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.

Babe, You Know You’re Growing Up So Fast*

An interesting comment exchange with Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery has got me thinking about some of the really interesting relationships we have: those with our adult siblings. Oh, not following Tracy’s blog yet? Please check it out. You won’t regret it; it’s a fine source of thoughtful crime fiction reviews among other things. Go ‘head; see for yourself.

Siblings know us in ways very few other people do. They may have different personalities, different outlooks and so on but they share common experiences. In fact, our relationships with our siblings are very often the longest-term relationships we have. And what’s really interesting (and this is what Tracy mentioned that got me to thinking) is what happens when siblings grow up. Adult siblings’ relationships are deeply affected by childhood experiences; if you have siblings you know what I mean. It can take a real effort of will to see one another with adult eyes, so to speak. Siblings’ relationships can be very complicated too. Some people are close to their adult siblings; others avoid them. But siblings are part of the human experience and they’re a rich source of plot points and characters when it comes to crime fiction. In fact, there are so many good examples that this one post won’t even come close to touching on all of them. But here are just a few to show you what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness (AKA Poirot Loses a Client), we meet Charles and Theresa Arundell. Neither of them is particularly good at managing money and both of them are fond of having it. So when their wealthy Aunt Emily dies, they’re desperate for their shares of her fortune. But Emily Arundell has left all of her money to her companion Wilhelmina ‘Minnie’ Lawson. Before she died, Miss Arundell wrote to Hercule Poirot asking his help in a delicate matter which she never specified. By the time Poirot and Hastings get to Market Basing to investigate though, Miss Arundell has already been dead for two months. That doesn’t stop Poirot; he discovers that Miss Arundell didn’t die naturally as had been assumed. Charles and Theresa Arundell are among the most likely suspects and as Poirot interviews them, we see how these siblings support each other while at the same time being quite aware of each other’s weaknesses.  

There’s an interesting look at adult sibling relationships in Dorothy Sayers’ Clouds of Witness. Lord Peter Wimsey’s sister Mary is engaged to be married to Denis Cathcart. When he is murdered, Wimsey’s older brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, is charged with the crime. Wimsey investigates, partly because he is interested in criminal investigation but mostly because his brother is in trouble. He discovers that more than one person had a motive to kill the duke. In the course of this novel Mary meets Wimsey’s friend Inspector Charles Parker and the two develop a relationship. And in Strong Poison we learn that they plan to marry. It’s interesting to see how Mary Wimsey’s brothers react to this relationship. On the one hand they’re as protective of her as though they were all still children. On the other, Peter Wimsey knows that Mary is now an adult who will make her own choices in life. It’s an interesting thread that runs through those novels.

There’s a really interesting look at how complex sibling relationships can be in Martin Clark’s The Legal Limit. Brothers Mason and Gates Hunt are the sons of an abusive alcoholic and that affects them deeply. Gates, the older son, tries to protect his younger brother as best he can. Mason feels strongly the debt he owes to his brother and that has a very important role to play in what follows later. Gates has quite a lot of athletic ability but he squanders all of the opportunities that brings him and ends up living on his girlfriend’s Welfare money and on money he gets from his mother Sadie Grace. Mason on the other hand takes advantage of every opportunity he gets. He gets a scholarship to law school and ends up becoming an attorney. Then one night Gates and Mason are coming home from a night out when they encounter Wayne Thompson, who is Gates’ romantic rival. An argument they had earlier flares up again and before anyone really knows what’s happened Gates has shot Thompson. Mason feels the burden of debt to his brother so he helps Gates cover up the crime. Life goes on for the brothers and the crime is never officially solved. Mason Hunt becomes a prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Virginia while his brother turns to drug dealing. Then Gates is arrested for and convicted of cocaine trafficking. He begs his brother to help him get out of prison but this time Mason refuses. Then Gates threatens that if Mason doesn’t help him, he’ll claim that Mason shot Wayne Thompson. When Mason calls his bluff Gates does as he’s threatened. Now Mason is indicted for murder and he’ll have to figure out how to clear his name.

And then there’s Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon, a National Park Service Ranger. She’s been assigned to several different areas of the country, and she’s seen all sorts of both beauty and horror. But always in her life is her sister Molly. Molly is a New York City-based psychotherapist who tries her best to be there for her sister. Anna treasures their relationship but that doesn’t mean either is blind to the other’s faults. Anna for instance doesn’t like the fact that Molly is a smoker. Molly gets infuriated because she feels Anna puts herself in far too much danger. Underneath their differences though the two really do love and depend on each other.

One of the things that can add to already-complex sibling relationships is the resentment adult siblings can feel about long-ago incidents. You could call it a form of sibling rivalry. There are a lot of novels where one sibling seems to ‘have it all’ and the other feels left behind and that resentment has consequences. Martin Edwards’ The Hanging Wood explores that theme on several levels. In that novel, DCI Hannah Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team look into the twenty-year-old disappearance of Callum Payne when his sister Orla apparently commits suicide. She’d begged Scarlett to look into the case, but Scarlett didn’t do much about it at first as Orla Payne was drunk and incoherent when she first made the request. It’s partly Scarlett’s feelings of guilt and partly her professional sense of responsibility that lead Scarlett to pursue both the disappearance and the circumstances of Orla Payne’s death. It turns out that much of what happens in this novel is tied in with the complex relationships between siblings, and the way that can lead to resentment.

Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch and his half-brother Mickey Haller have a very interesting relationship. For several reasons they didn’t really know each other for much of their lives. Now that they’ve established contact and a relationship, they work together on cases in several novels. And that makes sense as Bosch is a cop and Haller is an attorney. They didn’t grow up together though, so one thing that’s interesting in the novels featuring them is that although they’re biologically brothers, they’ve had to establish a relationship beginning in adulthood. It casts quite a different light on the sibling dynamic and it adds a solid thread to the series.

In Peg Brantley’s Red Tide we meet Jamie Taylor, a bank loan officer and volunteer rescue dog handler. She gets involved in a case of multiple murders when her dog Gretchen discovers a series of recently-buried bodies in a remote field near Aspen Falls, Colorado. Jamie’s sister Jacqueline ‘Jax’ is a local medical examiner who’s called in when the bodies are discovered. As the two interact we learn about their past. Their mother Star was murdered ten years earlier and their father Bryce has basically disappeared from their lives as he’s tried to search for the truth about his wife’s death. One the one hand, the two sisters work closely together as they unravel the mystery of how the victims in the field died and who killed them. When they discover the truth they find themselves in grave danger and have to work even more closely together to face that danger and bring the killer to justice. On the other hand, this doesn’t mean the sisters have no issues between them. Jamie is unhappy with the way her sister has managed her personal life; Jax is married to an abusive philanderer and so far, hasn’t left him. Jax doesn’t like the idea of her sister ‘managing her life.’ It’s an engaging portrait of an adult sibling relationship.

And there are many others, too (I know, I know, fans of Camilla Läckberg’s Ericka Falck and her sister Anna). Space doesn’t permit me to mention them all. But if you have a sibling I probably don’t have to anyway. You already know about life with adult siblings.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Night Ranger’s Sister Christian. Why’d I choose this one? It was written for and about drummer Kelly Keagy’s younger sister Christy.

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.

I’ll Stand By You*

Most of would probably say that loyalty is a good quality. Certainly we want our friends to be loyal to us; we want to know that there are certain people who can be counted on no matter what happens. And loyalty really is important in a lot of ways. But is it possible for loyalty to be taken too far? Are there times when one should not be loyal? It’s a tricky question actually, which makes it also a very interesting one. Little wonder it’s explored in crime fiction as much as it is.

Loyalty plays an important role in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Wealthy American businessman Samuel Ratchett is stabbed on the second night of his journey across Europe on the famous Orient Express. Hercule Poirot is on the same train and agrees to look into the case. He soon finds that Ratchett has a hidden past that has, as the saying goes, came back to haunt him. Poirot also discovers that the only possible suspects are the other passengers whose compartments are in the same coach as Ratchett’s. So Poirot gets to know the different passengers and in his own unique way, gets them to talk about themselves and their backgrounds. As the novel goes on Poirot finds out how much of what the suspects tell him is true and how much is not. Here’s a bit of the conversation that ensues when Poirot confronts one suspect with the fact that that suspect has lied:

 

“‘In fact, you deliberately lied to us…’ [Poirot]
‘Certainly. I would do the same again…I believe, Messieurs, in loyalty – to one’s friends and one’s family and one’s caste.’”

 

As it turns out, that sense of loyalty has everything to do with this particular murder.

In Christianna Brand’s Green For Danger, Inspector Cockrill is called to Heron’s Park military hospital when postman Joseph Higgins dies there during what’s supposed to be routine surgery. At first it looks as though Higgins’ death was a tragic accident as sometimes happens during surgery. So everyone thinks Cockrill’s main role will be to file the official “accident” paperwork. But then, Sister Marion Bates has too much to drink at a party and blurts out that she knows Higgins was murdered and that furthermore, she knows how it was done. Later that night she herself is murdered. Now it’s clear that Higgins’ death was no accident, so Cockrill looks more deeply into the case. He finds that there are only six people who could have killed both Higgins and Bates, so his focus is on those suspects as he investigates. When Cockrill discovers exactly how Higgins was murdered he also finds out who the killer was. In this novel, you could argue that in a sense, Higgins was killed partly out of loyalty. It’s also fair to say that loyalty plays a role in hampering Cockrill’s investigation.

In Margaret Truman’s Murder at the FBI, we meet special agent Christine Saksis. When fellow agent George Pritchard is murdered at the FBI’s Washington DC headquarters, Saksis and her partner Ross Lizenby are tapped to investigate the murder. They have to move very carefully on this case because one of the most important things that the FBI drums into its employees is “Don’t embarrass the bureau.” One theory of the case is that Pritchard was murdered by a terrorist group whose membership he was going to reveal. It’s a credible explanation too and Saksis and Lizenby are under an awful lot of pressure to pursue it. But little by little other possibilities arise, including the fact that Pritchard was going to reveal some ugly secrets at the agency itself. As the investigation goes on Saksis finds herself with very conflicting loyalties. She is proud to be an FBI agent and is loyal to the agency. At the same time the more she learns about this case the more she questions that loyalty. It’s an interesting look at the role loyalty plays in the way people think.

Stephen J. Cannell’s The Tin Collectors also gives readers a look at loyalty within a group; in this case it’s the L.A.P.D.  Homicide detective Shane Scully gets a call one night from Barbara Molar, the wife of Scully’s former cop partner Ray Molar. Barbara is frantic because she’s afraid her husband is about to kill her. Scully rushes to the Molar home where he confronts Molar. Molar fires at Scully but misses. Scully’s return bullet hits its mark and soon enough Scully finds himself the target of an internal investigation led by prosecutor Alexa Hamilton. Although Ray Molar was in reality a brutal man who abused his wife and his authority as a cop, he was also beloved on the police force; he was considered a “cop’s cop” who mentored several of the newer cops. So right away Scully becomes a pariah. It’s soon clear too that the “Powers That Be” are not going to treat Molar’s killing as a “typical” internal investigation. Scully learns that the department is angling to have him charged with murder. In order to protect himself, Scully starts asking questions to find out why he’s becoming the department’s fall guy. He soon learns that Molar was involved in several things that the department “higher ups” want kept quiet. In this novel, there’s quite a lot of discussion of loyalty, both to the force and to Molar.

Loyalty to the force is also a major theme of Y.A. Erskine’s The Brotherhood. The Tasmania police force is rocked when one of its members Sergeant John White is stabbed while he’s investigating a break-in/robbery. The most likely suspect in the case is Darren Rowley, a part-Aboriginal teenager who’s been in and out of trouble with the law for a long time. Everyone says that John White was a true “good guy” – a dedicated cop who stayed “clean” and mentored many, many younger officers. Everyone loved him and all of the other members of the force are devastated by his murder. We see this murder and its after-effects from several perspectives, including those of White’s friend DI Richard Moore, who’s investigating the death; probationer Lucy Howard, who was with White at the break-in scene when he was killed; police commissioner Ron Chalmers, who has to handle the investigation at the “higher-up” level; and Constable Cameron Walsh, for whom White was a mentor. Loyalty plays a critical role in the way these people see both White and Darren Rowley, and in the way people on the force deal with the investigation, with Rowley’s lawyer, with the press and with the public.  We also see it in the way the various members of the police force see the justice system that seems to them to be rigged in favour of criminals.

Family loyalty is another important kind of loyalty and we see that in action if you will in Martin Clark’s The Legal Limit. In that novel, brothers Gates and Mason Hunt are coming home after a late night one night when they encounter Gates’ romantic rival Wayne Thompson. Gates Hunt already had a confrontation earlier in the day with Thompson and now the argument heats up again and almost before anyone realises what’s happening, Gates Hunt has shot Thompson. Mason feels a strong sense of loyalty to his brother because of the way his brother protected him from their abusive father when they were younger. So he helps his brother cover up the crime. Life goes on for both brothers and Mason Hunt becomes a successful commonwealth prosecutor for Patrick County, Virginia. Then Gates Hunt is arrested for cocaine trafficking and given a long sentence. He begs his brother to help him get out of prison but Mason refuses. Gates Hunt has squandered every opportunity he had, and Mason refuses to bail him out any more. So Gates threatens to implicate his brother in the Wayne Thompson shooting if Mason won’t use his “pull” to free him from prison. When Mason refuses again, Gates makes good on his threat and Mason Hunt finds himself charged with murder. Now he’ll have to find a way to clear his name and outwit his brother’s legal team if he’s to avoid being imprisoned himself.

Loyalty can be a powerful and positive trait. It colours our perceptions and often, our actions. It’s not always a clear-cut force for good, but it’s most definitely a force to be reckoned with, as the saying goes.

 

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a Pretenders’ song.

In The Spotlight: Martin Clark’s The Legal Limit

Hello, All,

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. Sometimes the distinction between literary fiction and crime fiction gets blurred. If you think about it for instance, Shakespeare’s plays have plenty of crime in them. And novels such as Peter Temple’s Truth arguably have as much literary merit as they do merit as crime fiction. So sometimes it’s useful to look at novels that don’t fit squarely in either category. Let’s do that today and turn the spotlight on Martin Clark’s The Legal Limit.

The novel begins in 1984 when brothers Mason and Gates Hunt are just moving into adulthood. They’ve  grown up in rural Patrick County, Virginia in an abusive home and are now finally at the point where they can begin their own lives. But that’s where the similarities between them end. Gates Hunt is a gifted athlete with a very promising future ahead of him. In fact he’s gotten several opportunities for athletic scholarships to different universities. But he’s squandered both his talent and those opportunities and now lives on his girlfriend Denise’s Welfare allotment as well as money he gets from the boys’ mother Sadie Grace. Mason Hunt has taken advantage of every opportunity he’s ever gotten and is now off to law school. While hardly perfect, he’s kept out of trouble and has his eyes on a successful legal career.

One afternoon, the brothers are at Denise’s trailer when she gets a visit from her former boyfriend and Gates’ romantic rival Wayne Thompson. Gates and Wayne get into a vicious argument and Wayne ends up leaving angrily. Everyone thinks that’s the end of the matter. That evening the Hunt brothers go out for drinks. They’re on their way home late that night when they have another encounter with Wayne Thompson. They argue again and this time the argument’s fueled with alcohol. Before anyone really knows what’s happened, Gates Hunt has grabbed the gun he keeps in his car and shot Wayne Thompson.

Mason feels a strong sense of obligation to his brother, as Gates often took the brunt of their father’s abuse. So he helps his brother cover up the crime and get rid of the weapon and life goes on for both Hunt brothers. Mason finishes law school and in time becomes the commonwealth prosecutor for Patrick County. Gates makes other choices. He makes his living dealing dugs and more than once flirts with serious trouble. Then one day, Gates Hunt is caught in a cocaine trafficking “sting” operation. He is arrested, tried and convicted and gets a long prison term. Gates begs his brother to help him get out of jail but Mason refuses. For a while Gates seemingly accepts his brother’s refusal but then he makes a chilling threat. If Mason doesn’t help him get out of prison, Gates says that he’ll implicate Mason in the Wayne Thompson murder. Mason continues to refuse and calls his brother’s bluff; Gates follows through on his threat and trades “information” on the Thompson murder for his freedom.

Now the police begin to investigate the murder and they connect it with Mason Hunt. In fact, Mason is arrested for the murder his brother committed and faces indictment. Now he has to implicate his brother if he’s going to protect himself and his daughter Grace. In the end, Mason Hunt and his attorneys Jim Haskins and Pat Sharpe have to use their expert knowledge of the law to go up against Gates and his legal strategy and that’s the real suspense in this novel.

In important ways this is a legal thriller. So readers are privy to strategies, plea-making, discussion of evidence and other aspects of the legal world. In fact, since we know the truth about the murder of Wayne Thompson, the legal aspects of the novel are what drive its pace rather than the murder investigation. The legal principles involved in this case are not simple but they are explained so that readers not familiar with the law can easily understand what’s involved.

This is also in many ways literary fiction. So the characters in the novel and their stories are also an important element in it. The story of Gates and Mason Hunt is woven throughout the novel and we learn why they are they way they are. They come from a tragic background of abuse and that, plus the small-town Southern culture in which they were raised, has done much to shape them. To Clark’s credit, Gates Hunt is not depicted as a completely evil person with absolutely no redeeming qualities. When we learn about the brothers’ history we see that he did his best to protect his brother from their father. For his part, Mason isn’t depicted as the “perfect” hero, either. He has after all illegally covered up a murder. Those depths help make the characters interesting and make the conflict between them absorbing.

And then there’s Mason and Gates’ mother Sadie Grace. She’s tried desperately all her adult life to be a good mother to her sons and we can see in their attitudes towards her the Southern tradition of treating one’s parents with respect. She is an incredibly strong character who’s endured more than her share of sadness. But she’s got depths too and isn’t perfect. She stayed with an abusive husband for what many people would say was too long. And you could argue that she stands by (at least at first) while one of her sons plans to ruin the other’s life.

There’s also Mason Hunt’s Assistant Prosecutor Custis Norman. He’s unusual enough in rural Patrick County, being a successful African-American attorney. But he’s a non-conformist in other ways too. He also becomes a friend to Mason Hunt and the two come to like and trust each other. As the story moves on and Mason faces conviction for murder, Norman shows his true character and it’s interesting to see that character revealed little by little as the novel evolves.

The story is told in part in flashbacks, so readers who prefer linear novels will be disappointed. We learn through flashbacks, for instance, about Mason Hunt’s marriage to his beloved wife Allison, about the birth of their daughter and about Allison Hunt’s death at the hands of a drunk driver. We learn also through flashbacks about the Hunt brothers’ childhoods. However, the modern-day story of Gates’ imprisonment and his strategy for getting out of prison is told sequentially so readers follow that aspect of the plot step-by-step.

Every author is different, so I honestly am very wary of comparing one author’s work to that of another. That said though, I will offer this. Readers familiar with the legal novels of Scott Turow will find some similarities between Turow’s approach to a story and that of Clark. As in some of Turow’s work, we see in The Legal Limit the combination of literary elements such as a strong focus on characterisation and backstory and complex, non-linear storylines with a well-defined legal plot and legal strategising.

The Legal Limit also has a strong sense of the rural Southern location and culture, a slow but appropriate pace and some important larger questions of filial duty and the concept and importance of family. But what’s your view? Have you read The Legal Limit? If you have, what elements do you see in it?

 
 
 

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Monday 11 June/Tuesday 12 June – A Cotswold Killing – Rebecca Tope

Monday 18 June/Tuesday 19 June – Dust Devils – Roger Smith

Monday 25 June/Tuesday 26 June – Grey Mask – Patricia Wentworth