So How Am I Doing?*

If you work outside the home, chances are that your job performance gets evaluated in some way. If you supervise other people, chances are you are expected as part of your job to assess the job performance of the people you supervise. It’s not a fun fact of life because assessing what others do isn’t easy. Trust me. It can add stress and tension to a work relationship, especially if one’s job is on the line.

In real life, performance appraisal is a part of most working adults’ lives. Sometimes that assessment comes in the form of official evaluations and sometimes, it’s more informal. And we see both kinds of assessment as threads running through crime fiction novels too. The tension that performance evaluations cause can add a solid layer, even a sub-plot, to a crime fiction novel. And it’s a realistic plot point.

In Agatha Christie’s Cat Among the Pigeons, we meet Honoria Bulstrode, headmistress of Meadowbank, an exclusive and highly regarded school for girls. As the summer term begins, she’s contemplating her retirement and wrestling with the difficult decision of who will take her place as headmistress. Most people assume that she will choose Eleanor Vansittart, her ‘second in command.’ Miss Vansittart is a logical choice too since she is a capable teacher and she’s made it clear that if she were headmistress, she would continue with the traditions Miss Bulstrode has established. But Miss Bulstrode isn’t entirely comfortable with selecting Miss Vansittart. There’s also Eileen Rich, a young, truly gifted and passionate teacher. Miss Rich has innovative ideas for how a girls’ school might be run, and Miss Bulstrode finds herself drawn to Miss Rich’s passion and her love of teaching. But Miss Rich is young. And then there’s Miss Chadwick, a brilliant mathematician and the school’s co-founder. She knows more about the school than just about anyone else, and is looking forward to serving as headmistress once Miss Bulstrode retires. But the problem is that Miss Chadwick is getting on in years and may not be able to manage the burden. Miss Bulstrode’s dilemma is pushed aside when Grace Springer, the new games mistress, is shot one night in the Sports Pavilion. Then there’s a kidnapping, and then, another death. When one of the pupils Julia Upjohn begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together, she visits Hercule Poirot, whom she’s heard of through a friend of her mother. Poirot agrees to look into the case and returns with Julia to Meadowbank, where he connects the events with a cache of stolen jewels and a revolution in a Middle Eastern state. Throughout this novel, Miss Bulstrode informally appraises the work and the mindsets of each of her top three candidates, and her decision serves not only as a sub-plot, but also as a key motivation behind one of the events in the story.

Michael Connelly’s Angels Flight takes another sort of look at performance reviews. In that novel, LAPD detective Harry Bosch investigates the murder of prominent attorney Howard Elias. Elias was well-known for litigating suits against the LAPD and he was about to do the same again. Michael Harris was arrested and convicted for the rape and murder or twelve-year-old Stacey Kincaid. But Harris has claimed that he is innocent and that his confession was, to put it mildly, coerced. Elias had agreed to take Harris’ case and was preparing for the trial when he was killed, so Bosch soon finds himself investigating not just Elias’ murder but also Stacey Kincaid’s. In the process, he reviews the files on the Kincaid case and on Harris’ arrest. This informal performance assessment shows Bosch that there was mishandling of evidence, mistreatment of Harris and other police misconduct. That information leads Bosch to re-open the Kincaid case and in the end, he finds out how that case is related to Elias’ murder.

P.D. James’ Death of an Expert Witness is the story of the murder of Dr. Edwin Lorrimer, one of the senior staff at Hoggatt’s Laboratory in East Anglia. The laboratory provides forensic and other tests in cases of un-natural death, so it’s used by both sides in murder cases. One night, Lorrimer is working late on a recently-opened case when he is bludgeoned. Commander Adam Dalgliesh and DI John Massingham are called to the scene and begin their investigation. Hoggatt’s has strict security procedures and there is no evidence of a break-in. So it’s most likely that either the killer is a staff member at the laboratory, or that Lorrimer was well-acquainted with his killer and let that person in. So Dalgliesh and Massingham pay close attention to what they learn both about Lorrimer’s personal life and about his professional relationships with the staff members. It turns out that several of the staff had reasons to heartily dislike the victim. He was unpleasant and arrogant. He wasn’t much nicer in his personal life either, although Dalgliesh does uncover a surprising side to Lorrimer’s character. One of the main suspects in the case is Clifford Bradley, a biologist who’s struggled in his job. He is neither stupid nor lazy, but he is insecure and he lacks confidence. Lorrimer’s rudeness and overbearing demeanour made Bradley’s life miserable and in fact, Lorrimer wrote a very negative performance review for Bradley shortly before his murder. And it turns out that Lorrimer’s got a history of writing brutal performance reviews. I don’t think it’s spoiling this novel to say that his poor review makes Bradley a very likely suspect.

In Peter Lovesey’s  The Last Detective: Introducing Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, Peter Diamond and his team investigate the murder of Geraldine ‘Gerry’ Jackman, whose body is found in Chew Valley Lake. Although the victim was a famous television actress, Diamond and his assistant John Wigfull believe the murder might have been more personal in nature, so they begin with her husband Professor Greg Jackman. His alibi seems to hold up for the most part, so the team looks elsewhere too. It turns out that Gerry Jackman was involved in drugs use, so there are several candidate suspects among her ‘business associates.’ There are other suspects too, including Dana Didrikson. Didrikson and Greg Jackman had met accidentally and become friends, although they were not lovers. But it comes up that she had a confrontation with Gerry Jackman shortly before her death. What’s more, there’s physical evidence against her. So she’s arrested and held over for trial. At one point, Diamond has a confrontation with Didrikson’s twelve-year-old son Matthew. When Matthew lies about the confrontation, Diamond’s performance in the case is reviewed and he is removed from it. We learn too that he’s already on proverbially thin ice because of a confrontation in an earlier case. Those poor reviews have haunted Diamond and as we see, they play a role in the way the case unfolds.

And then there’s Martin Edwards’ The Cipher Garden. In that novel, DCI Hannah Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team have re-opened the ten-year-old case of the murder of landscaper Warren Howe. At the time of the murder, everyone suspected his wife Tina of the crime, and she had strong motive; Howe was adulterous and abusive. But the police couldn’t get the evidence they needed to pursue the case against her, so it went ‘cold.’ Now, anonymous notes have suggested that Tina really was guilty. It turns out that Howe worked for the same landscaping company that made the unusual garden attached to the cottage where Oxford historian Daniel Kind lives. He’s curious about its shape, so from his angle, he looks into the case too. While this is going on, Scarlett is also faced with the task of doing up annual appraisals for her staff. Here’s what she thinks of the job:

 

‘Everyone had to pay lip service to the benefits of performance management but in private, everyone ridiculed the whole process. How could you guarantee a level playing field, consistency and an absence of favouritism and score-settling across the whole county? The whole exercise was a time-consuming waste of energy that everyone except the people who mattered thought would be better devoted to real police work.’ 

 

I don’t think anyone believes that the police shouldn’t be held accountable for what they do, but it’s hard not to feel sympathy for Scarlett’s point of view.

Whether we like them or not, performance appraisals are a part of life for most people who work outside the home. The plot point is realistic and sometimes quite tension-filled, so it fits right in I think with crime fiction. What do you think?

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Anna Waronker’s How Am I Doing?

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Drowning

The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme continues on our treacherous journey through the alphabet. I’m pleased to say that thus far, we’ve had no casualties – yet. That’s thanks to our tour leader Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, who’s seen to all the arrangements.

Today we’ve arrived at the Hotel D. It’s quite a hotel, with its own fitness center, steam room and pool. That last is actually maybe not such a good thing, as my contribution for today’s stop is drowning.

The thing about drowning is that it can look deceptively like an accident. And it doesn’t really require a lot of specialised knowledge or weaponry. So it’s not surprising that there are a lot of cases of drowning in crime fiction.

Several of Agatha Christie’s works involve drowning. That’s what happens in for instance Hallowe’en Party. Thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds is with a group of young people who are helping to prepare for a Hallowe’en party. She boasts that she’s seen a murder and although just about everyone hushes her up she insists that it’s true. That evening Joyce is drowned in a bucket of water used for a bobbing-for-apples game. Christie’s fictional detective story author Ariadne Oliver was at both the preparations for the party and the party itself, and she is convinced that Joyce was killed because she really did witness a murder and the murderer wanted to keep her quiet. Mrs. Oliver asks Hercule Poirot to visit the village of Woodleigh Common and investigate. He agrees and starts to ask questions. Then there’s another murder. Poirot discovers that both murders are related to some events in the town’s past and a murder that occurred a few years earlier.

Minette Walters’ The Breaker tells the story of the murder of Kate Sumner, whose body is discovered on a beach near Chapman’s Pool in Dorsetshire. Forensics reports show that she was choked, drugged and then drowned. Shortly after her body is discovered, her toddler daughter Hannah is discovered wandering around a nearby town. PC Nick Ingram works with WPC Sandra Griffiths, DI John Galbraith and Superintendent Carpenter to find out who killed Kate Sumner and how Hannah got to the village. Their search for answers leads them to three main suspects: Kate’s husband William; Stephen Harding, an actor with whom Kate had flirted several times; and Harding’s roommate Tony Bridges. This murder turns out to be related to be much more psychological in nature than anything else.

DCI Hannah Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team investigate a case of drowning in Martin Edwards’ The Serpent Pool. Six years earlier Bethany Friend was drowned in the Lake District’s Serpent Pool. At the time, the case was put down as a suicide. But Scarlett has never quite believed that explanation. So she and her team re-open the case. At the same time, Scarlett’s friend and co-worker Fern Larter and her team are investigating two more recent murders. The two compare notes and it’s not long before they determine that the three murderers are related. And so they turn out to be. With help from Oxford historian Daniel Kind, Scarlett and Larter find out who killed all three victims and what the motive was.

Gail Bowen’s The Wandering Souls Murders also includes a drowning. Political scientist and academician Joanne Kilbourn gets involved in a case of multiple murders when her daughter Mieka discovers the body of a young girl in a trash bin. The police are just beginning to look into that case when there’s another death. Christy Sinclair is the former girlfriend of Kilbourn’s son Peter. When the two broke up, Kilbourn was only too happy to see Christy go. Then, she suddenly comes back into Peter’s life, going so far as to say they’re back together. One night she drowns in what looks like a tragic boating accident. But her death was quite deliberate. Kilbourn discovers that both deaths are related to a secret from Christy’s past and to some dark truths about some of the characters.

There’s a tragic case of drowning in Wendy James’ Out of the Silence, which is based on true incidents. Born and raised in Victoria, nineteen-year-old Maggie Heffernan was imprisoned in 1900 for the drowning death of her baby son Jacky. The novel is a fictional portrayal of Maggie’s life, her meeting with Jack Hardy, their brief affair and the resulting pregnancy. By the time Maggie realises that she’s pregnant, Jack has left for New South Wales to find work. Jack doesn’t respond when Maggie writes to tell him about her pregnancy, and she knows that her family won’t accept her. So she moves to Melbourne to find work and hopefully trace Jack. She gives birth and after a time, she finally traces Jack. When she does, he claims that she’s crazy and won’t have anything to do with her. With nowhere to go, Maggie searches through Melbourne for a place to stay and is turned away from six different lodging houses. That’s when Jacky’s death occurs. Through diaries, letters and news items, we read of Maggie’s experiences, the trial, and the efforts to free her once she is imprisoned.

And then there’s Domingo Villar’s Death on a Galician Shore. In that novel Vigo police detective Leo Caldas and his team investigate the mysterious drowning death of a local fisherman Justo Castelo. The evidence suggests that he committed suicide but there are just a few hints that suggest otherwise. So Caldas and his assistant Rafael Estevez dig deeper into the case. As they do so, they get to know about Castelo’s background they learn that his death could very well have to do with a 1996 tragedy in which he and two fellow fishermen were the only survivors of a boat tragedy that claimed the life of their captain Antonio Sousa. Bit by bit, Caldas and Estevez find out how Castelo’s drowning is related to the 1996 Sousa drowning.

See what I mean? Drowning happens a lot in crime fiction. Well, now; I’ve finished unpacking. What about a swim?

The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades*

Crime fiction is an awfully diverse genre and in a lot of ways that’s a good thing. In fact in most ways it is. There’s something in the genre for just about anyone to enjoy, no matter how dark, light, thriller-ish, character-driven, plot-driven or any other way they like their novels. And for the crime writer, writing in a diverse genre means there’s a lot of flexibility in terms of the kind of novel to write. But here’s the thing. A diverse genre with a lot of authors means that the crime fiction fan’s TBR list/library can get out of control. But that doesn’t stop crime fiction fans from getting excited when a new release by a favourite author is coming out.

Of course, everyone has a different set of favourites. But here are just a few of the new books coming out this year that I am very much looking forward to reading.

Coming out in April will be Martin Edwards’ The Frozen Shroud, the sixth in his Lake District series featuring DCI Hannah Scarlett and Oxford historian Daniel Kind. Edwards has a real gift for depicting the beautiful Lake District, and this series weaves together strong characters, past mysteries and present mysteries. Little wonder I’m so eager for this new novel. In it, Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team investigate the connections between the World War I-era murder of Gertrude Smith, the five-year-old murder of Shenagh Moss, and another murder closer to home for Scarlett.

Another book I’m very much looking forward to reading is William Ryan’s The Twelfth Department. This is the third in his historical crime fiction series featuring Moscow CID Captain Alexei Korolev. These novels take place mostly in Moscow during the Stalinist years leading up to World War II. Korolev lives and works during a very dangerous time in the then-Soviet Union. He’s assigned to investigate murder cases and he is committed to his job. At the same time, he is fully aware of the political tinder box in which he lives and he knows that he has to move carefully and trust no-one completely. In The Twelfth Department which is scheduled to be released in July, and which has already been getting excellent advance reviews, Korolev is excited at the prospect of a visit from his son Yuri. But he’s soon caught up in something quite different when he is assigned to investigate the murder of a noted scientist who’s been shot. It turns out that the victim was working on a sensitive, and very dark, project, and when another scientist is murdered, Korolev knows that this case is going to be extremely dangerous for him and also for his family.

Also being released in July will be Angela Savage’s The Dead Beach. This is the third in her series featuring Australian ex-pat Jayne Keeney, who lives and works in Bangkok. Savage creates a very real picture of life in Thailand and what it’s like to be a farang – a foreigner – who lives there. In this novel, Keeney is hired to find out who murdered a young tour guide who worked in the southern part of Thailand. From what Savage says about the novel, this case

 

‘…brings her [Keeney} face-to-face with unscrupulous businessmen, embittered thugs, environmental zealots and deadly cobras.’

 

Sounds like just another day’s work for Keeney, who’s already had to go up against child traffickers, corrupt cops and unscrupulous charity workers.

July will be a good month for me reading-wise because I’m also looking forward to Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Rubbed Out, the fourth in her Memphis Barbecue series which she writes as Riley Adams. This series features Lulu Taylor, who owns and runs Aunt Pat’s Barbecue, a popular Memphis restaurant. One of the things I like about this series is its authentic portrait of Southern life and culture. There’s humour and strong characterisation in this series, too. In this particular novel, Taylor gets mixed up in the murder of barbecue pitmaster Ruben Shaw. Taylor’s good friend Cherry Hayes gets into a violent quarrel with Shaw at a barbecue competition, so when Shaw is found murdered only a few hours later, Hayes is a very likely suspect. Taylor wants to clear her friend’s name, so she investigates the murder and finds that Hayes is not at all the only person who had a good reason to kill Ruben Shaw.

I’m also looking forward to a couple of October releases. For one, Jørn Lier Horst’s Vinterstengt is coming out in English as Closed For Winter. This is the seventh in Horst’s series featuring Chief Inspector William Wisting, who lives and works in Stavern, Norway. Horst creates (in my opinion at any rate) a strong sense of place and local culture and some well-drawn characters in this police procedural series. Closed For Winter continues Wisting’s story. In this novel, Ove Bakkerud is preparing for a last few quiet weeks in his summer home before closing it for the winter. Then his home is burgled. As if that’s not enough, Bakkerud discovers the body of a neighbour in the house next door. Wisting and his team investigate, only to be faced with the discovery of other bodies on the same archipelago. And what does all of that have to do with an unusual number of dead birds in the area?

October will also see the release of The Case of the Love Commandos, Tarquin Hall’s fourth novel featuring Punjabii private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri. Puri lives and works in Delhi, which Hall depicts in all of its beauty, squalor, vivid colour, life, and variety. Puri’s team consists of his secretary Elizabeth Rani, his office boy Door Stop (so called because he does as little as he can get away with doing), his driver Handbrake, and his fellow investigators Tubelight (who always takes his time sputtering to life in the mornings), Flush (whose family was the first in his village to get an indoor toilet) and Facecream (so called because she blends in perfectly in any surroundings). In this particular novel, Puri and his team investigate the abduction of a student named Ram, a member of India’s untouchable caste. He was set to marry a girl from a high caste, who’d been rescued from her family by the Love Commandos. But when Ram doesn’t appear at his own wedding, Puri takes the case. The trail leads to rural India so Puri travels to an area outside his usual element, so to speak. He also has to look over his shoulder because his rival Hari Kumar is also on this case. Word is too that Puri’s mother Mummy-ji, of whom I am very fond, features in this novel as well.

And then there’s December, when Michael Connelly’s The Gods of Guilt is set for release. This novel features attorney Mickey Haller, whom Connelly fans will know made his first ‘starring’ appearance in The Lincoln Lawyer. In The Gods of Guilt, Haller discovers that a former client – someone he thought he had saved and helped start a new life – has been murdered. Connelly is a master of creating flawed but basically sympathetic characters such as Haller, and forcing them to face their own pasts. He did it (in my opinion) brilliantly with his other famous creation Harry Bosch in novels such as Echo Park and The Last Coyote. And in The Gods of Guilt, it seems it’ll be Haller’s turn to deal with his past. I’m a fan of Connelly’s work, so this is one of those novels I’ll probably pre-order…

I’m also looking forward to lots of other releases as well. For instance, Domingo Villar’s Cruces de Piedra (Stone Crosses) will be released in Spain in May. I’m not sure how long it’ll take for this third Leo Caldas novel to be released elsewhere, but as soon as it is, I will definitely be reading it. Oh, and I’m currently reading T.J. Cooke’s Defending Elton which is due to be released very soon, but I’m not commenting on it much at the moment as I’ve not finished it; you’ll hear more about it, I can say that much.

What about you? Which novels are you really, really, really looking forward to reading this year?

If you’re a writer, here’s your opportunity: Got anything crime fictional being published this year?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Timbuk3

This Could be the Start of Something Wonderful*

There are all sorts of reasons we might choose to read a book. We may be persuaded by a review from a trusted source, or the author may be a favourite. Or we may choose to try a book because of its setting or sub-genre. But at some point, a book has to ‘sell’ itself. By that I mean that at some point, we need to make the choice to keep reading the book once we’ve started it. So the first part of a novel can be critical to the rest of the story. It’s often during that first chapter or two that readers decide whether they’re going to keep reading a story or not. Crime fiction authors know that and have different approaches to drawing readers into the story during that crucial first part of the novel.

Some crime writers start their novels with either a murder or the discovery of a body and for a lot of crime fiction fans, that’s a ‘selling point.’ For example, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir’s Last Rituals begins with the gruesome discovery of a body. Harald Guntlieb, a student at the university in Reykjavík, has been murdered and his body left in a printer alcove in the university’s history department. The police are called in and not long afterwards, Guntlieb’s friend Hugi Thórisson is arrested. Then, attorney Thóra Gudmundsdóttir gets a call from Guntlieb’s mother Amelia, who claims that the Guntlieb family believes that the police have the wrong suspect. Amelia Guntlieb wants Thóra to clear Hugi Thórisson’s name and find the real killer, and offers her a very tempting fee to do so. Thóra agrees to take the case and works with the Guntlieb’s family banker Matthew Reich to find out who committed the crime. In this novel, the discovery of the body gets the reader’s interest right away.

That’s also the case in Gail Bowen’s Deadly Appearances. Political scientist and academician Joanne Kilbourn has been active in the campaign to get Androu ‘Andy’ Boychuk selected to lead Saskatchewan’s Official Opposition party.  He’s been successful and is preparing to give his first official speech at a community picnic. Shortly after the speech begins though, Boychuk collapses and dies of what turns out to be poison. As a way of dealing with her grief, Kilbourn decides to write a biography of Boychuk and in the process, she learns things about him that no-one knew before. She also learns who the murderer is, because Boychuk’s death is directly related to the past. Again, the reader is drawn into this story in part because right from the beginning we are focused on the victim and we want to know why he was killed.

Sometimes authors use other kinds of major events/conflicts to engage the reader in the first chapter. For example, Martin Edwards’ All the Lonely People begins with a reunion of sorts between Liverpool attorney Harry Devlin and his ex-wife Liz. Although Liz left Harry to be with a new lover, he’s still in love with her, so when she shows up unexpectedly at his home, he thinks that they be able to reconcile. Liz has other ideas. She says that she’s left her lover Mick Coghlin because she’s afraid of him, and wants to say with Harry for a few days while she makes some plans. The scene between them shows the reader the tension between the couple as well as some of their backstory and right away readers want to know more. When Liz is murdered the next night, Harry becomes the most likely suspect. So, partly to clear his name and partly because he feels he’s let Liz down, he determines to find out who the killer is.

Karin Fossum’s When the Devil Holds the Candle also begins with a tense scene that sets the atmosphere for the novel. Oslo police detective Jacob Skarre is on duty when Runi Winther reports her son Andreas missing. She tells Skarre that Andreas has only been gone for a few days, but she’s worried because he hasn’t been in touch. The reader can guess just from that first scene that something has gone terribly wrong and this draws the reader in. What’s more, there’s just a hint of conflict as Skarre tries to convince Runi that nothing is necessarily wrong – that a lot of young men spend a few days away without explaining themselves. As we soon learn, this is a very different situation though. When Andreas doesn’t return after a few more days have gone by, Skarre and his boss Konrad Sejer look into the case. They find that Andreas and his friend Sivert “Zipp” Skorpe spent most of the day together on the last day anyone saw Andreas. The unfolding of what happened on that day eventually leads to the truth about what happened to Andreas.

Sometimes, the first line or two of a novel is enough to draw the reader into the novel. Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone is my favourite example of this. That novel begins this way:

 

‘Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.’

 

Immediately readers want to know who Eunice Parchman is and why not being able to read or write would drive her to murder. We soon learn that wealthy and well-educated Jacqueline Coverdale and her husband George hired Eunice Parchman as their housekeeper without knowing something very important about her. For her part, Parchman is desperate to keep that secret. When the secret accidentally comes out, the family is more or less doomed without even knowing it.

Agatha Christie isn’t perhaps best known for opening lines. However, the first sentences of The Murder on the Links make an interesting comment on story beginnings. Here is how the novel begins (these are Captain Hastings’ words):

 

‘I believe that a well-known anecdote exists to the effect that a young writer, determined to make the commencement of his story forcible and original enough to catch and rivet the attention of the most blasé of editors, penned the following sentence:
‘Hell!’ said the Duchess.’
Strangely enough, this tale of mine opens in much the same fashion. Only the lady who gave utterance to the exclamation was not a duchess.’

 

The lady in this case is a fellow passenger on a trip Hastings is taking back to London after a business trip. We meet this woman, who calls herself Cinderella, later in the novel. In fact, she figures in this story, in which Hastings and Hercule Poirot investigate the murder of Paul Renauld, who’s been killed on the grounds of his own French villa. Certainly these first few lines are enough to get the reader interested in finding out who the lady is, why she says what she says, and how she’ll figure into the story.

What about you? What does the first chapter (or first few chapters) of a novel have to have to draw you in and make you go further? If you’re a writer, how do you design your first chapters to make them engaging?

 

 
 

*NOTE:  The title of this post is a line from Steve Allen’s This Could be the Start of Something Big.

Advice is Cheap, You Can Take it From Me*

In Agatha Christie’s Hickory Dickory Dock (AKA Hickory Dickory Death), one of the residents of the hostel where most of the action takes place asks another for a piece of advice. Here’s the response:
 

‘Of course I could give you advice…, though I don’t know why anyone ever wants advice. They never take it.’
 

That’s a good point, really. People are often free with advice, although it’s frequently not heeded. For that reason alone (because it’s human and natural), it’s easy to identify with advice-giving in a crime novel, especially when the sleuth is about to do something ill-advised. On the other hand, a sleuth who always gets advice and never listens to it stops being interesting. Quickly. And characters who mind other people’s business too much are annoying. That’s to say nothing of the way investigations work in real life (e.g. would a cop really take advice from an amateur? That would take some believing.). But when it’s done credibly, getting and sometimes even heeding advice can a sleuth more human.

For instance, Christie’s Ariadne Oliver is not one to do as she’s told as a rule. And her independence is part of what makes her appealing as a character. But we see a very believable example of her taking advice in Hallowe’en Party. Poirot travels to Woodleigh Common at Mrs. Oliver’s request to find out who murdered thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds. The girl is found drowned at a party not many hours after boasting that she once saw a murder. So it’s fairly clear that she was probably killed by someone who feels threatened. Poirot finds out the history of the area and discovers which incident Joyce could have seen. As he does so, he realises an important fact that shows him that one of the villagers is in real danger. So he tells Mrs. Oliver to take that person to her home in London for safety. Here’s a bit of the conversation Mrs. Oliver has about it with the friend she’s been visiting in the village:
 

‘Anyway, you needn’t run away today, need you?’
‘Yes, I need to, I’ve been told to,’ said Mrs. Oliver.
‘Who’s told you – your housekeeper?’
‘No,’ said Mrs. Oliver. ‘Somebody else. One of the few people I obey.’
 

It’s actually a very tense scene and it’s a good thing that Mrs. Oliver listens to Poirot’s advice. It makes sense that she would too given he’s the experienced private investigator and they’re friends.

It’s also believable that a cop would listen to another cop’s advice, especially if the two officers trust each other. And that’s what we see in the relationship between Håkan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren and Intendant Münster. As the series featuring these sleuths begins, Van Veeteren is Münster’s boss, but as fans will know, he leaves the police force to take part ownership in a bookshop. And yet Münster is still grateful for his advice. In The Unlucky Lottery (AKA Münster’s Case), Münster and his team investigate the stabbing murder of Waldemar Leverkuhn. An obvious motive doesn’t come to light quickly but then the police find out that Leverkuhn and some of his friends went in together on a lottery ticket – and won. They’d gone out to celebrate just before Leverkuhn was killed, so the police now have a new angle on this case. But that’s not entirely satisfactory either. Münster is by no means incompetent, but he’s glad for the advice and input he gets when he tells Van Veeteren about the case. And when Van Veeteren lets Münster know he’s on the wrong track, Münster heeds his advice and looks elsewhere for the killer.

We see another example of a cop giving another cop advice in Louise Penny’s Still Life. That’s the story of former schoolteacher Jane Neal, who’s killed in what looks like a tragic hunting accident. Sûreté Inspector Armand Gamache and his team travel to the small town of Three Pines to do what they think will be perfunctory work on the case. But when Gamache begins to suspect that the victim was murdered, the team’s investigation stops being routine. Assigned to Gamache’s team for the first time is Agent Yvette Nichol. She turns out to be a poor choice for the team as she is arrogant, smug and unwilling to learn. Gamache’s second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir advises Gamache to get rid of Nichol as quickly as he can. Gamache likes and trusts Beauvoir so although he’s the boss, he listens to what Beauvoir has to say. At first Gamache tries to coach and counsel Nichol, but when that’s unsuccessful, he follows Beauvoir’s advice and cuts Nichol from the team.

Readers can also believe that sleuths might heed their spouses’ advice and there are a lot of examples of that. Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti, for instance, is married to Paola Falier, who is not only an educated professor of English, but also a genuine ‘blueblood.’ Brunetti values her input and benefits from it. For instance, in Blood From a Stone, he and Ispettore Vianello investigate the execution-style shooting of an unknown Senegalese immigrant. It takes some doing, but the detectives find out where the man lived and search his room. To their surprise, they discover a cache of diamonds that turn out to be ‘blood diamonds’ used to fund a military conflict Brunetti and Vianello also find that the diamonds are connected to an illegal arms trafficking ring. But in order to get all of the answers, Brunetti wants to know the diamonds’ origin. That’s where Paola’s advice is very helpful. She advises Brunetti of an expert he might contact about a small wooden head he finds among the dead man’s possessions.  Her view is that that information may help him locate the source of the diamonds. He takes her advice, although somewhat reluctantly, and is able to trace the diamonds.

It’s also quite believable that sleuths might listen to advice from friends. That’s what we see in Martin Edwards’ The Serpent Pool. DCi Hannah Scarlett and DCI Fern Larter are not just colleagues but also good friends. They find themselves working both ends of the same case when Scarlett re-opens the investigation into the six-year-old drowning death of Bethany Friend. That death was always put down to suicide, but Scarlett isn’t convinced. Larter and her team are working two recent murder cases that turn out to be related to the Bethany Friend case. So on a professional level, the two women give each other information and advice. But because they are also friends, Larter knows about Scarlett’s rocky relationship with her partner Marc Amos. She also knows – well, suspects – that Scarlett is attracted to Oxford historian Daniel Kind, who helps in this investigation. At the end of the novel, she gives Scarlett advice about that matter and it’s interesting to see that while Scarlett doesn’t immediately agree with her friend, what Larter says makes an impression.

Too often, crime fiction novels have scenes where someone tells the sleuth not to pursue a case or a particular suspect. And too often, sleuths take un-necessary risks because they don’t listen to advice. Sometimes it’s nice when a novel includes a believable use of advice. Well, I think authors ought to do that, anyway.

 

 
 

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