All I Wanna Do is Have Some Fun*

It’s not easy to write a novel. Any writer will tell you that creating characters, developing the plot, providing closure and all of the other elements of storytelling can be challenging. And that’s not to mention things like editing and revising. But don’t let any writer (including this one) fool you into thinking there’s no enjoyment in it. There are some scenes, characters and events that are fun, or at least enjoyable to write. And that enjoyment can definitely come through in a story.

For instance, of all of the books and plays she wrote, Agatha Christie is said to have most enjoyed writing Crooked House. As she put it,

 

‘Writing Crooked House was pure pleasure…’

 

It’s clear from the novel too that she took special enjoyment in creating the story. In this novel, wealthy patriarch Aristide Leonides and his much-younger wife Brenda live with several members of their family in Three Gables, the family home. When Leonides’ grand-daughter Sophie returns to Three Gables after World War II, she finds that her grandfather has been poisoned with his own eye drops. Sophie’s fiancé Charles Hayward knows that she will not marry him until the matter of who killed Leonides is settled. So Hayward is strongly motivated to do some sleuthing. As he gets to know the various members of the family, he discovers that several of them had a good reason to want Leonides dead. This novel (in my opinion, so do feel free to differ with me if you do) has all of the ingredients that made Christie’s work so well-regarded. It’s easy to see how much she enjoyed writing it.

In Michael Connolly’s The Lincoln Lawyer, we are introduced to attorney Mickey Haller, who works out of his automobile and travels to visit his clients. In this case, the client is Hollywood playboy and real estate dealer Louis Roulet, who’s been arrested for rape and murder. On the surface of it, the case looks clear-cut, but the more Haller digs into it, the more possibility there is that, as unlikeable as he is, Roulet is not guilty. Connelly has said that he enjoyed writing Haller’s two ex-wives. One is deputy district attorney Maggie ‘McFierce’ McPherson. The other is Lorna Taylor, who works as Haller’s assistant. According to Connelly, the fact that these two women still like Haller, maybe even love him, shows that he’s got some redeeming qualities. And it’s clear that Haller respects them too. The marriages may not have been successful, but the relationships have, and it’s obvious from the way Connelly has developed these characters that he likes them.

In Patricia Stoltey’s The Desert Hedge Murders, retired circuit court judge Sylvia Thorn is reluctantly persuaded to go on a sightseeing/gambling trip with her mother Kristina’s travel group the Florida Flippers. The group has plans to visit Laughlin, Nevada, and all goes well enough at first. Then, the dead body of an unknown man is found in the bathtub of the hotel room shared by two of the Flippers. Shortly afterwards, another member of the group disappears and is later found dead in an abandoned gold mine. Partly to protect her mother and the rest of the Flippers, Thorn looks into the case and together with her brother Willie, she finds out how the two deaths are connected and what’s behind them. In one scene in the novel, Thorn, her mother and the Flippers have arrived at the Oatman Hotel in Oatman, a famous ghost town near the gold mine. They’re getting off the tour bus from Laughlin when Thorn suddenly finds herself surrounded by a group of the burros that make Oatman their home. She has another encounter with the burros later in the novel. No, the burros don’t attack, and they don’t have anything to do with the murders, but they add to the story, and I’m pretty certain it was fun to write about them.

In Anthony Bidulka’s Flight of Aquavit, Saskatoon PI Russell Quant gets a new client Daniel Guest. Guest is being blackmailed because of some secret relationships he’s had with other men. He hires Quant to find and stop the blackmailer and Quant begins to look into the case. The trail leads to New York, where Quant crosses paths with another PI Jane Cross, who lives and works in Regina. Neither is particularly enamoured of the other but as it turns out, the cases they are working on are related. So like it or not, Quant has to interact with Cross. In the end, and after a murder, Quant works out who blackmailed his client, who killed the murder victim and how Jane Cross fits in. Here is what Bidulka had to say about Jane Cross:

 

‘I enjoyed writing her character, especially as a foil for Russell.’

 

And that’s clear from the novels in which she appears. Cross is smart, interesting and absolutely unafraid. The interactions between her and Quant are sometimes tense and unpleasant, but they are engaging and sometimes really witty.

And then there’s Angela Savage’s The Half Child. That’s the second in her series featuring  PI Jayne Keeney, who lives and works in Bangkok. In that novel, Keeney investigates the death of Maryanne Delbeck, who jumped (or fell, or was pushed) from the roof of the Pattaya hotel where she was living. The official police report is that Maryanne was suffering from depression and committed suicide. But her father doesn’t believe it and wants Keeney to look into the matter. Keeney travels to Pattaya and goes undercover at the orphanage/child care home where Maryanne volunteered to try to get some answers. Along with finding out what really happened to Maryanne, Keeney also finds out some very ugly truths about the child care facility. In her personal life, Keeney has begun a relationship with Rajiv Patel, who manages his uncle’s Bangkok bookshop. Throughout this case, Patel proves to be very helpful, so much so that Keeney re-thinks her relationship with him as well as her view of her work. At the end of this novel, Patel finds a way to surprise Keeney. That scene is not just fun, it’s moving, too, and I have it on very good authority that it was

 

‘…great fun to write…’

 

And that’s clear when one reads it.

Part of the reason that writers keep doing what they do is that despite the challenges, it can be a lot of fun. And when an author enjoys particular characters, scenes and so on, that comes through clearly in the story. Do you see that too? Can you tell when an author is enjoying himself or herself? If you’re a writer, which scenes or characters have you had the most fun writing?

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Sheryl Crow’s All I Wanna Do.

I See the Place Lives*

Any crime fiction fan can tell you that a good, atmospheric setting can add a lot to a novel. And a well-written post from Annette Thomson has got me thinking of the way that old buildings can be rich with history and character. Annette’s blog, by the way, is an excellent writing blog and Annette is a talented poet and writer. Check it out. Old buildings like the one Annette describes have their own stories to tell, and when they’re woven into a crime novel, this can add layers of atmosphere to a story.

There’s a building like that in Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral. When wealthy family patriarch Richard Abernethie dies, his family gathers for his funeral and the reading of the will. At this gathering, Abernethie’s younger sister Cora Lansquenet says that he was murdered. Everyone is quick to discount what she says and Cora herself asks everyone to forget she’s said anything. But privately, everyone wonders whether she might have been right. After all, Richard Abernethie had a fortune to leave and a family full of relations who are eager for their shares of it. When Cora herself is brutally murdered the next day it seems more and more likely that she was right. Family lawyer Mr. Entwhistle visits Hercule Poirot and asks him to investigate. As part of his search for answers, Poirot visits Enderby Hall in the guise of a representative of a foundation that wants to buy the old house. During his visit, he hears some important conversations and remarks, and gets some vital clues as to what really happened to both Richard Abernethie and Cora Lansquenet. The house itself has a rich history and we see that mostly through the eyes of the family butler Lanscombe, who’s been there for decades. As he goes about his duties we get a sense of the way an old building like this one can have memories.

There’s a very atmospheric, history-laden building featured in John Dickson Carr’s Hag’s Nook, the first in his Gideon Fell series. Tad Rampole has just completed his university studies and has decided to travel a bit. On the advice of his mentor, he seeks out Dr. Gideon Fell, who lives in Chatterham. On his way to visit Fell, Rampole meets and becomes smitten with Dorothy Starberth. When he meets Fell, Rampole hears the story of the Starberth family. Beginning with Anthony Starberth, two generations of Starberths were governors of nearby Chatterham Prison. The prison then fell into disuse and hasn’t housed any convicts for a hundred years. And yet the Starberth family still maintains a prison-related tradition. On the night of his twenty-fifth birthday each Starberth heir spends the night in the old Governor’s Room at the prison. While there, he opens the safe in the room and follows the instructions in a note left in the safe. Now it’s the turn of Dorothy Starberth’s brother Martin to follow the ritual and he duly prepares for his stay. Sometime during the night Martin Starberth dies from what looks like a fall from the balcony of the Governor’s Room. But it’s soon clear that he was murdered. As Fell, Rampole and Chief Constable Sir Benjamin Arnold investigate, we get a real sense of the rich and eerie history of the prison building. The old building adds much to the story in terms of atmosphere.

So does the Palace Theatre in Christopher Fowler’s Full Dark House.  When Arthur Bryant of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU) decides to write his memoirs, he makes a shocking discovery about the first case the unit solved. He’s following up on this finding when a bomb blast destroys the PCU offices and takes Bryant with it. Bryant’s police partner John May decides to find out who set the bomb. To do that, he’ll have to revisit the 1940 case that Bryant was reviewing. Through flashbacks we learn that in that case, the PCU investigates the murder of dancer Tanya Capistrania, who was part of the cast of Orpheus, which is scheduled to open at the Palace Theatre. As the team looks into what happened to the victim, preparations continue for the production, but they are marred by another murder, followed by a disappearance. It turns out that there was one question about that case that was not resolved. Bryant found out the answer to that question and when May does too, we find out how that 1940 case is connected to the modern-day blast. Throughout this novel, the Palace Theatre provides a rich, atmospheric and history-laden setting for much of what happens. Just the building itself adds much to the story.

We also see that sense of atmosphere in Patricia Stoltey’s The Desert Hedge Murders. Retired Florida circuit court judge Sylvia Thorn reluctantly agrees to accompany her mother Kristina Grisseljon’s travel club the Florida Flippers on a sightseeing and gambling tour of Laughlin, Nevada. Everyone settles in and all begins well enough. But shortly afterwards the body of a man no-one seems to know is found in the bathtub of the hotel room that two of the club members are sharing. Then one of the tour group members disappears. She is later found dead in the abandoned Lone Cactus gold mine. With help from her brother Willie and from the other members of the Florida Flippers, Sylvia finds out what the connection between the deaths is, and how they relate to some nasty secrets that someone has been hiding. One part of the story takes place in Oatman, Nevada, a ghost town near the mine. There are a few very effective scenes there, especially in the Oatman Hotel, which is full of history and character. As a matter of fact, there’s talk that a ghost haunts the hotel. The ghost town setting and the old mine really add atmosphere to this novel. Oh, and so do the burros.

And then there’s the Löwander Hospital, which features strongly in Helene Tursten’s Night Rounds. This private hospital has been in the Löwander family for a few generations and is now directed by Sverker Löwander. One night there’s a blackout at the hospital during which a nurse Marianne Svärd is killed. Another nurse Linda Svensson disappears and is later found dead. Eerily enough, her body is discovered in the same place where fifty years earlier, another nurse Thekla Olsson hung herself. Göteborg police inspector Irene Huss and her team are called in to investigate the nurses’ murders and another death that occurs. Since the three deaths all seem to be connected to the hospital in some way, the team spends its share of time there. The place is full of history and stories and that atmosphere adds to the novel.

There’s only room in this one post for a few examples of the kind of rich atmosphere and history that old buildings can add to a story (I know, I know, fans of Johan Theorin’s Öland novels). They can either provide an interesting contrast to a light story, or add a real layer of eeriness and mystery to a darker one. Which old buildings do you wish could tell you their stories? If you’re a writer, do you use old places as an inspiration?

Thanks, Annette, for the post that inspired me. And thanks, Elizabeth Spann Craig, for another post with a ‘photo of a great atmospheric Southern Gothic building. That inspired me too.

ps. The ‘photo is of Old Main, the heart of the campus of Knox College, Galesburg IL.  It is a building full of history and all sorts of stories. Among other things, the building is the site of one of the famous Lincoln/Douglas debates of 1858. Oh, and the winsome model on the steps is my daughter when she was a few months shy of her seventh birthday.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Mount Eerie’s The Place Lives.

Well, Life on the Farm is Kinda Laid Back*

Erm… Not always. I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I did grow up near some of the most fertile land in the U.S. so farms were a big part of the scenery. And if you stop to think about it, farming is a fairly important part of life whether you live anywhere near farm country or not. Besides the delicious fresh food, one of the best things about farms from my perspective (I have never claimed to have a psychologically well-adjusted view ) is that they make terrific settings for murder mysteries. They are filled with good hiding places for bodies, and farm communities tend to be smaller and more close-knit than some other communities, so there are all kinds of opportunities for murder motives. And then there’s the fact that some farms are isolated, so all sorts of things can happen there…

The farm belonging to Rowley Cloade figures in Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood (AKA There is a Tide). Cloade is trying to manage the farm in the financially straitened years during and immediately after World War II and he’s just getting by. He’s not as worried about money as some farmers are though because his wealthy uncle Gordon Cloade has always promised to take care of the family financially. Then, to everyone’s shock, Gordon Cloade marries a young widow Rosaleen Underhay. Before he can alter his will to protect his family, Cloade is tragically killed in a bomb blast. Now Rosaleen is set to inherit all of her husband’s considerable fortune, leaving his family with nothing. Then a stranger calling himself Enoch Arden comes to the area. He drops hints that Rosaleen’s first husband didn’t die as she’d always said but is alive. If that’s true then she can’t inherit. So the Cloades have every interest in finding out whether Arden’s story is true. When he is killed one night, Rowley Cloade and the rest of his family are caught up in both a family squabble and a murder investigation. Hercule Poirot has already heard the story of Cloade’s marriage and of Rosaleen’s first husband, so when two members of the Cloade family approach him to investigate, he’s interested in doing so.

In Ngaio Marsh’s Died in the Wool, New Zealand MP Flossie Rubrick finds out just how deadly farms can be. She goes to an isolated sheep pen on her husband’s farm to prepare an important speech, but doesn’t return. Three weeks later, her body turns up inside a bale of wool. Rubrick’s nephew writes to Inspector Roderick Alleyn asking him to investigate and since this could very well involve matters of national security Alleyn travels to New Zealand to look into the case. When he arrives, Alleyn gets to know the various members of the victim’s family and he finds out that more than one member had a good reason to want her dead. In the end, the murder turns out to be related to an important secret that Rubrick had discovered about one family member in particular.

Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers also shows how deadly farms can be. Johannes Lövgren and his wife Maria have a small farm not far from Ystad. One night they are brutally murdered. Ystad detective Kurt Wallander and his team are called in immediately. It’s too late to save Johannes, but Maria lives for a short time. She recovers consciousness just long enough to say the word foreign before she too dies. There is already simmering anti-immigration sentiment in the area and when the press learns what Maria Lövgren said just before she died, the situation gets even more inflamed and another murder is committed. Now Wallander has to deal with multiple murders as well as the threat of more violence. This case turns out to be simpler than it seems on the surface and one of the clues to the case turns out to be on the farm.

Linda Castillo’s series featuring police chief Kate Burkholder takes place in and around the Amish farming community of Painters Mill, Ohio. In Sworn to Silence, we learn that Burkholder was a member of the Amish community herself until she left it, for very good reasons, sixteen years earlier. Shortly after her return, the body of a young girl is found in a snowy field on a farm belonging to Isaak and Anna Stutz. Then another body is discovered. And another. These murders turn out to be connected to the reason that Burkholder left Painters Mill in the first place, so if she’s gong to catch the killer, Burkholder is also going to have to confront her own past. Besides the murder investigation, this series also gives readers a look at Amish farms and life in an Amish community.

Still interested in Amish farms? I don’t usually discuss films very much on this blog, but do see Peter Weir’s 1985 film Witness. It’s a suspenseful mystery and much of it takes place in the Amish community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In my opinion (so feel free to differ with me if you do), it’s an excellent portrayal of the Amish lifestyle as well as a solid mystery. Oh, and did I mention it features both Harrison Ford and Viggo Mortensen??

Oh, right. Farms.    Farmland turns out to be very important in Patricia Stoltey’s The Prairie Grass Murders. Former Vietnam veteran Willie Grisslejon pays a visit to the Illinois farming community where he grew up. He discovers the body of an unknown man in a field and tries to notify the local sheriff. That’s when he’s locked up as a vagrant and ordered to have a psychiatric evaluation. Willie calls his sister Sylvia Thorn, who at the time of this novel is a Florida judge, and she travels to Illinois to arrange for her brother’s release. When Willie insists on returning to the site where he found the body, they find that it has disappeared and there’ve been obvious attempts to cover up any trace of the dead man’s existence. Now Sylvia and Willie get involved in a mystery involving land disputes, corruption and greed – and a farm that seems to be the focus of a lot of what’s going on. Much of the novel takes place in the beautiful prairie farmland of Illinois.

In Martin Edwards’ The Hanging Wood, we meet Orla Payne, who works at St. Herbert’s, a residential library in the Lake District. Twenty years earlier, her brother Callum disappeared and was never found, but Orla has always believed he was murdered. She wants DCI Hannah Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team to investigate, but at first Scarlett doesn’t take her request seriously. And it’s hard to blame Scarlett for her reluctance. Orla Payne is unstable at the best of times and when she contacts Scarlett she’s been drinking so Scarlett doesn’t make it a priority. Then, Orla Payne’s body is discovered buried in a silo on Lane End Farm. There’s no way to tell at first whether she was murdered or committed suicide, so now, Scarlett and her team have a very new case to solve as well as the cold case of Callum Payne’s disappearance. With help from Oxford historian Daniel Kind, Scarlett discovers the truth about the farm, the history of the area and its families, and what really happened to Orla and Callum Payne.

Farming is a way of life for a lot of people and farms are an important part of the economy. They’re also really interesting settings for murder. I know I haven’t mentioned all of the great farm-related mysteries out there (for instance, I’m only getting acquainted with Nelson Brunanski’s Saskatchewan prairie/farmland novels, so I’m not really equipped to comment on them yet). Which ones have you enjoyed?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from John Denver’s Thank God I’m a Country Boy.

She Came in Through the Bathroom Window*

Most of us would probably agree that breaking into someone’s home is a crime. That’s for instance one reason why police aren’t allowed to enter someone’s home unless that person invites them in or they have a warrant. In most places, evidence they get from illegal activity such as breaking and entering isn’t admissible in court anyway, so many cops don’t do that. Licensed private investigators are also limited in the searches they’re allowed to make. And having had my home broken into twice (this was years ago – not in the home I live in now), I can say that it’s a very good thing there are laws against breaking and entering. And yet, despite the fact that B & E is illegal with good reason, that doesn’t always stop sleuths from doing it at least sometimes. It’s not easy to write such a scene convincingly because as I say, real-life police officers who break and enter face serious consequences for it and so do PIs. But when it is written well, a B & E scene can add some tension to a plot.

For instance, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton, Sherlock Holmes’ new client Lady Eva Brackwell is being blackmailed by Charles Augustus Milverton. He has some compromising letters she wrote and has threatened to send them to her fiancé unless she pays a very large sum of money. Holmes has nothing but contempt for Milverton, so he has no qualms about planning a way to get those letters. He learns the layout of the Milverton home and one night he and Watson break into the home to find the letters. They do get them but not before another of Milverton’s victims finds her own way of getting compromising evidence back from him.

Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot isn’t above B & E when he needs to make use of that strategy. In Christie’s short story The Adventure of the Cheap Flat, Captain Hastings learns of a young couple named Robinson who seem to have pulled off a fait accompli. They’ve found a nice flat at a very low rent in a nice part of London. When Hastings mentions the matter to Poirot, Poirot begins to wonder whether there’s something more going on here than just a very good piece of luck. So he takes a flat in the same building as the Robinsons’ new home. Poirot soon learns that the Robinsons have been made pawns in a plot that involves international crime and jewel theft. But he knows very well that the people involved in the plot are not going to stand by meekly and let the police arrest them. So he and Hastings break into the flat late one night and find the evidence that they need to lure and then catch the criminals.

In Linwood Barclay’s Bad Move, science fiction writer Zack Walker moves with his journalist wife Sarah and their two children to Valley Forest Estates. Walker is convinced that the city where they had been living is no longer safe and wants to give his family a safe, secure suburban place to live. The family hasn’t been in their new home long when Walker begins to notice some things that are wrong with the house they’ve bought. So he goes to Valley Forest’s sales office to complain and arrange for some repairs. That’s when he witnesses an argument between a Valley Forest sales executive and local environmental activist Samuel Spender. When Walker later finds Spender’s body in a nearby creek he knows that something must be very wrong at Valley Forest. Not long after that, Walker and his wife are doing some shopping when he spies a purse that he thinks belongs to Sarah. It doesn’t, so now Walker has to find a way to return the purse – which has quite a lot of money in it – to its owner Stefanie Knight, who works in the Valley Forest sales office. He goes to her home intending to return the purse but no-one comes to the door. Walker gets into the home only to find Knight’s body. Despite his best efforts to keep out of dangerous situations, Walker finds himself more and more mixed up in what turns out to be a case of greed and corruption leading to murder.

There’s a funny example of B & E in Donna Malane’s Surrender. Missing Person’s expert Diane Rowe finds out from her cop ex-husband Sean Callum that James Patrick ‘Snow’ Wilson has been found stabbed to death. That murder has special meaning for Rowe. A year earlier her sister Niki was murdered and everyone, including Callum, has always believed that Snow was guilty. In fact just before his death Snow admitted his guilt and said that he was paid to murder Niki. Rowe thinks that if she can find out who paid Snow, she’ll find out the truth behind her sister’s murder so she begins to investigate. She happens to be passing near the house Snow shared with his sisters when she decides on impulse to go in and see if she can find any clues as to who else was involved in her sister’s killing. She breaks in through a window only to be stopped cold by a deftly-wielded cricket bat. It turns out the house wasn’t as empty as it seemed and Snow’s sisters caught Rowe red-handed as the saying goes. When she explains why she was there, the Wilson sisters suggest that they might be able to help each other. They want to find their brother’s killer as much as Rowe wants to find her sister’s killer. So they decide to exchange what turns out to be useful information.

Paddy Richardson’s Stephanie Anderson, whom we meet in Hunting Blind, isn’t the ‘typical’ (if there is such a thing) ‘B & E type.’ She’s a beginning psychiatrist who’s lived a very careful life for the last several years. Then she begins to work with a new patient Elizabeth Clark who has a tragic past. Years earlier Clark’s sister Gracie was abducted and no trace of her was ever found. This story resonates deeply with Anderson, whose own younger sister Gemma was abducted seventeen years earlier. Anderson decides to lay her own ghosts to rest and find out who was responsible for both abductions. So she makes the journey from Dunedin where she lives and works to Wanaka where she grew up. Along the way she gets more and more information on the person who wreaked so much havoc on her life. She wants to get proof of this person’s culpability but can’t easily find hard evidence. So one day she decides on impulse to break into that person’s home and look for the evidence she needs. It’s a very tense scene and I don’t think it’s giving away spoilers to say that Richardson shows us what it’s like to get into someone’s home when one’s absolutely not supposed to be there.

There’s an interesting case of breaking into one’s own home – well, in a way – in Patricia Stoltey’s The Prairie Grass Murders. Sylvia Thorn is a Florida judge who gets an upsetting call from her brother Willie Grisseljon. Willie was visiting the family’s former home in Illinois when he discovered the half-buried body of a man in a field not far from the house. When he tried to alert the police, he was arrested for vagrancy. So Thorn travels to Illinois to arrange for her brother’s release. Once that’s accomplished, she’s ready to leave but Willie wants to return to where he found the body. When they get there, they find that the body has disappeared and the ground nearby has been disturbed as if to hide evidence. It also turns out that the dead man may be a local businessman who’s gone missing. Thorn and Grisseljon get drawn into a case of corruption and greed tied to murder. At one point Thorn goes to her old family house which is now a focal point for those behind the crimes. She breaks in and ends up trapped in a hideaway under the house when the ‘bad guys’ discover that she’s been there.

Of course any B & E scene has to be done carefully. Real-life cops and PIs know they’re not supposed to just sneak into people’s homes, so it would stretch credibility too far to have them do that on a whim. But when it’s done deftly, a B & E scene can add an interesting layer of tension to a story.

 

 
 

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

This Night We Are Together*

Authors understand as few other people can what other authors go through and what it’s like to be an author. That’s true in just about any genre and it’s certrainly true in crime fiction. So it’s a special compliment when one author pays tribute to another in a novel or series. And it happens more frequently than you might think. I’ll just give a few examples; I’m sure you can think of others.

Many people know that Agatha Christie mentions Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in several of her works. Christie fans will also know that she and P.G. Wodehouse admired each other’s work quite a lot. In fact Christie’s Hallowe’en Party is dedicated to Wodehouse. Murder in Mesopotamia is told from the point of view of Amy Leatheran, a nurse who’s been hired by noted archaeologist Eric Leidner. Leidner’s wife Louise has been having fears and anxieties – she even believes that someone is trying to kill her – and Leidner wants Leatheran to help allay his wife’s concerns. The couple is sharing an expedition house near a dig in Iraq so when Leatheran arrives, she meets the rest of the members of the expedition staff. The first staff member she meets is Bill Coleman; here’s how she describes him:
 

“He had a round pink face and really, in all my life, I have never seen anyone who seemed so exactly like a young man out of one of Mr. P.G. Wodehouse’s books.”
 

When Leatheran’s patient is murdered just as she had feared, Coleman becomes one of the suspects. Hercule Poirot is travelling in the area and he agrees to take some time off and find out who killed Louise Leidner and why.

Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is the story of fifteen-year-old Christopher Boone, who is particularly fascinated with Arthur Conant Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. He imagines himself as a detective like Sherlock Holmes and he gets the chance when a neighbour’s dog is killed. Boone finds the dog and decides to find out who’s responsible. He’s even more determined when he becomes a suspect. Throughout this novel Boone and Haddon make reference to the Conan Doyle novel; even the title is a tribute.

In James W. Fuerst’s Huge we meet twelve-year-old Eugene “Huge ” Smalls. Huge has trouble getting on in school and socially even though he’s brilliant. But that’s not really important to Huge; at least that’s what he tells himself. His grandmother introduced him to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and those two fictional detectives are Huge’s heroes. He wants to do just what they do and he gets his opportunity when his grandmother hires him to find out who defaced the sign at the retirement home where she lives. Bit by bit Huge finds out the truth about the sign and a lot of truths about himself. As he does so he refers several times to Chandler and Hammett. It’s an interesting way to pay tribute to those groundbreaking authors.

Patricia Stoltey’s Sylvia Thorn is a former Florida judge whom we first meet in The Prairie Grass Murders. In that novel, Thorn’s brother Willie Grisseljon is paying a visit to his and Thorn’s home town in Illinois when he discovers the body of an unknown man. At first Grisseljon is suspected of being the murderer and in fact, he’s locked up for vagrancy. Thorn travels to Illinois to get her brother released and ends up getting involved in the investigation of the dead man’s murder. It turns out that this murder is related to greed, land-grabbing and corruption. Thorn is a reader and there are several references to some talented crime fiction authors in this novel and in the next Sylvia Thorn/Willie Grisseljon novel The Desert Hedge Murders. Here’s one example from The Prairie Grass Murders:
 

“A little relaxation was in order. One glass of Reisling, a slice of cheddar cheese, one chocolate truffle, a new China Bayles [the creation of Susan Wittig Albert] mystery, and a long soak in a tub full of lavendar-scented bubbles. Heavenly.”
 

Stoltey also makes reference by the way to Sue Grafton.

One of the more innovative ways in which one crime fiction author pays tribute to another is in Anthony Bidulka’s Aloha Candy Hearts. In that novel Saskatoon private investigator Russell Quant takes a trip to Hawai’i to spend some time with his long-distance partner Alex Canyon. He gets involved in a murder and a sort of treasure-map mystery when a stranger who turns out to be an archivist slips a cryptic set of clues into Quant’s luggage. When the man is later murdered, the cop who investigates the murder is Kimo Kanapa’aka, the creation of fellow crime fiction author Neil Plakcy. Michael Connelly and Robert Crais have also had their sleuths “visit” each other’s series and it’s a creative way to pay tribute to each other.

Angela Savage’s Behind the Night Bazaar includes an interesting discussion of other crime fiction. Australian private investigator Jayne Keeney lives and works in Bangkok but she frequently visits her good friend Canadian ex-pat Didier de Montpasse, who lives in Chiang Mai. The two of them share a love of books but they have different tastes. Didier prefers classics and cosies while Jayne prefers more modern, darker novels. They discuss several well-known authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, and Sara Paretsky and each tries to “convert” the other. It makes for a lively debate. Then Didier’s partner Nou is brutally murdered, and shortly afterwards, Didier himself is shot in what the police say was an attempt to escape them. The police report holds that Didier murdered Nou and resisted arrest when the police tried to question him. But Jayne is quickly convinced that Didier would not have killed Nou and that both men were deliberately murdered. She decides to try to find out the truth behind the murders and discovers that Didier had uncovered some very ugly truths about Chiang Mai that some powerful people do not want made public. Interestingly enough, one of the important clues in this case is a clue that Didier himself leaves for Jayne: it’s a cryptic clue that refers to a Sherlock Holmes story.

It’s a gesture of respect when authors pay tribute to each other and it’s a nod to the crime fiction fan too. I’ve only mentioned a few examples here. Which have you read and enjoyed?
 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s This Night. Why did I choose this song? Because in it Mr. Joel pays tribute to Beethoven by integrating the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata into the chorus.