Tension Mounts in the City Tonight*

Yesterday I had the honour of having lunch with the terrific Rob Kitchin, who blogs at The View From the Blue House. Kitchin’s blog has great reviews of crime fiction novels, and is well worth a place on your blog roll if you’re a crime fiction fan. But Kitchin isn’t just a blogger – not by any means. Like me, he’s an academic. He’s also the author of The Rule Book and The White Gallows, both featuring his sleuth Detective Superintendent Colm McEvoy. Oh, and he’s the author of Killer Reels, a linked collection of short stories featuring the very creepy film buff Jimmy Kiley. And his standalone Stiffed, which he’s called ‘screwball noir,’ is due to be released this year. Check out The View From the Blue House for details about all of those books and about Kitchin’s many short stories and 100-word Drabbles.

One of the things we talked about was the way that authors use suspense and tension in their novels to engage the reader and to keep the reader turning pages. Some authors start their novels with lower levels of suspense, but gradually add it in as the novel goes on. For instance, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (AKA Ten Little Indians) is like that. The story starts, if you will, innocently enough. Ten people have been invited to Indian Island, off the Devon coast and for different reasons, each accepts. The story begins as they all travel to the island and although there are little hints of what’s to come, the tension hasn’t really set in yet. Then, when they arrive on the island and discover that their host hasn’t yet made an appearance, the tension begins. It builds after dinner that night, when each person is accused of having caused the death of at least one other person. Then, one of the guests suddenly dies of what turns out to be poison. Then there’s another death that night. One by one, the other guests also begin to die and it’s soon clear that they’ve been lured to the island and that one of them is the killer. The suspense continues to build as the survivors try to find out who the murderer is and avoid getting killed themselves.

Suspense builds gradually in Louise Penny’s A Rule Against Murder too. In that novel, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec goes on an annual wedding anniversary trip with his wife Reine-Marie. They’re staying at Manoir Bellechasse and hoping for a relaxing getaway. Soon they meet several members of the Finney family, who are also staying at the lodge. There are Thomas and Sandra Finney, Thomas’ elderly parents, and his sisters Julia and Marianna and Marianna’s child. At first all seems to be going smoothly enough although it’s clear that the Finneys are not exactly a happy family. The suspense begins to build though when it becomes clear just how dysfunctional the family really is. Then there’s a murder. Of course the tension increases then, and even more so as more revelations come out about the family and as Gamache uncovers an unexpected connection to a character fans of this series already know.

Of course, not all authors choose to build the suspense in their stories slowly. Some choose to start with a high level of tension and more or less keep up the same pacing and tension throughout the novel. That’s the case with Megan Abbott’s Die a Little. The tension in that story is built early when Bill King marries Alice Steele. Alice is a former Hollywood dressmaker’s assistant who seems to settle quickly into life as a suburban housewife. But Bill’s sister Lora doesn’t care much for Alice. She tells herself it’s because there’s just something about Alice that doesn’t seem quite right. And indeed, she finds out things about Alice that suggest that Alice isn’t telling the truth about a lot of her life. But Lora has always had a close relationship with Bill and although she doesn’t admit it to herself at first, she’s also jealous of this new woman’s presence in her brother’s life. The suspense and pacing continue as Lora gradually gets drawn more and more into Alice’s world at the same time as she feels repelled by it. Then there’s a murder. What’s more, Alice may have had something to do with it. As Lora starts asking questions, she learns more than she wanted to admit about Alice and about herself.

T.J. Cooke’s Defending Elton also starts with a strong dose of suspense and keeps that level steady throughout the novel. An enigmatic young woman Sarena Gunasekera has been found dead at the bottom of a cliff at Beachy Head near Eastbourne. Evidence shows that she was stabbed and possibly raped, and then thrown over the cliff. The evidence also strongly suggests that Elton Spears is the murderer. Spears is a troubled young man with mental problems and deficiencies, so he can’t really participate in his own defence. And yet some things he says hint that he may not be guilty. And there is also the principle of British law that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty. Solicitor Jim Harwood has worked with Spears before and takes his case now, working with barrister Harry Douglas, who will defend the case in court. As the novel goes on, we learn bit by bit what Sarena’s history  was, how her story is tied up with that of crime boss Sammy Todd, and what really happened on the night she was murdered. The story is told from Harwood’s point of view, and through his narrative we learn that in this case, little is as it seems.

There are also crime novels and series where tension and suspense are not really strongly featured. The interest in those novels comes instead from character development and sometimes atmosphere and setting. Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series featuring Mma. Precious Ramotswe is like that. In each of the novels, Mma. Ramotswe and her associate Mma. Grace Makutsi are hired to solve several cases. For instance, one client hires Mma. Ramotswe to find out whether his teenage daughter is secretly seeing a boyfriend. Another wants to know which of several young women would be the best candidate to win Botswana’s Miss Beauty and Integrity pageant. Other cases involve finding long-lost people and uncovering shady practices at a health clinic. In all of these cases, there is real interest as we follow the way Mma. Ramotswe and Mma. Makutsi go about finding answers. And as the series goes on, their characters and the characters of the people in their lives develop and evolve. There’s also a strong sense of the Botswana setting. Those are the features that hold the reader’s interest rather than a high level of action and suspense.

That’s also true in M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series. Fans of this series know that Macbeth is the constable in the small Scottish town of Lochdubh. He’s got little ambition and would rather fish than do a lot of detecting. But he’s good at what he does, and he has a deep knowledge of the Highlands and its people and culture, having lived there all his life. These novels do feature murders, some of them not exactly pretty. But the real interest in the novels isn’t the suspense and tension of the cases, although of course, they are important. Rather, it’s the setting, the quirky characters and of course Macbeth himself.

Everyone’s different about the way they like their suspense. Some like it to start high and stay that way. Others prefer a different focus in their novels. And still others like the suspense to build gradually. What about you? How do you like your suspense? If you’re a writer, how do you use suspense to keep readers engaged?

 

Thanks, Rob, for a real treat of a meeting and conversation. Hey folks, do read Rob’s work. You won’t regret it.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from King Prawn’s No Peace.

Why Not Come Dancing, It’s Only Natural*

Do you like to go dancing? What’s interesting about dancing is that most cultures (‘though certainly not all of them) have some form of dance whether it’s sacred or secular. And for a very long time dances were one of the few socially acceptable places for couples to meet. That’s one of the reasons they’re so popular among high school students. Dances and evenings that include dancing are also events that draw all sorts of disparate people together. Add alcohol to that mix and you have – yup, a very effective context for a crime fiction novel or at least a scene in one.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s short story Finessing the King, Prudence ‘Tuppence’ Beresford notices a personal ad in the newspaper. The ad refers to an upcoming ball called the Three Arts Ball and to an agreed meeting of some sort at a restaurant/club called Ace of Spades after the ball. Tuppence is curious enough about it to persuade her husband Tommy to take her dancing and to a late supper at the Ace of Spades. The booth next to them is occupied by Lady Vere Merivale, who’s has obviously just come from the Three Arts Ball; she’s dressed as Alice’s Queen of Hearts. With her is a man dressed in newspaper. When the man leaves, the Beresfords find that Lady Merivale has been stabbed but she gives them cryptic clue before she dies. Inspector Marriot investigates the murder but it’s Tuppence who really links the crime to the criminal.

In Rex Stout’s Champagne For One, one of Archie Goodwin’s friends persuades him to attend a dinner and dance hosted by Louise Robilotti. The not-so-hidden agenda for the evening is to support the young women who live at Grantham House, a temporary home for unwed mothers and their children. The idea of the dinner/dance is that the young ladies will get some exposure to how things are done in the ‘better’ social circles and perhaps even meet a young man. During the evening Goodwin is introduced to several of Grantham House’s residents, including Faith Usher. Goodwin is told that Faith has brought cyanide with her and intends to kill herself while she’s at the dinner/dance. During the dancing that follows the dinner Faith does in fact die from what turns out to be cyanide poisoning. Everyone is convinced that she followed through on her threat and that there’s nothing to investigate. But Goodwin isn’t sure and as time goes by he’s more and more convinced that she was murdered. So, despite intense pressure from the police and from the Roibletti family, Goodwin pursues his suspicion and we learn who killed Faith Usher and why.

In Kerry Greenwood’s Cocaine Blues, socialite Phryne Fisher agrees to take on an unusual challenge. Colonel Harper and his wife are concerned about their daughter Lydia, who has moved to Melbourne. They believe she may be in danger and want Fisher to go to Melbourne and find out whether Lydia is all right and whether her husband (whom neither Harper trusts) is up to no good. Fisher returns from London to her home town of Melbourne and begins circulating among the ‘set’ that includes Lydia. One evening Fisher’s invited to an evening of dinner and dancing at the home of Melanie Cryer and that’s where she first meets Lydia and her husband. During the evening Fisher gets the chance to show off her tango skills, meet up with a handsome Russian dancer and get some valuable background information on Lydia, her husband and a few other members of Melbourne’s elite. That information helps Fisher solve the case when Lydia’s husband John is murdered.

Dancing plays an important role in M.C. Beaton’s The Deadly Dance. In that novel, recently-established PI Agatha Raisin is hired by Mrs. Laggat-Brown when her daughter Cassandra receives a threatening letter. Cassandra Laggat-Brown is shortly to be engaged to Jason Peterson and the letter threatens her life if she does so. Mrs. Laggat-Brown wants Raisin to attend a dinner/dance at their home the following evening to see if she sees any suspicious characters. Raisin attends the dance and at first, all seems in order. Then, some planned fireworks are set off prematurely. Raisin glances up and sees what she swears is a gun. Now she begins to think that someone really is trying to kill Cassandra Laggat-Brown and she wants to know why. Despite Mrs. Laggat-Brown’s fury at Raisin’s ‘ruining the party,’ Raisin goes in search of the person responsible. And then Jason Peterson’s father Harrison dies, apparently a successful suicide. Raisin doesn’t think so though and it turns out that she’s right. That death and the attack on Cassandra Laggat-Brown are connected to each other and to an IRA cell.

And then there’s Anthony Bidulka’s Flight of Aquavit, in which successful accountant Daniel Guest hires Saskatoon PI Russell Quant to stop a blackmailer. When the blackmail case turns deadly, Quant has to put the pieces of the puzzle together before his client is murdered. Guest is vulnerable to blackmail because he’s had a few secret relationships with men and isn’t yet ready to ‘come out.’ And he has some money. It’s possible that the blackmailer is someone with whom Guest was involved so one night, he, Quant and some friends go to Diva’s, a gay bar with plenty of dancing. Since Guest has dressed in drag for the evening he’s sure that nobody will know who he is. All goes well until Guest spots the person he thinks is his quarry – and it turns out to be a very surprising person whom Quant is loathe to pursue. The scenes at Diva’s do have plenty of humour in them but they also show how useful dances and dancing can be in a crime fiction novel. They’re great places for finding clues, following people and of course, stirring up the tension.

I’ve only touched on a few examples of dances and dancing in crime fiction. There is after all only so much space in this one post. So help me out please and fill in the gaps I’ve left. Which novels have you enjoyed where dancing waltzes through the story?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Kinks’ Come Dancing. Do you know how many songs there are about dancing? It was hard to choose from among them!

There’s Got to be Some Changes Made*

No matter how content we are with ourselves, we all know that we’re works in progress. So there’s always something we can do better. Some people make New Year’s resolutions to motivate themselves, and others do different things. But in some way most of us try to do better at handling at least something in our lives. It’s not always easy though and most of us have occasional slips as we try. But that process and those slips make us human. They also make us interesting. That’s why that side of a character can add a lot to a novel. Of course that’s true of any genre, but since this is a crime-fictional blog let me show you what I mean with a quick look at crime fiction.

In Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train for instance, we meet Derek Kettering. He’s not exactly a model human being. He’s unwise and wasteful with money and he’s been cheating on his wife Ruth. Kettering justifies what he does by telling himself that Ruth isn’t exactly a perfect wife either. Everything changes though when Kettering meets Katherine Grey. She is a former paid companion whose employer has just died, leaving her a very large fortune. Katherine decides to use some of her inheritance to travel to Nice on the famous Blue Train. That’s how she gets caught up in a case of murder when Ruth Kettering, who’s on the same train, is killed. Ruth’s father Rufus Van Aldin hires Hercule Poirot to investigate the murder and Poirot begins to ask questions. Derek Kettering is the most obvious suspect. Besides his motives, he was seen on the train and can’t account for his time. Meeting Katherine and being involved in the murder investigation force Derek to re-think everything. I don’t think it’s giving away spoilers to say that he decides to change.

Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn is a political scientist and an academic. She is also a loving mother to Mieka, Peter, Angus and Taylor. And therein lies a personal challenge for Kilbourn. She has the same desire that any loving parent has to protect her children and to see them succeed in life. But as they get older, Kilbourn’s children do what any healthy child does: they start to make their own choices in life, some of which are not choices that Kilbourn would make. In The Wandering Souls Murders for instance, Peter’s former girlfriend Christy Sinclair comes back into the family’s life. Kilbourn has never thought that Christy was good for her son but at the same time, she doesn’t want alienate Peter. So she’s forced to walk a very thin line as she welcomes Christy back into the family circle, especially when Christy happily announces that she and Peter are back together as a couple. Then it all becomes moot when Christy dies in what seems like a tragic canoeing accident. Her death turns out to be not at all accidental and Kilbourn discovers that it’s related to a series of other killings. Although Kilbourn does slip at times, she really does try hard to let her children work out their own lives while still being available as a caring mom. And that’s not easy. Trust me.

Deon Meyer’s Martin Lemmer is a professional bodyguard whom we first meet in Blood Safari. Lemmer has a dysfunctional background and that’s contributed to a deep well of anger. He knows all too well how easy it is to let that anger overtake one; in fact, Lemmer has served time in prison for murder because of that anger. So he fights a regular battle as you might say to keep his temper under control. He faces quite a challenge when Emma le Roux hires him to accompany her from Cape Town to the Lowveld to find out the truth about her brother Jacobus’ disappearance. For years it was thought that Jacobus le Roux was killed in a battle with poachers. But Emma saw a man who looks exactly like her brother while she was watching a news story on television. So she decides to find out whether her brother might still be alive. There are several very nasty people who don’t want the truth about Jacob le Roux to come out, and some of them have quite a lot of clout. So Emma and her bodyguard face all sorts of terrible danger as they search for answers. Through it all Lemmer constantly has to guard against allowing his rage to spill over and that adds a layer of tension to this novel.

M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin has her own ongoing struggles. One of them is dealing with her ex-husband James Lacey. Through the course of the novels, we watch as she and Lacey fall in love, marry and then divorce. Not that Lacey has no redeeming qualities, but he isn’t faithful and he isn’t exactly known for his honesty. Agatha is hardly perfect herself, but she does try to make it work with Lacey. She has a great deal of feeling for him and it’s the one weak spot she constantly tries to shore up – and doesn’t. In several novels (Love, Lies and Liquor is one and so is Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye), she is determined to let go of her feelings for Lacey after their divorce. In fact, she’d agree with you that she’s well rid of him. But keeping that resolution is harder than making it is…

Domingo Villar’s Leo Caldas is a police inspector in Vigo, in the Spanish province of Galicia. He is devoted to his work and makes his job a high priority. At the same time he’s resolved to spend more time with his father. The two don’t have a lot in common but they care about each other and they do respect each other. In Death on a Galician Shore for instance, Caldas investigates the death of local fisherman Justo Castelo, whose body is found washed ashore near the small town of Panxón. At first it’s thought that Castelo committed suicide, but little pieces of evidence suggest otherwise so Caldas and his assistant Rafael Estevez dig deeper into the case. It turns out to be more complicated and time-consuming than either thought it would be. In the meantime, Caldas’ Uncle Alberto has had to go into hospital and of course, Caldas would like to spend time with him as well as with his father. More than once in this novel Caldas resolves to call his father or meet him for a meal. He also resolves to visit his uncle. Sometimes he follows through on his commitment to spend more time with his father and uncle. Sometimes he doesn’t. His resolution to work harder at those relationships adds an interesting side to his character.

Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest knows that she has a tendency to speak her mind before really thinking things through. She has a habit of taking rash, even reckless decisions too. She herself admits that she goes too far at times. For instance, in Gunshot Road she takes on a difficult and very dangerous case when the body of Albert ‘Doc’ Ozolins is discovered in his shack at Green Swamp Well. Tempest doesn’t believe the official explanation that Ozolins was killed as the result of a drunken quarrel and does her own investigation. On one hand, it turns out that she is quite right about Ozolins’ murder. On the other, she goes off recklessly on her own. Her choices lead her to the truth, but she pays a very heavy price for it. Part of what makes Tempest’s character interesting is that she knows she should be more prudent and more than once she resolves to do so. But she doesn’t always succeed.

And that’s the thing about people. As I say, we’re works in progress. We resolve to do things better and we do try. At times we succeed and at times, well, we don’t. And that adds to our richness. It also adds to the depth of fictional characters.

 

 
 

*NOTE:  The title of this post is a line from The Animals’ I’m Going to Change the World.

So Often Times it Happens That We Live Our Lives in Chains*

One of the many patterns we see in crime fiction is the character who’s in a bad situation and doesn’t simply leave it. It’s very tempting to yell, ‘Well, then, just don’t go back to him!’ or ‘Well, then, just leave your job if you hate it so much!’ But as we know, it’s not that simple. And it can add to the richness of a crime novel if the author acknowledges how difficult it can be. It can also invite the reader to engage more with a character if the author shows the complexities of that character’s situation.

In Mickey Spillane’s The Big Kill, for instance, Spillane’s sleuth Mike Hammer is in a seedy bar one day when William Decker and his toddler son come in. Decker quickly buys and downs two drinks. Then he says goodbye to his son and leaves the bar. Just as he’s leaving, he’s struck by a hit-and-run driver whose passenger then fires several gunshots just to be sure, or so it seems, that the job is done. Hammer runs outside but not quickly enough to catch those responsible for Decker’s murder. He takes in Decker’s son and resolves to find out who killed Decker. He discovers that Decker was a safecracker who’d been working with a local gang. He’d ‘gone straight’ for the sake of his son but then, at his wits’ end for money, returned to his old profession. At first it looks as though Decker was killed because he bungled a job he was doing for the gang. But as Hammer finds out, it’s not that simple. You might wonder why Decker would return to such a dangerous and illegal lifestyle, but in this case, having a son to take care of means that leaving that life is not the straightforward decision it seems to be.

M.C. Beaton’s Love, Lies and Liquor takes her sleuth PI Agatha Raisin to the run-down Paradise Hotel at the seedy seaside town of Snoth-on-Sea. Raisin’s ex-husband James Lacey has convinced her to take a holiday there and against her better judgement, she goes. Once there Raisin meets the very unpleasant Geraldine Jankers, her new husband, her son Wayne and his wife Chelsea, and a friend Cyril Hammond and his wife Dawn. One night Raisin gets into a quarrel with Geraldine Jankers. When Jankers is later found murdered, Raisin becomes a very plausible suspect. Partly in order to clear her name and partly because she’s intrigued, Raisin investigates the murder. One interesting suspect is Cyril Hammond. Through a course of events that occurs in the novel, he stands to inherit Jankers’ considerable wealth. As she looks into Hammond’s life, Raisin discovers a very ugly truth about him: he has been abusing his wife. Raisin confronts Dawn with what she knows and Dawn admits the truth. In fact, Raisin even convinces Dawn to leave her husband. But then, inexplicably to Raisin, Dawn goes back. On the surface of it, you could yell at Dawn for going back when she knows what awaits her (at least I wanted to). But Hammond is wealthy and ‘connected’ and Dawn has neither real marketable skills nor any real professional experience. She’s very much afraid of what will happen to her if she tries to make it alone so for her, the decision to leave and stay away is not as simple as it seems.

We see a kind of related situation in Martin Clark’s The Legal Limit. In that novel we meet Sadie Grace Hunt. She and her husband Curt live in rural Patrick County, Virginia, where they raise their sons Mason and Gates. Curt Hunt hasn’t had it easy financially, and he tends to drink too much. What’s worse, he abuses his sons physically and his wife more emotionally and verbally. Both Mason and Gates are deeply affected by the abuse they suffer and it later leads to tragedy when Gates Hunt murders a romantic rival during a heated quarrel. Mason is persuaded to help cover up what his brother has done. That decision comes back to haunt him when Gates is imprisoned on a drugs charge and begs his brother, now a prosecuting attorney, to help him get out of prison. Their conflict tears the family apart and raises several questions about family loyalty, among other things. Sadie Grace Hunt is fully aware of what her husband is like and she is appalled at her husband’s treatment of his family. But she doesn’t leave. Part of the reason for that is financial; where would she go and how would she feed two sons? Part of the reason is her commitment to what she sees as her family obligations. While it’s easy to blame someone like Sadie Grace for not leaving, it’s a very complex situation, and Clark doesn’t reduce it to ‘black and white.’

Andrea Camilleri doesn’t reduce complex situations to ‘black and white’ either. For instance, in The Wings of the Sphinx, Inspector Salvo Montalbano investigates the murder of an unknown girl with a distinctive tattoo. Her body is discovered near a local landfill and at first, no-one claims to know her. But later she is identified as a foreigner who came to Italy with a group of other young woman under the premise that the group sponsoring them would find jobs and security for them. Things haven’t turned out that way though and without giving spoilers, I can say that the women have gotten themselves into a very difficult and dangerous situation. So why didn’t any of them leave the area?  Why did they stay? They’re not portrayed as stupid; in fact, quite the contrary. But leaving that kind of situation is complicated. Without plenty of money, they can’t return home or even go to another part of the country. Without connections it’s hard to get legal work. So although you might argue that the women should just leave, it’s more complex than that and it’s to Camilleri’s credit that the story acknowledges that fact.

That’s also true in Betty Webb’s Desert Wives. Esther Corbett has left a Utah polygamous group called Purity. She hires private investigator Lena Jones to go to Purity and rescue her daughter Rebecca from the group and Jones and her partner Jimmy Sisiwan successfully find Rebecca and return her to her mother. But in the meantime, Purity’s leader Solomon Royal has been shot and there’s some very strong circumstantial evidence against Esther. When Esther is arrested for the murder, she begs Jones to find out who Royal’s killer is so that Rebecca won’t be forcibly returned to her father Abel, who is still a loyal member of Purity. Jones agrees and goes undercover at Purity to find out who murdered its leader. While she’s there Jones discovers some appalling truths about Purity including domestic violence, forced marriage and child abuse. Jones finds it very hard to believe at first that the women of Purity would simply stay there and tolerate what’s been happening. But the more she learns about their situation, the better she understands why they can’t just leave. First, Purity is an isolated compound, so leaving is physically very difficult. Then too, Purity’s women have very little money and no independent means of transportation. Most have little if any education. Further, local and regional authorities do little or nothing about the abuses at Purity although they are aware of them. And finally, many of Purity’s members have been raised to believe that that’s ‘the way things should be.’ One very clear message in this book is that changing the situation at Purity is not as easy as one would wish.

That’s the message in Angela Savage’s Behind the Night Bazaar too. Australian ex-pat Jayne Keeney lives and works in Bangkok, but occasionally goes north to Chiang Mai to visit her friend Didier ‘Didi’ de Montpasse. One night during one of Keeney’s visits, de Montpasse’s partner Nou is murdered. The police begin to investigate and almost before Keeney knows it, de Montpasse has been shot. The official explanation for that killing is that de Montpasse murdered his partner and threatened the police when they came to arrest him. But Keeney is certain that’s not true. So in order to clear her friend’s name, she begins to investigate. What she finds is that those two deaths are connected to corruption, child abuse and sex trafficking. One of the debates raised in this novel has to do with how we stop the practice of child trafficking, and one question is, why do parents from rural villages continue to allow their children to be sold into the sex trade? Why don’t they simply stop doing it? But as Savage points out, the question is much more complicated than that and entails more far-reaching issues than it seems on the surface.

And that’s the thing about people who seem locked in bad situations. Very often (‘though certainly not all the time), simply leaving those situations is not as easy as it seems on the surface. And exploring those complex issues can make for a realistic and rich crime novel.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Eagles’ Already Gone.

Our House is a Very, Very, Very Fine House*

One of the more popular kinds of murder mysteries is what’s often called the country-house or country-manor story. A group of disparate people is brought together for a short stay and one or more of them don’t survive the visit. Why are we drawn to these stories? One reason could be that country-house murders often take place in houses that almost seem to have personalities of their own. The setting isn’t always creepy (at first, anyway) but we feel a sense of history or of foreboding and that adds to a story. So do the different characters who are drawn together in these mysteries. The clash of personalities, the histories that can come out and the secrets that characters often hide can really bring suspense to the story. There are many, many country-house mysteries out there, and space in this post is limited. So I won’t be able to mention all of them by any means. But a quick look should give you a sense of what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Captain Arthur Hastings pays a visit to an old friend John Cavendish and his wife Mary at their family home Styles Court, in Essex. The home belongs to Cavendish’s stepmother Emily Inglethorp, whom Hastings remembers fondly, so he’d prepared for a pleasant stay. One night shortly after his arrival though, Emily Inglethrop is poisoned. The most likely suspect is her husband Alfred, whom everyone else thinks married her only for her money. As it happens, another of Hastings’ friends Hercule Poirot is living in the nearby village of Styles St. Mary, and when Hastings asks Poirot to look into the case, he agrees. As Poirot begins to investigate, we gradually find out that each one of the people in the house had a motive for murder.

Christie wrote several other novels too that you’d probably count as country-house murders. So did Ngaio Marsh. The country house setting is the basis, for instance, of A Man Lay Dead, the first of Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn series. In that novel, Nigel Bathgate and his cousin Charles Rankin have been invited to a house party hosted by Sir Hubert Handesley. The main event of the party will be a Murder Hunt, in which one guest will be tagged as ‘the murderer.’ That person will choose a ‘victim.’ The rest of the guests will be tasked with finding out who the ‘murderer’ is. The game starts off well enough but ends tragically when Rankin is actually murdered. Alleyn is called in and soon finds that just about everyone in the house, including the staff, had a good reason to want Charles Rankin dead. There’ve been all sorts of country-house type mysteries since, but in my opinion (so feel free to differ with me if you do) it’s hard to beat Ngaio Marsh’s skill with this premise.

M.C. Beaton’s Death of a Cad is the story of an ill-fated house party at the country home of Colonel and Mary Halburton-Smythe. They’ve invited several people to join them at a gathering to meet up-and-coming playwright Henry Withering. The Halburton-Smythes’ daughter Priscilla has just become engaged to Withering, so this is also in the manner of a ‘welcome to the family’ party. Early one morning, one of the guests Captain Peter Bartlett goes out hunting; he’s made a bet with another guest Jeremy Pomfret that he can bring in a trace of grouse before Pomfret can and he leaves the house early to hedge his bet. He’s shot on the way back in what looks like a tragic hunting accident. Local constable Hamish Macbeth goes to the Halburton-Smythe’s home to visit Priscilla, in whom he’s interested himself, and comes upon the scene. He is soon convinced that Bartlett was murdered and begins to investigate, despite the Halburton-Smythes’ insistence that Bartlett died by accident.

As Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell takes readers to Lydstep Old Hall, which is owned by the Cosway family, in The Minotaur. Swedish nurse Kerstin Kvist meets the Cosways when she is hired to look after thirty-nine-year-old John Cosway, who is said to have schizophrenia. Kvist is glad to get this position since it will allow her to be closer to her lover Mark Douglas. But soon after she takes up her duties, Kvist begins to notice several things about the house and family that make her uneasy. First, both house and family seem to have been preserved rather eerily from Victorian days. The family is dysfunctional too. Then Kvist discovers that her patient is kept under heavy drugs by his mother the family matriarch. She’s quite certain that Cosway doesn’t need that much medication and begins to deliberately withhold those drugs without mentioning it to Cosway’s mother. Kvist’s decision to involve herself in the family leads to tragedy when one of the family members is murdered. It turns out though that a diary she keeps provides major insights and clues as to who the murderer is.

And then there’s Louise Penny’s The Cruelest Month, the third in her Armand Gamache series. In this novel it’s the old Hadley home that serves as the setting for a murder. Fans of these novels will know that the Hadley place has a dark history of its own (no spoilers). A well-known Hungarian psychic, Madame Blavatsky, is staying at the local Bed and Breakfast in the small Québec town of Three Pines. She is persuaded to hold a séance but soon, it’s discovered that she is neither Hungarian nor really psychic. Still, it’s agreed to go ahead with the event. When that first séance isn’t successful, another is planned on Easter night at the now-unused Hadley house. During the séance, Madeleine Favreau, who’s recently returned to the area after a difficult battle with illness, is killed. At first she seems to have been frightened to death. But as Gamache and his team learn, she’s been given a lethal dose of a diet drug. Now the team has to learn which of the other guests at this séance had reason enough to commit murder. This novel doesn’t feature the traditional upper-crust family that’s been associated with most country-house mysteries. But the gathering of disparate personalities, the unexpected death, the discovery of dark secrets and hidden agendas, and the house with a personality of its own are definitely reflective of the country-house premise.

As I mentioned, there are many, many country-house mysteries. I’ve probably not brought up the ones you like best, so it’s time for you to fill in the gaps I’ve left. Come and join me at the family home. It’ll be a very pleasant stay. Wait… what was that sound??? 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Crosby Stills, Nash & Young’s Our House.