I’m In the Mood to Help You, Dude, You Ain’t Never Had a Friend Like Me*

It’s not always easy, especially for private investigators, to get started in ‘the business.’ They need to build a reputation and they need a solid financial footing. And that’s where having a benefactor or sponsor can be very handy. Benefactors provide financial support and very often they help spread the word about the sleuth, too and that can build a sleuth’s reputation and client base. There are a lot of examples of benefactors and sponsors in crime fiction, and it’s interesting to see that although they may remain in the background during an investigation, their influence can have a real impact.

Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot for instance is a highly successful private investigator and through the years, he’s made quite a lot of money. But it wasn’t always that way. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, we learn that he came to England as a refugee from Belgium. He and some other Belgians were sponsored by Emily Inglethorp, a wealthy benefactor to whom Poirot feels a debt. So when she is poisoned, he is only too happy to undertake the task of finding out who killed her.

There’s another benefactor in Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. That’s the story of the murder of a seemingly inoffensive charwoman. Her lodger James Bentley has been convicted of the crime, but Superintendent Spence doesn’t think Bentley is guilty. So he asks Poirot to look into the matter. Poirot agrees and travels to the village of Broadhinny where the murder occurred. It turns out that Mrs. McGinty found out more than was safe for her to know about one of Broadhinny’s residents and was killed to guarantee her silence. Several of the locals are keeping secrets and have a good motive for murder, so Poirot has his work cut out for him as the saying goes. In the meantime, Poirot’s friend detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is also in Broadhinny. She’s staying with up-and-coming playwright Robin Upward, who is adapting one of her novels for the stage. Upward is the adopted son of Laura Upward, and we soon learn that she is as much his sponsor and benefactor as she is anything else. It’s an interesting dynamic that runs through the story.

Sometimes a sleuth is also a benefactor. That’s the case with Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. Wimsey is both wealthy and titled, and he has access to the highest of social circles. He uses that privilege to sponsor a number of people including Miss Katherine Climpson, who owns and runs a temporary agency. Miss Climpson’s employees certainly do their share of typing, filing and other clerical jobs. But unbeknownst to a lot of people, they also assist when Wimsey needs some extra help on one of his cases. For instance, in Strong Poison, Wimsey needs an important clue that can be found in the office of attorney Norman Urquhart. Rather than going to the office himself and asking openly for that clue, Wimsey arranges for Joan Murchison, one of Miss Climpson’s employees, to take a clerking job at the law office. She finds the clue that Wimsey needs and is therefore an important part of solving the case Wimsey’s working on, the poisoning murder of author Phillip Boyes. In this case, there’s a mutually-beneficial relationship between the benefactor and the person he sponsors.

Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma. Precious Ramotswe’s benefactor was her beloved father Obed Ramotswe. The two were devoted to each other and it was the sale of her father’s cattle after his death that gave Mma. Ramotswe the ‘seed money’ she needed to start her own detective agency. While her father didn’t play the classic ‘sponsor’ role of referring clients and supporting her business during its early days, he did support his daughter’s education. He also looked after her in the sense of wanting to make sure she could live independently. In this case there’s an admitted fine line between being a caring parent and being a benefactor but I still think Obed Ramotswe’s worth mentioning.

A more traditional example of a benefactor is Jacqueline Winspear’s Lady Rowan Compton. She and her husband Sir Julian are one of London’s wealthy ‘better’ families during the time just before and during World War I. In Maisie Dobbs, when we meet these characters, they take into their home thirteen-year-old Maisie Dobbs as a young maid. With help from Maurice Blanche, a friend of the Comptons, Lady Rowan learns that Maisie is extremely intelligent and has a great deal of potential. So Lady Rowan decides to sponsor Maisie. She arranges for the girl’s education, including university. She also helps Maisie get started as a private investigator after World War I. Blanche serves as Maisie’s mentor and teaches her ‘the business.’ But it’s Lady Rowan who serves as Maisie’s benefactor and as the series continues, Lady Rowan refers clients, spreads the word about Maisie’s business and in other ways supports her business.

Rebecca Cantrell’s Hannah Vogel is a journalist just before and during World War II. Although she earns a small amount of money for her work, it’s certainly not enough to conduct investigations. But in A Trace of Smoke she meets wealthy banker Boris Krause. Vogel had done an article on a serial rapist who attacked Krause’s daughter Trudi and that’s their first connection. But they soon develop a relationship. Among other things, Krause becomes Vogel’s benefactor when she begins to investigate the murder of her brother Ernst. That search for the truth leads Vogel into some very dangerous places, including the upper echelons of the swiftly-growing Nazi party, so Vogel has to take some serious risks. But Krause has the connections to help to help keep her safe, and he provides financial backing too. In Krause we see an interesting blend of benefactor/sponsor who also develops an intimate relationship with the sleuth.

And then there’s successful men’s clothier Anthony Gatt, who sponsors Anthony Bidulka’s Russell Quant. Gatt also serves as Quant’s personal mentor in a lot of ways, but in a very practical way, he supports Quant’s PI business. Gatt is extremely well connected; he knows everyone who is anyone in Saskatchewan and a lot of other places too. So he refers clients, he makes social connections for Quant, and a few times he provides a place for Quant to stay when he’s ‘on the road.’ Gatt doesn’t directly give money to Quant; his financial support is more subtle. But it’s definitely there.

Benefactors and sponsors don’t always broadcast the support they give. But it’s essential to those who have talent but not a lot of money. I’ve only mentioned a few fictional sponsors, so I’m sure I’ve left out some you like. Who are they?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s Friend Like Me.

Does Anything Last Forever?*

An interesting post at Fair Dinkum Crime (You really should be following that blog if you’re not) has got me thinking about what happens as we expand our reading horizons. Reading more widely introduces one to all kinds of ideas, themes, and authors that one wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. It also gives debut authors and authors who are less widely known the chance to get their work ‘out there.’ So I for one think it benefits readers, authors and the genre (in this case crime fiction) when readers stretch themselves. Of course, let’s not talk about what expanding one’s reading horizons does to one’s TBR list… But there’s another consequence to branching out: one sees one’s old favourites in a different light. Sometimes that’s a positive experience, and sometimes it isn’t. As we evolve in our reading habits, we do get a different perspective and that affects the way we look at the authors and books we always loved before.

For example, authors such as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr created memorable novels that feature mostly a focus on plotting as opposed to deep character development. Of course one can point to exceptions in each of these authors’ back catalogues but in general their novels feature intellectual puzzles. That’s their appeal for millions of crime fiction fans. But for those of you who loved those puzzles, what happened to your view when you first read, say, Ruth Rendell’s work or P.D. James’ work? Those authors certainly feature solid mystery plots but their focus is also on deep interesting characters and psychological study. Did expanding your horizons that way change your perception of the ‘whodunit’ kind of intellectual exercise?

Many readers fell in love with the hardboiled PI novel along the lines of Raymond Chandler and later, John D. MacDonald, Peter Temple, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton. It’s easy to see why too. A well-written ‘hard boiled’ novel has a solid blend of realism, action, compelling plot and suspense. And the very well-written ones also develop the characters so that they aren’t ‘cardboard cutouts.’ But if you’re the PI-novel type, what happened to your perception when you expanded your horizons to include quieter series such as Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series? Did you change your view of the level of violence and grit in the series you’d always loved? If you’ve broadened your reading to include some traditional ‘country house’ or ‘English village’ series such as Ngaio Marsh’s or Caroline Graham’s work, have you returned with the same interest to the PI sub-genre?

Very often crime fiction fans experience these ‘growing pains’ if you want to call it that when they broaden their reading to include the work of authors from other countries. Each country has a different culture – sometimes several different cultures – and that’s reflected in the crime fiction that comes from that country. So suppose you’ve been a fan of L.A. crime fiction such as the work of Michael Connelly. What happened to your perception of that sort of crime fiction after you expanded your reading to include work such as Håkan Nesser’s Inspector Van Veeteren novels or Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache novels? Those series reflect the cultures of their authors and thus expose readers to those cultures. After experiencing those different cultures did you return to Connelly’s work with the same enthusiasm?

There are also many crime fiction fans who originally fell in love with historical crime fiction such as Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series. If that describes you, what happened to your perception of that context and those authors when you began to read crime fiction set in the modern day? Do you still enjoy virtually returning to medieval times? What about when you began to read historical crime fiction set in different eras, such as Rebecca Cantrell’s Hannah Vogel series which is set just before World War II? Did that change your perception of the historical crime fiction you’d always loved?

Sometimes of course we broaden our reading only to realise how much we really do enjoy the novels we’ve always loved. In those cases, returning to a favourite author’s work is like re-uniting with a dear friend. Yes we’ve matured but that doesn’t change our feelings about that author’s novels. I know I have my favourites whose writing I always enjoy. It doesn’t always work out that way though, even if the author has continued to innovate and create well-written books.

When that happens – when we see that our tastes have simply changed – it can be a little sad, especially if we have some very good memories of a particular author or series. But people grow and expand their horizons and sometimes that simply means that our favourite clothes if you will simply don’t fit any more.

Has that happened to you? What’s happened to your perception of your favourite authors’ novels as you’ve widened the scope of your reading? If you’re a writer, has your writing changed as your reading has changed? Just wondering…

Thanks to Bernadette at Reactions to Reading for the inspiration for this post. Folks, you really should be following her superb blog. I know it’s one of my must-reads.
 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Kenny Loggins’ Heart to Heart.

A Musical Salute ;-)

Today (or tomorrow, depending on when you read this), we’re celebrating Independence Day in the U.S.. This year I’ve thought of a different sort of way to observe the occasion. I hope you enjoy
 

 

I wish a happy and safe Independence Day to my U.S. readers!

But the Big Bad World Doesn’t Owe You a Thing*

We’ve all had to deal with sadness, let-downs and sometimes much worse. In fact, the question really isn’t whether we have to deal with those negative and sometimes terrible things. The more important question is how we cope – what we do about the bad breaks we get. In crime fiction, there are a lot of novels that feature characters who’ve gotten a raw deal and lash out about it; sometimes those characters become murderers and there are a lot of plots both good and…otherwise that feature those characters. But the more interesting characters (or perhaps this is just my opinion) are those who don’t waste their time blaming others for their problems. Those characters may acknowledge that they’ve been hurt, or been a victim of some very bad fortune or worse. But, to use a metaphor, they play the hand they’ve been dealt. It takes strength and resilience to do that.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly we meet Amy Folliat. Once the lady of Nasse House in Nassecombe, Devonshire, she has had several pieces of very bad fortune. For one thing, she married a man who turned out to be an abusive alcoholic during an era when divorce was simply not an option. For another, she lost one of her sons during World War II. The family’s economic situation became so difficult that the Folliats were forced to sell Nasse House to pay debts, so that now Amy Folliat lives in the lodge associated with the house. And yet, although everyone knows about the blows fate has dealt her, no-one sees Amy Folliat behave bitterly or bemoan her fate. She doesn’t blame others for what’s happened to her. Instead, she lives life as best she can. When Sir George and Lady Hattie Stubbs begin to plan the fête that’s been held annually for years, Amy Folliat joins in the planning. This year, the group decides to have a Murder Hunt, akin to a scavenger hunt. They commission detective novelist Ariadne Oliver to design the Murder Hunt and she travels to Nasse House to do the planning. Soon after her arrival, she begins to get the feeling that something more is going on than just a fête, and asks Hercule Poirot to join her there. He agrees and travels to Nasse House under the guise of giving out the prizes for the Murder Hunt. On the day of the fête, Oliver’s worse fears are realised when fourteen-year-old Marlene Tucker, who was playing the part of the “victim” in the hunt, is really strangled. Poirot works with Inspector Bland to find out the truth about the killing. Throughout the novel, we see Amy Folliat’s strength of character and her refusal to blame others for the things that have happened to her. She’s a stronger and more interesting character for that.

James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux is like that too. He’s had his share of disappointments and bad breaks, but he doesn’t waste time looking for people to blame. Instead, he does what needs to be done given what he is and has. For instance, in A Morning For Flamingos, he and his partner Lester Benoit are assigned to transport two prisoners to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. One of the prisoners Jimmie Lee Boggs manages to escape and free his fellow prisoner Tee Beau Latiolais. Boggs kills Benoit and badly wounds Robicheaux, leaving him for dead. Robicheaux certainly knows that Boggs is responsible for what happens – he even has nightmares about it – and when he gets the chance to go after Boggs he does. But at the same time, he plays the hand he’s been dealt. Instead of spending his recovery time hating and blaming Boggs, he uses it to heal, to spend time with his daughter Alafair and to get back to the business of living. Robicheaux is a Vietnam veteran, so he sometimes has nightmares of things that happened during that war. But rather then blame the government that sent him, or the soldiers who attacked him, Robicheaux simply does his best to deal with the after-effects of that trauma.

We see that same strength of character in Denise Mina’s Maureen “Mauri” O’Donnell. She’s had more than her share of bad breaks. She grew up with a paedophile father and an alcoholic mother. For a number of reasons she really doesn’t have a close bond with anyone in the family except her brother Liam. But Mauri O’Donnell doesn’t waste her time blaming her dysfunctional family for everything that happens to her. She knows that her parents are deeply troubled and she knows what the source is of her own fragile emotional state. But instead of fulminating about it, she deals with her life as it is. She has friends, she works in a women’s shelter, and she builds a world for herself. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t acknowledge her scars. They are very real. But as we learn in Garnethill, they don’t stop her from finding out who killed her former lover Douglas Brady. They don’t stop her in Exile or Resolution, either. She shows real strength of character as she deals with the murder of one of the residents of the women’s shelter, the trial of Douglas Brady’s murderer and more. And that’s mostly because she doesn’t obsess about who is responsible for her bad fortune. She simply deals with her life as best she can.

So does Peter Temple’s Jack Irish. Irish is a Melbourne private investigator who used to have a regular law practice. Then his beloved wife Isabel was murdered by one of his clients. In Bad Debts, here is what Irish says about that:

 

“Deranged clients. It’s a risk you run. Isabel knew that. She practised family law, where practically all the clients are deranged to some degree. I didn’t blame myself. I just raged against fate.”

 

In that sense Irish does acknowledge his anger, grief and loss. And he does slide into a long period of drinking. But – and here’s what’s crucial – Irish doesn’t blame others for his choice to drink or for his anger. He doesn’t blame “an unfair system” or even spend a lot of time blaming the client who shot his wife. He picks up his pieces, stops going on drinking binges and simply lives his life with what he has.

We see a similar response in Deon Meyer’s Martin Lemmer. Lemmer is a professional bodyguard whom we meet in Blood Safari. He is the product of an abusive childhood and a broken home. He’s also had a battle with alcohol. But Lemmer does not waste time blaming his parents or anyone else. He gets a job as a personal bodyguard and is hired by Emma le Roux to travel with her from Cape Town to the Lowveld to help solve the mystery of her brother Jacobus’ disappearance. During the course of that trip, we learn that Lemmer copes with the life he’s got by not drinking, by controlling the anger he knows he has and by simply, as the saying goes, putting his head down and doing his job. He doesn’t ask us to feel sorry for him.

Neither does Rebecca Cantrell’s Hannah Vogel, whom we meet for the first time in A Trace of Smoke. Vogel comes from a very troubled family background. In her adult life, she has to cope with food shortages, an unstable income and in A Trace of Smoke she has to deal with her grief at the loss of her brother Ernst. When Vogel discovers that her brother’s been killed, she is determined to find out how and by whom Ernst was murdered. She can’t do it openly though because she’s lent her identity papers to a friend and hasn’t gotten them back yet. And yet, through all of this, plus the danger from the rising Nazi party, Vogel doesn’t ask us to blame anyone for what’s happened to her, or to feel sorry for her. She uses her wits and she does what she can with what she has rather than wasting time blaming others.

The ability to simply “play the hand one’s dealt” without useless blaming can add real strength to a character and make that character all the more appealing. That said though, it’s just as important to make characters realistic enough to acknowledge the enormity of what happens to them and deal with that reality.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from The Eagles’ Get Over It

When I Had to Pawn My Clothes Just to Pay The Rent*

It’s easy enough to make wise decisions when things are going well. But it’s less easy to predict what we might do if our world were suddenly turned, as the saying goes, upside down. That seems to be especially true about financial security. People who suddenly find themselves in a financially desperate situation, or a situation they see as desperate, may find themselves doing things they would never consider doing otherwise. Financial desperation adds a severe burden of stress and can completely change one’s perspective on “the right thing to do.” In crime fiction it can be a motive for murder but even when it isn’t, that kind of desperation can add suspense and a layer of character development to a story.

For example, in Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood (AKA There is a Tide), we meet the members of the Cloade family. They’ve always depended on patriarch Gordon Cloade for financial security and he’s always promised his younger brothers and sister and their families that they would never need to worry. But then, everyone’s shocked when Cloade gets married to the much-younger Rosaleen Underhay. He and his new bride have only been married a few weeks when Cloade is tragically killed in a wartime bomb blast. Now the Cloade family is faced with a real financial problem: Gordon Cloade died intestate. So his widow Rosaleen will now inherit his considerable wealth. The Cloades are all accustomed to depending on Gordon Cloade for financial support and now have to face the real prospect of loss of income. Then a possible solution to their problem comes to town in the form of a stranger who says he may have news of interest to them. It seems that Rosaleen Underhay may have been married to someone else at the time of her wedding to Gordon Cloade. If she was, then she was not legally married to Cloade and so, cannot inherit. The visit of this stranger, who calls himself Enoch Arden, throws all of the Cloades, including Rosaleen, into turmoil. Then, Enoch Arden is killed. Hercule Poirot is asked by two members of the Cloade family, on two separate occasions, to look into the matter of the identity of this stranger and he begins an investigation. As he searches for the truth, we see just what financial panic can do to people.

We see that also in Ruth Rendell’s Simisola. That’s the story of the disappearance of Melanie Akande, who went to keep an appointment at the local Employment Bureau and never came back. Her father Raymond Akande is DCI Reg Wexford’s physician, so he asks Wexford to look into the matter. Wexford agrees somewhat reluctantly and begins to ask some questions. Then, Annette Bystock, the jobs counselor with whom Melanie Akande had her appointment, is murdered. Now Wexford and his team begin to concentrate their efforts on the Employment Bureau and we see how the desperate need for money and the stress of being unemployed can weigh on people. When the body of a young woman is found in a nearby wood, Wexford thinks it’s the body of Melanie Akande. It turns out though that it’s not Melanie Akande. Now Wexford and his team have an even more complicated story to unravel. All throughout this story there is the theme of money, of unemployment and of financial desperation. In fact, it even strikes the Wexford family. Wexford’s son-in-law Neil Fairfax loses his job and he and Wexford’s daughter Sylvia have to completely re-think their lives, their relationship and more. Here’s how Neil himself puts it:

 

“…being unemployed demotes you.”

 

It’s an astute observation.

There’s also a sense of financial desperation in Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke. Crime reporter Hannah Vogel lives and works in Weimar Republic Berlin, a time of financial desperation and real poverty during the Great Depression. She considers herself very lucky that she’s got a job and doesn’t have to resort to prostitution to be able to buy food, as many women do during that time. When Vogel discovers by accident that her brother Ernst has been murdered, she’s shocked and of course, wants to know what happened to him. But she’s in a very delicate situation. She and Ernst lent their identity papers to some Jewish friends to allow them to leave Germany. Her papers haven’t yet been returned to her, so she can’t call any more attention to herself than is absolutely necessary. Still, she goes to work very quietly, looking into Ernst’s murder and trying to find out what she can. She gets another surprise when a young boy named Anton, who claims to be Ernst’s son, shows up on her doorstep, saying she is his mother. Vogel knows that’s not true but she takes Anton in and does her best to feed him and take care of him. That includes pawning some jewellery to get what money she can. As it turns out, Ernst Vogel wasn’t murdered for money, but throughout this novel, we see just how financially desperate people are, and how the burgeoning Nazi Party uses this desperation for its own ends.

In Walter Mosley’s A Red Death, which takes place in the early 1950’s, former aeroplane mechanic Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins finds himself in a very desperate financial situation. He did a “favour” for a friend, for which he earned quite a lot of money on which he never paid taxes. He gets a letter from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent Reginald Lawrence claiming that he owes the IRS thousands of dollars in back taxes and threatening Rawlins with imprisonment if he doesn’t pay. Rawlins can’t pay, and he’s sure that he’s bound for prison. Thenl he’s given an unexpected way out. FBI agent Darryl Craxton offers to make Rawlins’ tax problems go away. In return, Rawlins must agree to help the FBI bring down a suspected communist named Chaim Wenzler, who’s a former member of the Polish Resistance. Wenzler does volunteer work at the First African Baptist Church, so the plan is for Rawlins to do the same and get close to Wenzler. Rawlins has no way out of this situation, so he agrees. But matters get extremely difficult for him when he gets to know Wenzler and finds he actually likes the man. Then, two bodies are found in the church, and since Rawlins was there at the time of the murders, he’s a prime suspect. Now he has to find out who the real killer is before he’s jailed himself. Rawlins finds himself in this situation in part because he’s caught, as the saying goes, between a rock and hard place financially.

And then there’s Andrea Camilleri’s The Shape of Water. In that novel, the body of Vigatà businessman and politician Silvio Lupanello is found in The Pasture, a notorious area outside of town. One of the men who find the body is Baldassare “Saro” Montaperto, who gets a small salary for helping to clean up trash at The Pasture. Saro finds more than he bargained for when he discovers a valuable necklace near the place where Luparello’s body is found. Instead of turning the necklace over to the police, which is what he’s supposed to do, or to Gegè Gullotta, who runs The Pasture, Saro keeps the necklace. Ordinarily, Saro isn’t a thief, but he has a desperately ill son and very little money – certainly not enough for the boy’s medical treatment. Inspector Salvo Montalbano and his team investigate Luparello’s murder and in the process, find that the necklace could be an important piece of evidence. Montalbano finds out that Saro took the necklace and why, and comes up with a very clever way to recover the necklace and still make sure that Saro’s son gets the treatment he needs. It’s an interesting sub-plot to this novel.

Just about all of us probably have a point of financial desperation at which we would do things that we’d never consider doing otherwise. When that happens in crime fiction, it can make for a solid layer of tension, an interesting sub-plot, and a good motive for murder.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Ray Charles’ Hard Times (No One Knows Better Than I).  The Eric Clapton version of this song is terrific, too.