And I’d Do Anything to Just Feel Better*

Most of us have had to face our share of sorrow, loss and sometimes real tragedy. It just seems to be a part of life. The question isn’t really, ‘Do people have to face some terrible things in their lives?’ They do. The more important (or maybe that’s just my view) question is, ‘What do people do to go on after something terrible’s happened?’ Notice I didn’t say, ‘…to get over it after something terrible’s happened.’ That’s because we don’t really ‘get over’ tragedy and sorrow. They change us. But people do go on.

This is a pretty important issue in crime fiction because a lot of what happens in crime fiction involves tragedy. After all, people get murdered. Their friends and loved ones mourn them and the sleuth has to deal with the trauma of those cases. What’s more, because we all have to deal with life’s sadness and sorrow, it’s realistic when sleuths have their own scars from which they have to heal. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of the stereotypical sleuth who drowns in a bottle to cope with life’s damage. It’s much more interesting and I think engaging when sleuths and other characters find different ways to cope.

For instance there’s the character of Henrietta Savernake, whom we meet in Agatha Christie’s The Hollow (AKA Murder After Hours). She is a talented and highly-regarded sculptor who’s having an affair with Harley Street specialist John Christow. Christow is more absorbed in his passion for his profession than he is in his relationships with either his wife Gerda or his mistress. But the triangle continues until one fateful weekend when John and Gerda Christow are invited to the country home of Sir Henry and Lady Lucy Angkatell. Henrietta is also invited as she’s a cousin of Lucy’s. On the Sunday afternoon, Christow is shot just before lunch. Hercule Poirot, who’s taken a nearby cottage as a weekend getaway, was invited for lunch and when he arrives, practically the first thing he sees is the murder scene and Christow’s apparent killer standing over the body, gun in hand. But something about the scene strikes Poirot as artificial. So when Inspector Grange begins his investigation, Poirot is not convinced that the killer is yhe most obvious person. He and Grange look into the case and slowly get to the truth. At one point, Edward Angkatell, who has also been staying at the house, tries to console Henrietta; here’s her response:

 

‘What did you think? That I’d sit gently crying into a nice little pocket handkerchief while you held my hand? That it would be a great shock but that presently I’d begin to get over it? And that you’d comfort me very nicely?’

 

In fact, that’s not what Henrietta does. Here is how she begins to move on:

 

‘‘Instead I must take my grief and make it into a figure of alabaster…’
Exhibit No. 58. ‘Grief.’ Alabaster. Miss Henrietta Savernake…’  

 

That way of coping is a very effective fit for Henrietta’s character.

Sometimes characters deal with their trauma by trying to regain some kind of control over their lives. That’s what we see in Copenhagen police detective Carl Mørck, whom we first meet in Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Mercy (AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes). As that novel begins, Mørck is recovering from a line-of-fire incident in which one of his colleagues was killed and another left paralysed. He’s physically ready for work again, but mentally still dealing with the trauma. Although he doesn’t really think about it this way, Mørck wants to regain control over his life after what happened. He goes about this in a couple of ways. One of the sub-plots in this novel is his determination to catch the man responsible for what happened and see him brought to justice. Another way in which Mørck tries to take back some control is that he becomes even less of a ‘team player’ than he normally is. In fact, he becomes so difficult to work with that he’s ‘promoted’ to a new department, ‘Department Q,’ which is set up to investigate ‘cases of special interest.’ The job itself doesn’t interest him much at first, but the chance to do what he wants, when he wants, does.

We also see that search for control if you want to call it that in Arnaldur Indriðason series featuring Reykjavík police inspector Erlendur. When Erlendur was a child, his brother Bergur was lost in a blizzard and has never been found. The boy’s loss was difficult enough for the family to cope with. But Erlendur feels an additional sense of loss and guilt because he was with his brother when the blizzard struck although they had gotten separated. Erlendur has never been able to forgive himself for not bringing Bergur back safely. He has gone on with his life though. And in an interesting story arc, Erlendur has faced his trauma and tried to regain control over that part of his life by searching for his brother. Now that he’s a cop, he tries to find out everything he can about that day so that he can either find his brother or his brother’s remains.

Some people choose to move on by making major life changes. That’s what Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon does. As we learn in Track of the Cat, she lived the New York ‘social life’ with her husband Zach, a talented actor. Then, tragically, Zach was run down and killed by a taxi. Pigeon has dealt with her grief by leaving New York and her socialite life. She’s become a National Park Service ranger and nurtured her love of nature and wildlife. She’s gotten good at her job and although there are things she misses about New York, she’s gone on with life. As we see Pigeon’s character evolve throughout the series, we see that she doesn’t really ‘get over’ Zach. At the same time, she moves on to a new chapter in her life. She even allows herself to love and marry again.

We see the same kind of choice in an earlier series by James Yaffe, featuring his investigator sleuth Dave. Dave’s a former NYPD cop whose life revolved around his work and his beloved wife Shirley. When Shirley dies, Dave finds himself unable to keep living the life he’s always had. So he makes a major change and moves to Mesa Grande, Colorado, where he takes a job as an investigator working for the Office of the Public Defender. His new job and new life don’t mean that Dave ‘gets over’ the loss of his wife. But he starts over and finds a new place for himself.

As fans of Åsa Larsson’s attorney sleuth Rebecka Martinsson know, Martinsson has had some traumatic things happen to her. As we learn in Sun Storm (AKA The Savage Altar), she grew up in Kiruna, but left for a trauma-inducing reason (no spoilers here). She returns when a former friend is accused of murder. That case leads to more trauma for Martinsson, and so does the case she investigates in The Blood Spilt. So how does Martinsson go on after the things that happen to her? After a time under psychiatric care, she makes a major life change, giving up her job in Stockholm and remaining in Kiruna. As Until Thy Wrath be Past begins she’s taken up a position as the local district prosecutor and is slowly putting the pieces of her life back together.

Some people find comfort in a new relationship when something traumatic happens. There’s an example of that in Geoffrey McGeachin’s The Digger’s Rest Hotel. It’s 1947 and Melboourne cop Charlie Berlin has recently returned from Europe where he served as a bomber pilot and was also taken as a POW. He’s seen his share of awfulness and it’s left him with what we would now call PTSD. He is sent to the town of Wodonga to investigate a series of robberies that have apparently been committed by a motorcycle gang. While he’s in the middle of working on that case the body of sixteen-year-old Jenny Lee is found in a local alley. Now Berlin has a brutal murder to solve as well as the robberies. In the course of this investigation he meets journalist Rebecca Green, who has her own share of scars. One of the sub-plots of this novel is the healing each begins to experience as they work together and later, become involved.

We don’t really ‘get over it’ when something traumatic happens. But we can go on. Sometimes we start a new life; sometimes we do other things. That’s why it’s so human and believable when characters do things to make themselves feel better and go on.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Santana’s Just Feel Better (Yes, that’s Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler on lead vocals).

Can’t You See I’m Smart?*

Research during the past few decades has shown us some fascinating things about the way we think and know. It used to be believed that intelligence could be measured on a single dimension. The assumption was that everyone had a certain amount of this one ‘thing’ called intelligence. But work by Howard Gardner and other researchers has changed all that. Gardner conceived of several different intelligences. According to this theory, there are several different ways of thinking and knowing; Gardner called them multiple intelligences. We each have some of each of the intelligences, but in each of us, at least one (and usually more than one) is particularly strong. Hold on – I’ll get to crime fiction in just a second.

Gardner’s ideas about multiple intelligences make a lot of intuitive sense if you think about it. Some people are naturally good at, say, art, music, athletics or languages. And research has supported his theory fairly consistently. We can even see these multiple intelligences woven all through crime fiction. If you look at the way various sleuths go about solving cases, you can see how different ways of thinking and knowing come through in the genre.

For instance, one of Gardner’s multiple intelligences is what he called logical-mathematical intelligence. People with a high degree of this kind of intelligence find it easy to recognise patterns and algorithms. They find numbers and codes and puzzles interesting and their skill is in deduction. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is like that. As Holmes fans know, he looks for patterns and focuses on deduction and logic.

There’s also what Gardner called visual-spatial intelligence. People with visual-spatial intelligence tend to be talented at art. They notice colour and design and respond to what they see. In a very obvious way we see that kind of intelligence in Ngaio Marsh’s Agatha Troy. She’s an artist who responds to what she sees and can create in several different media. For instance in both Final Curtain and Tied Up in Tinsel (and other novels too), Troy is commissioned to paint portraits. So she’s on the scene when murder happens at the homes where she’s staying. Although it’s technically her husband Roderick Alleyn who officially solves the cases, Troy’s skilled eyes are very helpful in finding clues. We see that especially in A Clutch of Constables in which she goes up against an international art forger known only as Jampot. Hercule Poirot also has this kind of intelligence. He’s quite observant about his visual surroundings and of course, fans know how important the appearance of his clothes and moustaches are to him.

Some people have a great deal of linguistic intelligence. Novelists, poets, journalists and other writers often fall into this category. If you love words, play a lot of word games and notice the way people use language, you’ve got a solid dose of this kind of intelligence. For instance, John Dickson Carr’s Dr. Gideon Fell is a lexicographer. Words and languages are his specialty. That’s how he finds out the truth in, for instance, Hag’s Nook, where a cryptic poem turns out to be key to a murder. Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse has a dose of this kind of intelligence too. He does after all solve crossword puzzles with a pen and is a stickler for certain kinds of language use.

People with a lot of kinesthetic intelligence have a solid sense of where their bodies are in space. Actors, athletes, dancers, and people who can parallel park on the first try show this kind of intelligence. People with kinesthetic intelligence like to learn by doing and using their hands and bodies. For example, Helene Tursten’s DI Irene Huss has a share of kinesthetic intelligence. She is a former judo champion who uses the principles of judo to keep herself in shape as well as to clear her mind and cope with the stresses of her life as a cop. And interestingly, we several instances in this series where Huss gets bored and tired of paperwork and the other ‘desk routines’ that are part of a cop’s life. Although she’s hardly rash, Huss prefers to be out doing things to sitting at her desk. She also enjoys going for runs and exercising the family dog. All of those are hallmarks of kinesthetic intelligence and it serves Huss well.

Gardner also proposed interpersonal intelligence. People with interpersonal intelligence are skilled at interacting with others. I don’t mean that they are necessarily manipulators; rather, they work well with all kinds of people. And that is a critical skill for a sleuth. So, most fictional sleuths have at least some degree of it. G.K. Chesterton’s Father Paul Brown for instance is highly skilled at communicating with others, at forming bonds with them and understanding their perspectives. That’s how he learns as much as he does from suspects and witnesses. Karin Fossum’s Oslo police inspector Konrad Sejer is like that too. When he’s investigating a crime, one of his talents is the ability to see things from a variety of other perspectives and ‘get in people’s heads’ to understand why and how they do what they do. People tend to become comfortable talking with him and he often finds himself better able to get information through his interactions than he would through simply reading police reports.

There are also people with a lot of what Gardner called intrapersonal intelligence. Reflective people, people who keep journals and those who are really aware of themselves show this kind of intelligence. And being aware of one’s own reactions  – one’s sense of self – can be very useful for a sleuth. For example, James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux has a keen self-awareness. That self-knowledge and reflection have helped him cope with some of the traumas he’s had to face, especially his Vietnam-era experiences. For instance in A Morning For Flamingoes, Robicheaux agrees to go undercover as a ‘dirty’ cop to try to trap New Orleans crime boss Tony Cardo. Part of his assignment is to get close to Cardo but that proves increasingly difficult for Robicheaux as he becomes aware that he has sympathy for his target. Throughout this novel, Robicheaux keeps himself as grounded as he can by ‘checking in with himself.’

Another of the multiple intelligences people have is musical intelligence. Obviously singers, composers and musical artists have a healthy dose of this kind of intelligence. But it’s more than just being able to sing or play music on key. It’s also a sense of rhythm and a keen awareness of sound. If you like a soundtrack when you work, or if you find yourself singing or whistling when you weren’t aware of it, or if you can’t help walking in time to the music when you walk past a car with its radio on, you know what I mean. And if you don’t, just ask Jill Edmondson’s Toronto PI Sasha Jackson, who used to be a rock singer and still does occasional gigs. Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus has musical intelligence as well although he’s hardly a famous rocker. His music collection matters a lot to him and there are lots of scenes in the Rebus novels (including a really well-done scene in Exit Music) in which he gets or listens to music.

Naturalist intelligence is actually pretty self-explanatory. People who are attuned to nature and its rhythms and who just ‘fit in’ in natural environments have a lot of naturalist intelligence. Garden enthusiasts, park rangers, those who are comfortable with animals and those who simply like to be outdoors are examples of those with naturalist intelligence. There’s a lot of it in crime fiction too. Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee, Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest, and Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon are all examples of people who learn from and use nature as they solve crimes. So does Arthur Upfield’s Napoleon ‘Bony’ Bonaparte. These sleuths can tell much from weather patterns, animal activity, ground marks and other natural phenomena. In fact, they often find clues where others can’t.

Finally there’s what Gardner called existential intelligence, the most recent of his proposals. The big questions – the ‘why’ questions – appeal to people with a lot of existential intelligence. Philosophers and members of the clergy often wrestle with these larger questions. And sometimes getting philosophical can be helpful to a sleuth. It is to Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie, who is the editor of Review of Applied Ethics. She doesn’t go out looking for physical clues, and she doesn’t search for patterns. Rather, she looks at the larger motivations people have, and considers the larger issues of morality.

You may be thinking, ‘But don’t all these sleuths also have other intelligences?’ They do indeed. That’s the thing about multiple intelligences. We’ve all got all of the intelligences to some degree. And what’s most interesting is that we can develop the ones we choose to develop.

Interested in taking a look at your own intelligences? Try this Multiple Intelligences Survey. It’s got 40 questions and took me about 10 minutes or so to complete.  By no means is it definite – it’s just one look at the way we learn and know. If you’re a writer, what intelligences does your protagonist have?

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from The Undertones’ Smarter Than You.

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.

When the Jazzman’s Testifyin’, a Faithless Man Believes*

There’s something about jazz and jazz clubs. If you like good jazz as I do then you know what I mean without me having to explain it. Jazz, when it’s done right, is full of feeling and emotion (of course, I suppose all music is when it’s done well). A lot of jazz is improvised and adapted, too, so each jazz artist has her or his own take on the music. Jazz has been associated for a long time with fun and good times; it’s an uninhibited genre. But it’s also been associated with grief and sadness. There’s something a little dark about jazz – something that goes beneath the surface. It’s a complex form of music that for many people strikes a particular chord. And because of the kind of music it is, I’m not at all surprised that you see it in crime fiction. To me (or perhaps this is just my opinion, in which case feel free to disagree if you do) jazz music would be a nicely-matched soundtrack to a lot of crime fiction novels.

When jazz first made the transition from its roots in the U.S. Black community into the mainstream, many people were suspicious of it. It was – is – unique and therefore unfamiliar and seemed, well, dangerous. You see that kind of feeling about jazz in some Golden Age crime fiction like Dorothy Sayers’ The Unpleasantness at the Bellonna Club. In that novel, Lord Peter Wimsey investigates two deaths. One is the death of one his fellow club members General Fentiman. Fentiman’s wealthy sister Lady Dormer also dies. And therein is the hitch. According to Lady Dormer’s will, if she dies first, her fortune passes to Fentiman’s grandson. If the general dies first, the fortune passes to Lady Dormer’s distant cousin Anne Dorland. So the timing of the two deaths matters greatly. When it’s discovered that General Fentiman was poisoned, Wimsey and his friend Inspector Parker have to find out not only who poisoned the general, but also who died first: the general or his sister. At one point, Wimsey is talking with Fentiman’s grandson George and his wife. George has this to say about the effect of jazz and the jazz culture:

 

‘In the old days, heaps of unmarried women were companions, and… they had a much better time than they had now, with all this jazzing and short skirts…the modern girl hasn’t a scrap of decent feeling or sentiment about her.’ 

 

It’s clear in this novel that there’s real suspicion of ‘the jazz life.’

Of course, times have changed and today jazz isn’t considered the ‘dangerous’ kind of music that it once was. But it still runs through crime fiction. In James Lee Burke’s Dixie City Jam, for instance, New Iberia cop Dave Robicheaux needs to raise money to help his business partner Batist, who’s been arrested for murdering a drug dealer. Robicheaux decides to raise the money through a finder’s fee for recovering a World War II-era submarine that’s sunk not far from New Iberia. The real trouble begins when Robicheaux’s search gets the attention of Will Buchalter, a neo-Nazi who doesn’t want the secrets buried with that sub to come to light. Buchalter begins to target Robicheaux’s wife Bootise, so Robicheaux tries to track him down. The only problem is that Buchalter is notoriously elusive. In fact, the only real clue to he has is that Buchalter is an avid collector of rare jazz recordings. So Robicheaux looks for answers among New Orleans’ group of music lovers, musical artists and jazz dealers as he searches for Buchalter. In this novel, jazz is not only part of the context for this plot thread, but it’s also, you might say, part of the key to finding Buchalter.

Walter Mosley’s Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins series takes place in 1950’s Watts, Los Angeles which, as we learn in White Butterfly, was once a well-known jazz district. Here’s how Rawlins describes the area:

 

‘The women, in the late forties and even into the early fifties, were all beautiful; young and old, in satins, silks and furs…They’d come in and listen to Coltrane, Monk, Holiday and all the rest, drinking shot for shot with their men.
It was a bold and flashy time. But by that evening [1956] all the shine had rubbed off to expose the base metal below. The sidewalks had broken, sporting hardy weeds in their cracks. Some clubs were still there but they were quieter now. The jazzmen had found new arenas.’
 

It’s in that context that Rawlins is ‘persuaded’ to go looking for a killer. Three young women Bonita Edwards, Willa Scott and Juliette LeRoi have been murdered. But since they were all Black, not much attention has been paid to their deaths. When Robin Garnett, who calls herself Cyndi Starr, is killed though, things change. She was White and the media starts to pay attention. The police know that they won’t get the truth if they try to investigate in Watts themselves. So they coerce Rawlins into doing so. He starts to ask questions and follows the girls’ trails through the seedy clubs and bars of the area. One of his stops is a visit to Lips McGee, a talented jazz trumpeter at the end of his career. During his heyday McGee was at the top of the scene, but he’s now living in Hollywood Row, a building that like its residents has seen much better times. It turns out McGee knew Robin Garnett and gives Rawlins valuable help in finding out where and how she lived. Rawlins manages to track down the person he thinks killed the women – and then discovers that someone else might have killed Robin and ‘disguised’ her murder to look like the work of the other killer.

Nevada Barr’s Burn has a strong dose of jazz. In that novel, National Park Service Ranger Anna Pigeon visits her friend Geneva, who’s now a singer at the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park. She soon begins to suspect that Geneva’s tenant Jordan may be involved in New Orleans’ child trafficking trade. At the same time, Seattle chemist Clare Sullivan also goes to New Orleans, but for a very different reason. She is suspected of the arson murder of her husband and two children.  But she is convinced that her children are still alive and have been taken to New Orleans. She goes on a desperate search for her children at the same time as Pigeon is looking for what may lie beneath Jordan’s exterior. While jazz music isn’t the key to pulling together the threads of this story, it serves as a really effective backdrop for the novel.

Even when jazz and jazz clubs aren’t featured in a crime novel, they are still sometimes woven in more subtly. For instance fans of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch will know that he is a jazz lover. In many of the novels featuring him, Bosch listens to all sorts of jazz. In fact you could say that jazz cements the bond between him and Sylvia Moore, whom he meets in The Black Ice. In that novel Bosch investigates the death of her husband Calexico ‘Cal.’ In the process of that investigation he has several conversations with Sylvia and they develop a relationship. And at the very end of the novel, Bosch asks her:

 

‘You like jazz? The saxophone?’…
‘Especially the solos,’ she said. ‘The ones that are lonely and sad. I love those.’

 

That’s when Bosch invites her for a New Year’s Eve date at the Catalina, where jazz great Frank Morgan will be playing. Sadly, Morgan died in 2007 and Connelly actually dedicates The Brass Verdict, which was written that year and published in 2008,in part to Morgan’s memory. And on an interesting note, we learn in that novel that Bosch’s half-brother Mickey Haller is acquainted with Morgan.

Jazz is a unique music form with a rich history. It’s got all sorts of depths, shadow and light (or maybe that’s just my view). I’m glad it’s threaded through crime fiction; they go together somehow. Or maybe that’s just my view, too…

 
 

In Memoriam…
 

 
This post is dedicated to the memory of the great Dave Brubeck, a legendary jazz pianist who passed away today at the age of 91. He will be missed.

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Carole King’s Jazzman.

Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?*

If you’ve ever been to New Orleans then you know that it’s a distinctive place. It’s a mixture of old Southern wealth, new money and wrenching poverty. It’s also one of the most fascinating mixtures of cultures, ethnic groups and language backgrounds I’ve ever experienced. And music? The city moves to music – really. New Orleans also has some of the most delicious food there is and you can find it even in little hole-in-the-wall restaurants. It’s got an interesting history too. But what makes New Orleans so special (at least to me) is that it is a very “alive” city. There is a rich enjoyment of life there that makes it truly vibrant. It’s also a really intriguing setting for crime fiction. Not only is there as I said a mix of different socioeconomic and other backgrounds but New Orleans has had more than its share of drugs gangs, racial tension, corruption and other problems. It’s not a perfect place. But it is unique.

There are several series that are set in New Orleans. Julie Smith’s Skip Langdon series is just one of them. Langdon is a former member of New Orleans’ upper crust who turned “rebel” and became a cop. In New Orleans Mourning for instance (the first Skip Langdon mystery), she investigates the murder of wealthy magnate Chauncy St. Amant who is shot during Mardi Gras. Langdon is a rookie who’s assigned to this case because it’s assumed that she’s in with the social elite. The truth is that Langdon has never felt like one of the “beautiful people” although she went to the “right schools” and her parents have spent their lives climbing the social ladder. Still, she does have contacts in that world and she uses them to solve this murder. Like several of the novels in this series this one features a lot of dark family secrets..

James Sallis’ Lew Griffin is a former private investigator turned writer and part-time professor. In The Long-Legged Fly we learn of Griffin’s career as a full-time private investigator and some of the wrenching cases he took. By the time Moth, the second Lew Griffin novel, takes place, Griffin has retired from full-time detection and has taken up an academic career. But the pull of a former friendship draws him back into the business. The Lew Griffin novels often feature a search for missing children and Griffin’s determination to find them before anything happens to them. They also show a much seedier side of New Orleans than we see in Smith’s novels. Sallis’ novels are what you might call a literary look at the life of a New Orleans PI who began his career during the 1960′s when being a black PI was even more dangerous than it is now. Readers who prefer more or less chronological timelines should be aware that this series goes back and forth between the past and the present as we follow Griffin’s career. But each section of each novel is clearly set off so it’s not difficult to know when a part of the story is taking place. And this series shows quite a lot of New Orleans that the tourists don’t get to see.

Crime fiction fans will already know that a lot of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels are set in and near New Orleans. Robicheaux is a former New Orleans cop who ended up working for the New Iberia, Louisiana police. But he still has lots of frieds and contacts in New Orleans. For instance The Tin Roof Blowdown is in part the story of one of those friends. In that novel, one thread of the plot is Robicheaux’s search for his former friend Jude Le Blanc, who became a Roman Catholic priest. The novel takes place in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and thousands of people are stranded. Le Blanc disappears and is presumably shot while trying to save some of his parishoners who’ve gathered in the very top part of his church. When the boat he’d managed to obtain is later used by looters Robicheaux knows there’s some connection to Le Blanc’s fate. In this novel and in many others in this series we see all of cultural and ethnic sides of New Orleans. We also see some of the not-very nice sides of the city. But even when he’s describing New Orleans at its worst Burke captures how very much alive the city really is.

Barbara Hambly has written a very interesting New-Orleans based historical mystery series featuring Dr. Benjamin January, who left New Orleans to study medicine in Paris. In A Free Man of Color, the first of the series, January returns to 1830′s New Orleans after the death of his beloved wife Ayasha. Her loss has left him heartbroken and unable to stay in Paris. Since he is barred because of his race from a medical career, January makes a living playing piano. That’s how he gets access to all sorts of New Orleans events from private parties to larger events, including the famous Mardi Gras Carnival. These stories offer a look at the city through the eyes of someone who’s in some ways an outsider, especially in the early novels in this series. But January is from New Orleans and he knows the New Orleans of the 1830′s intimately. Through January’s eyes Hambly effectively depicts all of the layers of ante-bellum New Orleans.

Even some authors whose novels aren’t primarily set in New Orleans sometimes bring their characters there. For instance Nevada Barr’s Burn, featuring her National Park Service Ranger Anna Pigeon, takes place mostly in New Orleans. In that novel Pigeon decides to visit her friend Geneva, who’s a singer at the New Orleans Jazz National Historic Park. It’s not long before Pigeon suspects that Geneva’s tenant Jordan may have connections to New Orleans’ child trafficking trade. So she decides to track him to find out what and who he really is. This story is related to the simultaneous story of Seattle chemist Clare Sullivan, who is accused of setting the fire that kills her husband and two children. She is convinced though that her children are alive and have been taken to New Orleans. Sullivan uses all of the skills at her disposal to try to find her children.

New Orleans is an exciting, fun, exotic, mysterious place. As author Julie Smith says, it’s full of secrets. It’s got some of the finest food there is and world class music (I’m telling you, New Orleans breathes music). With so much vibrancy, so much confluence of different groups and backgrounds and so much rich history, it’s little wonder that New Orleans is the setting for some compelling crime fiction. This post has only mentioned a few examples; which are your favourites?
 

ps. The ‘photo shows a voodoo luck treasure I got in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I wandered one day to the part of the French Quarter that the tourists don’t usually visit and was very glad I did. And the CD? There is nothing like a ‘Trane ride.
 
 
 

NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Eddie DeLange and Louis Alter.