and the reader disengages, especially if the missing person isn’t depicted in an interesting way. But the ‘missing person’ theme can be compelling when the author adds solid characterisation, a solid amount of action and suspense, and enough plot ‘meat’ to keep the reader absorbed. Thanks, Rebecca, for the inspiration!

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Beatles’ I Call Your Name.

See What You’ve Made and See Who You Are*

People often get into patterns of doing things. Sometimes a new pattern creeps up on us so subtly that we’re not even aware we’ve developed one. Sometimes we’re more deliberate about it. Patterns can weave themselves into any aspect of our lives, and for the book lover, that includes reading. If you’ve ever found yourself suddenly realising that the last several books you’ve read have been about the same topic, or take place in the same region, or treat the same theme, you know what I mean. Of course, everyone’s different about reading patterns, but it’s interesting to see how they affect our choices, whether we’re aware of it or not.

Some reading patterns start almost accidentally if I can put it that way. For instance, suppose a friend lends you a novel such as Vicki Delany’s In the Shadow of the Glacier, which introduces Trafalgar, British Columbia Constable Molly Smith. Now, suppose you enjoy that novel, so you pay a little more attention when you notice a review of Gail Bowen’s The Endless Knot, which also takes place in Canada. It’s in a very different province, but you liked the Delany, so…why not? Then you notice yourself reading other books with Canadian settings (e.g. Giles Blunt, Louise Penny or Anthony Bidulka). Before you really now what’s happened, you’ve developed a pattern of reading more Canadian crime fiction than you thought you had.

The same kind of thing happens sometimes when people read crime fiction that takes place in a given era. For example, you might read one of Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple novels that take place in the 1920’s. The era is absolutely fascinating, so perhaps that tempts you to read one of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher novels or perhaps Jeffrey Stone’s Play Him Again. Those novels also take place in the 1920’s. Before you’re even aware of it, you’ve started on a pattern of reading novels that take place in a particular time period.

We all have different sub-genres of crime fiction that particularly appeal to us and sometimes, we find that we’ve developed a pattern of mostly reading within one sub-genre. If you’ve ever tried one of Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe novels and loved it or one of Katherine Howell’s Ella Marconi novels and loved it, you may slowly find yourself reading more and more police procedurals. And because you haven’t thought about it or planned it, you’re not even really aware you’ve been reading a lot from that sub-genre.

After a while, most of us do notice that we’ve been reading a lot about one issue, or about one place/time, or in one sub-genre. Some people don’t mind that at all and there’s nothing wrong with that. Other people though decide to change their patterns or at least add in new ones.

That’s one reason why some patterns in reading are quite deliberate. Sometimes people deliberately develop patterns by choosing a reading challenge. There are dozens out there too, and a lot of them are not difficult to meet. I’ll just mention two. One is the Vintage Mystery Challenge, hosted by Bev at My Reader’s Block . Readers who notice that they haven’t read a lot of classic, Golden Age or other vintage crime fiction may want to check out that challenge; there are lots of interesting categories and lots of possibilities for books. Another challenge is the Australian Women Writer’s Challenge. You may decide for instance that you’d like to be more familiar with all sorts of fiction being written by the terrific ladies from Down Under. This challenge gives you the chance to try some of their work. The great thing about challenges is that they give the reader a focus for breaking out of patterns or trying new ones.

Some readers deliberately try a new pattern through reading blogs that focus on particular places, times, etc.  For example, a look at Glenn Harper’s International Noir Fiction may convince you to add some noir to your reading diet. You may read Barbara Fister’s Scandinavian Crime Fiction blog and find some titles there that pique your interest. I know that terrific blogs like that have gotten me to take a look at my reading patterns and think about adjusting them.

There are plenty of readers too who keep notes on what they read and take a look at them periodically. Charts and graphs on what they read help them reflect and decide what they’re going to do about their patterns. You know who you are and I really respect that self-reflection.

Writers of course have another way of focusing deliberately on their reading patterns. The best writers are also voracious readers and are well aware of what other people in their sub-genre are doing. They keep up with the major authors and series in their sub-genre to help them improve what they do. I know that reading other authors’ work helps me.

These are just a few things I’ve discovered about reading patterns. What are your views? Do you notice yourself developing patterns without being aware of it? Do you plan your patterns? What gets you in the reading patterns you’ve developed? If you’re a writer, how do your reading and writing patterns affect each other?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Don McLean’s The Pattern is Broken.

Pictures in My Mind*

One of the challenges authors face is how to convey the visual. It’s easy enough if one’s writing a graphic novel or children’s picture book but in other kinds of novels it can be difficult to give the reader mental images. For one thing, readers are often more engaged if they use their own imaginations to ‘colour in the drawing.’ What’s more, too much description tends to burden a novel and can pull the reader out of the story. But if the reader has no sense of the visual it can be harder to be drawn into the story. So authors have to strike a delicate balance when it comes to depicting the visual. Just a quick look at crime fiction should show you what I mean about striking that balance.

There’s interesting use of imagery in Agatha Christie’s Death in the Clouds (AKA Death in the Air).  That’s the story of the murder of Marie Morisot, a French moneylender who does business under the name of Madame Giselle. She’s poisoned while en route by air from Paris to London, and the only viable suspects are her fellow passengers. Hercule Poirot is on the same flight, so he works with Chief Inspector Japp to solve the crime. Two of the other passengers are London hairdresser’s assistant Jane Grey and dentist Norman Gale. At one point, the two have a cup of tea together and discuss the case:

 

‘They found a tea shop, and a disdainful waitress with a gloomy manner took their order with an air of doubt as of one who might say: ‘Don’t blame me if you’re disappointed. They say we serve teas here, but I never heard of it.’’

 

Can’t you just visualise the waitress and her facial expression? And Christie does this without overburdening the reader with a lot of description. There’s room for the imagination, but she leaves the reader in no doubt about the setting for the conversation these two characters have.

One of James Lee Burke’s many strengths as a writer is the way he conveys the Southern Louisiana setting for most of his Dave Robicheaux novels. Burke takes a different approach to Christie’s but that’s of course part of the pleasure of crime fiction – the variety. In The Tin Roof Blowdown, for instance, one of the plot threads is Robicheaux’s search for his old friend Jude Le Blanc, who has become a Roman Catholic priest. In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Le Blanc disappears and is presumably shot while trying to save some of his parishioners. The boat Le Blanc was using turns up later, this time in the possession of a group of looters. So Robiceaux suspects a connection between the looters and his friend’s disappearance. And so it turns out to be although of course, it’s not the obvious connection you might make. Here is a bit of the description of the onset of Katrina:

 

‘A hard gust of wind blows down the long corridor of trees that line Bayou Teche, wrinkling the water like old skin, filling the air with the smell of old fish roe and leaves that have turned yellow and black in the shade. Katrina will make landfall somewhere around Lake Pontchartrain in the next seven hours.’ 

 

This visual imagery places the reader unmistakeably in the setting, and raises the tension as it’s clear there is about to be a devastating storm.

In Stephen Booth’s Dying to Sin, DS Diane Fry and DC Ben Cooper investigate when two sets of remains are found on Pity Wood Farm near the village of Rakesdale in the Peak District of Derbyshire. The farm was the property of brothers Raymond and Derek Sutton, but Derek Sutton has died and his brother has had to move to a nursing care facility. Now the farm is the property of Manchester attorney Aaron Goodwin, but he has spent nearly no time there as of yet. So one thing Fry and Cooper have to do is find out who actually owned the property at the time the bodies were buried there, and how likely the owner would have been to know about the bodies. The remains belong to Orla Doyle and Nadezda Halak, very different young women from very different backgrounds. So another task the police face is finding out what these women were doing near the farm and why anyone would want to kill them. Here is Fry’s first impression of Pity Wood Farm:

 

‘She was confronted by a collection of ancient outbuildings leaning at various angles, their roofs sagging, doors hanging loosely on their hinges. By some curious law of physics, the doors all seemed to tilt at the opposite angle to the walls, as if they were leaning to compensate for a bend. Some doorways had been blocked up, windows were filled in, steps had been left going nowhere.’

 

This description gives the reader a real sense of how poverty-stricken and untended the farm is. It’s not a very pleasant place, but it’s in the history of the farm that Fry and Cooper find the clues to what happened to Orla Doyle and Nadezda Halak.

Håkan Nesser isn’t known for flowery descriptions, but he’s quite skilled at conveying visual images. For instance, in Woman With Birthmark, Inspector Van Veeteren and his team are called in when Ryszard Malik is murdered in his own home. The team is starting its investigation when there’s another murder. And then another. The deaths are all tied together by a past event, and Van Veeteren and his team will have to find out what the victims had in common if they’re to prevent a fourth murder. Here is the way Nesser describes a press conference in which Van Veeteren participates:

 

‘The conference room on the first floor was full to overflowing with journalists and reporters sitting, taking photographs, and trying to outdo one another in the art of asking biased and insinuating questions.
He had been press-ganged to accompany Hiller and sit behind a cheap, rectangular table overloaded with microphones, cords, and the obligatory bottles of soda water that for some unfathomable reason were present whenever high-ranking police officers made statements in front of cameras…’

 

The reader doesn’t need a lot of verbiage to build a strong visual image of what this press conference is like.

In Katherine Howell’s Violent Exposure, Sydney police detective Ella Marconi and her team investigate when Suzanne Crawford is murdered and her husband Connor goes missing. At first, it seems like a case of domestic violence that ended in death, but before long, it’s clear that the case is more complicated than that. For one thing, background checks on Connor Crawford show nothing, as though he never existed. And it comes out that he was keeping a secret from his wife that she was desperate to discover. Things get even more complex when Emil Page, a teenage volunteer at the nursery the Crawfords owned, also disappears. These events are all related and tied to the Crawfords’ past, and in the end, Marconi and her team find out what it is about the Crawfords that made them targets. Here’s a description of the murder weapon used to kill Suzanne Crawford:

 

‘It looked like a standard carving knife, about twenty centimetres long, with a stainless-steel blade and black plastic handle. Ella saw prints in the dry blood on the handle.
‘Beautiful,’ she said.’

 

Just from this short description one can get a strong visual image of the weapon without the need for Howell to use gory detail.

And that’s the thing about effective visual imagery. It conveys a lot to the reader without the need for a lot of verbiage or gratuitousness. Which authors do you think do a particularly effective job at conveying the visual? I know I’ve only mentioned a few here. If you’re a writer, how do you convey the visual?

 

 
 

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