I’m Just a Poor Soul in the Unemployment Line, My God, I’m Hardly Alive*

If you’ve ever been unemployed, you know the mix of fear and shame that being out of work can bring. There are of course people who don’t want to work. But the vast majority of people without jobs are not unemployed because they like it that way. On one level, the most basic of levels, unemployment threatens one’s security. Even for people who live in countries that have social ‘safety nets,’ unemployment means re-thinking every purchase. It means possibly having to leave one’s home. It means a struggle to provide the barest essentials. On another level there’s the whole matter of social perception. People who are unemployed, especially if it’s for more than a brief period, are often looked at with pity or worse, with hostility (i.e. ‘Why don’t you get off your lazy a*** and get a job!’). On yet another level there’s the deep sense of shame one feels when one doesn’t have work. After all, many people’s identities are tied up with what they do. I’ll bet when you meet someone for the first time, one of the questions that invariably get asked is, ‘What do you do for a living?’ So it’s not surprising that being unemployed deeply affects the way we act, the way we think and the way we look at the world. And it can drive people to all sorts of things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Little wonder then that unemployment is a thread that’s woven through a lot of crime fiction. Let me just give a few examples.

Agatha Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead is the story of Hercule Poirot’s investigation into the murder of a charwoman. Everyone in the village of Broadhinny thinks that Mrs. McGinty was murdered by her lodger James Bentley. And there is evidence against him. And yet, Superintendent Spence thinks Bentley may be innocent, so he asks Poirot to go to Broadhinny and look into the matter. One of the things that Poirot finds out quickly is that there’s a lot of local prejudice against Bentley. He had a job at an estate agent’s office but lost it and hasn’t been able to find another. That in itself is a major strike against him and it deeply affects his already shaky self-confidence. In fact, Bentley is so lacking in self-respect that he sees little point in re-investigating the case. Fortunately for him, Poirot doesn’t see things the same way and is able to find out the truth about Mrs. McGinty’s death.

In Mickey Spillane’s The Big Kill, we meet William Decker. He’s a former safecracker who’s decided to ‘go straight’ mostly for the sake of his son. But it’s hard to find a job and after all, one can’t feed a child on good intentions. So Decker takes a fateful decision. One day, Spillane’s sleuth Mike Hammer is in a seedy bar when Decker comes in with his son. He downs two drinks in quick succession, says goodbye to his son and leaves the bar. Seconds later he’s knocked down in what looks like a hit-and-run incident. Hammer dashes outside in time to see that this is no ordinary hit-and-run tragedy. The passenger in the car that struck Decker also shot him to make he was dead. Hammer takes in Decker’s son and determines to find out who’s behind the murder. It turns out that Decker was desperate for money and got mixed up with a local criminal gang. At first it looks as though members of that gang killed him as punishment for bungling a job. But the reality turns out to be quite different.

Robert Pollock’s Loophole takes a solid look at several levels on which unemployment can wreak havoc on a person. Stephen Booker is an architect who’s just lost his job. At first, he works hard to find another, but he’s unsuccessful and begins to sink into depression. Finally, he settles for the only thing that he can find: a job driving a cab at night. He doesn’t earn much money but his self-respect and his marriage are suffering and he’s desperate for whatever he can get. Booker’s cab driving puts him in touch with professional thief Mike Daniels, who’s busy planning a major heist. He and his team want to break into the City Savings Deposit Bank. When Daniels discovers that Booker is an architect by background, he decides that the team could really use Booker’s expertise to perfect their plan. At first Booker refuses. But his sense of self-respect and his dire financial straits finally convince him that he ought to go along with the gang and that’s what he does. On the day of the break-in, all is planned and ready until a major storm comes through and changes everything. Now, Booker, Daniels and the rest will have to fight the weather as well as look out for the police and security staff if they’re to get their haul.

Ruth Rendell’s Simisola takes a close look at the financial and social consequences of unemployment. Twenty-two-year-old Melanie Akande wants to find a job and get her adult life started, so she schedules an appointment at the local employment bureau. Shortly after that appointment she disappears. Her father, who’s a doctor, asks his patient Reg Wexford to look into the disappearance and after a few days, Wexford does so. He and his team are just beginning to ask questions when the body of Annette Bystock is discovered. It was with Bystock that Melanie Akande had her appointment so the investigation team starts to focus its attention on the employment bureau. As the team members interview the bureau’s employees and those who make use of the employment service, we see the effects of not having a job on everyone’s perceptions. For example, those who apply for help are given appointments and then made to wait, sometimes for hours, until someone actually sees them. And those who work at the bureau don’t all have what you could call compassionate attitudes. On the other hand, not all of the job applicants are hard-working people who have simply had a tragic piece of bad luck. In the meantime, Wexford’s son-in-law Neil has lost his job. He is hardly perfect, but we see in his response to being unemployed how frustrating, enervating and humiliating it can be to be jobless. Rendell doesn’t offer easy answers to the problem of unemployment, which is just as well; there aren’t any. But she does invite the reader to think about how being unemployed affects one’s sense of self-worth and one’s choices. She also invites readers to think about the effects of others’ perceptions of those who have no jobs.

There’s an unflinching look at that perception in Y.A. Erskine’s The Brotherhood. That novel’s main plot is the investigation into the murder of Tasmania police sergeant John White, who is stabbed when he and a colleague Lucy Howard are called to the scene of a break-in. The prime suspect for the crime is seventeen-year-old Darren Rowley, who comes from Glenorchy, a low-income suburb of Hobart. Police Commissioner Ron Chalmers is furious that one of his best men has been killed and is only too happy to write Darren Rowley off. As we learn more about Chalmers, we also learn his attitude towards those without jobs, especially those who live in places like Glenorchy. Here’s a bit of the way he compares the unemployed residents of Glenorchy with other people:

 

‘One generation of normal, sane, hardworking, decent, contributing human beings as opposed to two generations of dole-bludging, thieving, fighting pieces of trash.’

 

Chalmers’ attitude about the unemployed is extreme. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t shared by a lot of people.

That social perception of unemployment as a disgrace, combined with the sense of personal shame and of course, the fear of not being able to survive, makes having no job a very stressful situation.  Sadly, it happens to millions of people so it’s no surprise that crime writers explore the problem. I know I’ve only mentioned a few examples here. There are many more.

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Styx’s Blue Collar Man (Long Nights). Readers who are kind enough to check this blog regularly may remember that I just used this song a few days ago. Usually I don’t do that, but this part of the song reflects the reality for a lot of people without jobs.

Well, You Say That I’m an Outlaw*

In crime fiction, we usually think of the protagonist as ‘the good guy’ – the one who catches ‘the bad guy.’ But people who break the law can also be really interesting protagonists and even sleuths. Having a criminal as a protagonist gives a really interesting perspective on a crime. It also allows for some solid depth of character.

One of G.K. Chesterton’s well-drawn characters is Hercule Flambeau, who is a master jewel thief and criminal. He’s usually able to outwit the police, but when he encounters Father Paul Brown in The Blue Cross, Flambeau finds he’s met his match. In that story, Father Brown is en route to a large gathering of priests. With him he’s brought a silver cross set with turquoise – a very attractive prize to a thief such as Flambeau. The story of how the two men interact and of how Father Brown deals with Flambeau is interesting and certainly from Flambeau’s perspective, unusual. We meet Flambeau in other stories too where he is at least the co-protagonist and although he has a criminal past, he’s painted quite sympathetically.

Agatha Christie takes an interesting look at the criminal-as-protagonist in And Then There Were None (AKA Ten Little Indians). Ten very different people receive invitations to stay as guests at a house on Indian Island, off the Devon coast. For different reasons, each accepts. On the night of their arrival, the guests are shocked when each is accused of being a criminal, specifically of causing the death of at least one other person. Then, one of the guests dies of what turns out to be poison. Later that night there’s another death. It’s soon clear that they are trapped on the island with a murderer. As more guests begin to die, the survivors have to find out who the killer is while at the same time staying alive themselves. As we learn the backstory of each person on the island, we also learn why their un-named host considers them criminals. But they’re not entirely unsympathetic people and we can feel for them as they try to decide who can be trusted and who not.

Robert Pollock’s Loophole: Or, How to Rob a Bank is the story of a group of criminals led by professional thief Mike Daniels. The team decides to try for a very big prize: a theft from the City Savings Bank. Their bold plan is to use the sewer system to tunnel under the bank. For that though they’ll need the help of an architect. They find their man in the person of Stephen Booker, an unemployed architect who’s taken to driving a night cab to put food on the table. He’s desperate for money so against his better judgement he falls in with the thieves. The group makes elaborate preparations and as they do, Pollock shows the thieves in a sympathetic light. Here for instance is Daniels’ description of thieves:

 

‘Thieves. You might just as well say salesmen or clerks in an office. It’s their business. It’s what they do. There’s nothing strange about it, not to them anyway…They do what everybody does. They have girlfriends or wives and children and hobbies. They build shelves in the kitchen and clean their cars on Sundays.’
 

The day of the robbery arrives and at first everything goes well. Then a storm moves in, bringing a lot of rain with it. Now the thieves face a literal life-or-death struggle as they try to go for their prize.

In Tony Broadbent’s The Smoke, we meet Jethro, a professional cat burglar living in post-World War II London’s West End.  He tries to convince the world that he’s ‘gone straight,’ so he takes a job in the theatre district. His real goal though is easy access to the wealthy homes in nearby Mayfair and Belgravia. At first, he’s able to go fairly un-noticed even though most people in the criminal world are convinced that he has no intention of living an ‘upright’ life. Then Jethro decides on a real coup: emeralds belonging to the wife of the Russian Ambassador. That break-in gets the interest of MI5 and Jethro soon finds himself facing off against them, the police and fellow criminals. While it’s quite clear that Jethro’s a criminal, it’s easy to feel sympathy for him.

In Jeffrey Stone’s historical novel Play Him Again we are introduced to Matt ‘Hud’ Hudson. Hud has dreams of becoming a film-maker in the growing world of Hollywood. But at the moment he’s a ‘rum-runner’ – a smuggler of then-illegal alcohol (the novel takes place in the 1920’s). Hud is devastated when his friend Danny is murdered, Hud wants to find out who killed him and get revenge. There are plenty of suspects too. For one thing, a very nasty criminal gang has moved into the area and wants to take over Hud and Danny’s operation. There are rival smuggling groups too whose members would be all too happy to have the field cleared as the saying goes. As Hud searches for answers, it’s clear that he and several of the people he deals with are criminals – thieves, con men and smugglers. But Stone presents a lot of them sympathetically and it’s not hard to wish Hud well as he tries to find out what happened to his friend.

Even when criminals aren’t ‘official’ protagonists, they can play important roles in novels and be depicted sympathetically. For example, Andrea Camilleri’s series featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano includes a very interesting ‘regular’ character Gegè Gullotta. He’s a drug dealer and local criminal leader who runs a notorious area of the town of Vigàta. This area, called The Pasture, is a meeting place for prostitutes and their clients and for small-time marijuana and other drug deals. Gullotta and Montalbano went to school together and they’ve maintained a cordial relationship since then, although both of them find it more expedient to keep their friendship discreet. Gullotta wants to run a trouble-free operation; as he sees it he’s a businessman, nothing more. In his way Montalbano helps Gullotta by not making public examples of the people involved in Gullotta’s ‘enterprises.’ Gullotta appreciates being able to run a peaceful trade and he does his part by not letting things in The Pasture get out of control or trouble people who don’t want to be involved in what goes on there. He’s also quite tuned in to the Vigàta criminal community so he hears a lot of what goes on. More than once Montalbano benefits from what Gullotta finds out.

It’s always interesting to see stories from different points of view. When criminals are portrayed as protagonists, it’s important for authors to acknowledge that they’re lawbreakers. But at the same time, a criminal with a sympathetic character can make for an effective perspective in a crime novel. Which ones have you enjoyed?

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Woody Guthrie’s Pretty Boy Floyd.

Money Makes the World Go Around*

Banking – and I don’t mean only high finance – is such an integral part of our lives that we don’t really think about it unless there’s some sort of problem. And with today’s direct deposit, ATMs and electronic banking transactions we really don’t even need to go into a bank very often. And yet our financial lives are a part of who we are. So when there’s a crime, especially if the crime may have a financial motive, the police waste little time going into victims’ and suspects’ banking histories. And it’s surprising what they can find there. In fact there’s even a forensics specialty in accounting and banking. Detectives and attorneys use things such as ATM transactions and debit card purchases to marshal evidence for and against people too. With the prevalence of banking in our lives it’s no wonder it shows up so much in crime fiction. The topic of banking in crime fiction is quite broad so this post only gives me the space to touch on a few aspects of it. But a quick glance is all you need I think to really see how important banking and finance are to the genre.

Starting from the days of Arthur Conan Doyle and even before, bank robberies have been the subject of crime fiction stories. That’s what’s behind Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Red-Headed League. In that story pawnbroker Jabez Wilson is offered an opportunity that seems to good to be true. He is hired for good pay to copy the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The only proviso is that he cannot leave his new place of employment while he is ‘on duty.’ Happy enough to comply with that rule he begins his job. All goes well until the day he goes to work only to find that his employers seem to have disappeared. Wilson asks Holmes to look into the matter and Holmes begins to investigate. He finds that Wilson was being manipulated by a gang of thieves who wanted to use Wilson’s pawn shop as a base from whence they would tunnel into the nearby City and Suburban Bank.

Bank robberies are also integral to the plots of Robert Pollock’s Loophole or, How to Rob a Bank and Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo. In both of those novels there’s a plan to use underground tunnels as a way to break into a bank. For those who are interested, I recommend reading Pollock’s novel first, since it takes place about thirty years before Connelly’s does, and it’s really interesting (or maybe it’s just me) to see how technology and bank security changed over time.

A bank robbery also plays an important role in Karin Fossum’s He Who Fears the Wolf.  In that novel, Oslo Inspector Konrad Sejer and his assistant Jacob Skarre are investigating the murder of Halldis Horn, who lived alone after the death of her husband. The evidence seems to point to Errki Johrma, who has mental illness and a very troubled personal history. But Sejer isn’t sure at all that Johrma is the killer. And since Johrma has disappeared, there’s no way to question him about the crime. Then, there’s a bank robbery to which Sejer is a sort of eyewitness. He’s passing by Fokus Bank, where he has an account. Not far from the bank he sees a young man who for several reasons makes him uneasy. When the man goes into the bank Sejer goes in too but then chides himself for being overly suspicious. Sejer leaves the bank but he’s only a few blocks away when he hears a shot. He returns to the bank to find out that the man he observed robbed the bank and has escaped. That robbery ends up being related, ‘though in an unexpected way, to the murder investigation.

Bank transactions themselves can provide clues to the motive for a crime and to the person who committed it. We see that all through crime fiction. For instance, under the name Emma Lathen, the writing duo of Mary Jane Latsis  and  Martha Henissart created a very popular series featuring banking vice president John Putnam Thatcher. He is employed by international banking giant Sloan Guaranty Trust. In that capacity, he oversees many of the bank’s transactions and gets involved with banking clients. And because of his knowledge of the way banking works, he’s often able to find financial clues that solve murders. For instance in Going For the Gold, the Sloan has been selected as the official bank of the 1980 Winter Olympics. Thatcher travels to Lake Placid, New York where the games are to be held to oversee the bank’s handling of the myriad transactions the games will generate. When one of the athletes is murdered, Thatcher discovers that the victim was involved in a traveller’s cheque counterfeiting scheme. Another athlete who works at a bank gives Thatcher important information as to exactly how the scheme worked in individual bank branches and he is able to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Financial transactions are important, even if only mentioned briefly, in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Wealthy American businessman Samuel Ratchett is on his way across Europe on the world-famous Orient Express train when he is stabbed late one night. Hercule Poirot is aboard the same train and his friend M. Bouc, a company director, persuades him to investigate. It’s soon discovered that Ratchett is not who he appears to be. In his real identity he’s hiding a dark secret that has everything to do with his murder. Ratchett’s past catches up with him in part because his murderer has discovered through his financial transactions exactly how he managed to escape it, so to speak.

Peter Temple’s Bad Debts introduces us to occasional lawyer and private investigator Jack Irish. When he gets a series of messages from a former client Danny McKillop, he doesn’t take them seriously at first. Then McKillop is murdered. Partly out of a sense of guilt for not paying closer attention to the messages, Irish begins to look into what happened to the victim. Eight years earlier McKillop had gone to prison for the hit-and-run killing of Melbourne activist Anne Jeppeson. Irish’s investigation raises the strong possibility that McKillop was framed for Jeppeson’s death and that she was, in fact, deliberately murdered. With help from journalist Linda Hilliard, Irish discovers through financial and banking transactions exactly what the motive was for Jeppeson’s killing. Those transactions are also part of what leads him to the real killer.

A trip to the bank proves to be of vital importance in Henning Mankell’s  Faceless Killers. Johannes Lövgren and his wife Maria are brutally murdered one night and Inspector Kurt Wallander and his team on the Ystad police force investigate the killings. It doesn’t look as though robbery was the motive; the couple was not known to be wealthy and besides, the murders are more brutal than one would expect in a case of robbery gone wrong. Just before she dies, Maria Lövgren says the word foreign, and that raises all sorts of suspicions, to say nothing of controversy. But a thorough investigation turns up nothing to connect the couple to any foreigners living in the area. Meanwhile the team looks in to Lövgren’s bank statements and financial records and uncovers some facts about his past that no-one knew. But Wallander still cannot make a direct connection between the killer and the victims. Then he visits the Union Bank, where Lövgren had a safe-deposit box. During his trip there he gets an unexpected clue and the same person later provides him with the conclusive evidence he needs to catch the killer.

There are plenty of other novels out there where the police trace bank transactions, debit card use and other financial clues that lead them to a criminal and a motive or that exonerate someone. It’s a realistic approach to getting evidence too since virtually all of us use banks in one way or another. When financial detail isn’t overly burdensome, it can add much to a story.  Do you find that kind of investigation interesting? If you’re a writer, do you include banking when you plan motive or clue-gathering?

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Fred Ebb and John Kander’s Money Song.

I Count Every Penny and I Watch Where it Goes*

Most of us have money concerns at least every once in a while. It’s usually not because we’re greedy (although there are of course greedy people out there). It’s really because of what money represents to us – security. Let’s face it; in today’s world, money is necessary to meet even our most basic needs.  Without money, our sense of security is threatened and that can make people desperate, even if relatively small amounts of money are at stake. Desperate people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. So it’s not surprising that an urgent need for money can drive people to crime, both in real life and in crime fiction.

For example, in Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness (AKA Poirot Loses a Client), wealthy Emily Arundell has a nearly-fatal fall down the stairs in her home. As she’s recovering, little pieces of evidence suggest to her that her fall was no accident. And that realisation doesn’t surprise her. She’s got two nieces and a nephew, all of whom are desperate for money. She doesn’t want to go to the police about the matter as the family’s reputation is at stake. So she writes a letter to Hercule Poirot asking him to look into the matter. By the time Poirot gets the letter, though, it’s too late; Miss Arundell has died of what seems at first to be liver failure. It’s not, though, as Poirot discovers once he begins to investigate. He and Captain Hastings travel to the village of Market Basing where they look into the lives of Miss Arundell’s relations and her companion Wilhelmina “Minnie” Lawson. They learn that, for different reasons, just about everyone in Miss Arundell’s life was frantic about money. That urgency – that sense of desperation – is what eventually drove the killer to strike.

We also see the true desperation that money problems can cause in Mickey Spillane’s The Big Kill. In that novel, Mike Hammer is in a seedy bar drowning his sorrows when a man and his toddler son come in. The man, who we later learn is William Decker, then has two drinks in quick succession, kisses his son and leaves the bar without the boy. As he leaves, he’s struck by a hit-and-run driver and then shot. Hammer rushes out of the bar but doesn’t get there in time to save Decker. He does, however, take the boy in and decides to find out why Decker was killed. Hammer soon discovers that Decker was a former safecracker who’d decided to “go straight,” mostly for the sake of his son. But he needed money. So, being at his wits’ end, Decker got mixed up in a robbery scheme with some unsavoury people. At first, it appears that he was killed because he’d bungled a job. It’s not as simple as that, though, as Hammer discovers. In this story, Decker’s need for money drives him to do things he had sworn he wouldn’t do.

In Robert Pollock’s Loophole or, How to Rob a Bank, Stephen Booker finds himself frantic about money. He’s an architect who loses his job and can’t find another. He finally gets a low-paying job as a night-shift cab driver, but it doesn’t come close to paying the bills. Then one day he meets Mike Daniels, a professional thief. Daniels is planning a major heist of the City Savings Deposit Bank and when he meets Booker, he realises that Booker has just the skills he needs for the job. At first, Booker demurs, but his money fears are so great that he falls in with the group’s plans. Together, the team members plot a robbery that will make all of them wealthy. One of the interesting things about this novel is the way Stephen Booker’s views of right and wrong change as the book goes on. His real need for money plays a very clear role in what he is and isn’t willing to do.

Donna Leon’s Blood From a Stone also addresses what happens when people become desperate for money. Commissario Guido Brunetti is called to the scene when an unidentified Senegalese immigrant is shot, execution-style, at an open-air market. No-one saw very much that’s helpful, but from the bits and pieces he’s able to learn, Brunetti finds out where the victim lived. When he and Ispettore Vianello search the dead man’s possessions, they’re shocked to find a hidden cache of valuable diamonds. The more they look into the matter, the clearer it becomes that the diamonds are “conflict diamonds,” traded for weapons used to arm rebels against African governments. As it turns out, the dead man was desperate enough for money that he risked his life for the diamonds and in the end, that’s why he was murdered.

In Alexander McCall Smith’s The Kalahari Typing School for Men, we meet Mr. Molefelo, a successful civil engineer. When he has a near-death experience, he suddenly realises how short life is, and wants to set a few things right. Years earlier, when he was a student, he boarded with the very kind and helpful Mma. Tsolamosese and her husband. At the time, he also had a girlfriend Tebogo Bathopi. When Tebogo told him she was pregnant, Mr. Molefelo refused to be responsible for the child. The only alternative was an abortion, which neither could afford. So, feeling that he had no choice, Mr. Molefelo stole a radio belonging to his hosts and sold it to pay for the abortion. Now, he deeply regrets both the theft and the way he treated Tebogo. So he asks Mma. Ramotswe to help him find both Mma. Tsolamosese aTebogo, as he wants to make amends. Mma. Ramotswe agrees and tracks down both women, allowing Mr. Melofelo the chance to make things right.

There are also, of course, plenty of sleuths whose money worries drive them to take cases or to get into the business in the first place. For instance, Walter Mosley’s Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins gets into the sleuthing business in Devil With a Blue Dress when he loses his factory job and can’t pay his mortgage. Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum becomes a bounty hunter because she gets laid off from her department-store job and is worried about paying her rent and other bills. And Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence Beresford form the Young Adventurers Ltd. in The Secret Adversary because neither of them has a job and they need money. There are other examples, too.

Sometimes it doesn’t even take a huge amount of money to make a person desperate. Even worrying about smaller amounts of money for the basics like food, rent or mortgage, electricity and so on can be enough to drive one to do all sorts of things. It’s certainly true in real life and we see it in crime fiction, too. That makes sense, really. Not only is such a plot line realistic, but it can also add a very effective layer of tension. But what’s your view? Do you think the “desperate for money” theme is overdone?

 

 

 

*NOTE:  The title of this post is a line from the Kinks’ Low Budget.

Take a Look at My Life, I’m a Lot Like You*

Most of us would probably say we wouldn’t commit a crime. Well, maybe exceeding the posted speed limit, but a “real” crime, like robbery? Most of us wouldn’t even consider it. That’s one reason that it can be hard for crime fiction authors to make us sympathise with characters who do commit crimes.  When it’s done well, though, we can see why a character commits a crime; we might even think, “I might do the same thing.” It’s that ability to make readers identify with criminals that can make those fictional criminals all the more human.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly, we meet Alec Legge. He’s a young scientist who’s been under a tremendous amount of pressure lately, so he is persuaded to take a rest in the country for a few months. He and his artist wife Peggy take a cottage in the village of Nassecomb where they’re soon drawn into preparations for a fête to be held at Nasse House. This particular fête is to include a Murder Hunt, a bit like a scavenger hunt. In this competition, entrants are given a synopsis, clues and suspects for an imaginary murder and challenged to name the murderer, weapon and motive. Detective novelist Ariadne Oliver has been commissioned to create the game, but she begins to suspect that more is going on at Nasse House than a Murder Hunt. She asks Hercule Poirot to look into the matter and he agrees to visit Nasse House. On the day of the fête, fourteen-year-old Marlene Tucker, who is playing the part of the “victim,” is actually strangled. Poirot works with Inspector Bland and the police to find out who killed Marlene Tucker and why. In the process, he finds out that Alec Legge has been mixed up in espionage and that Marlene Tucker could have found out about it. As we learn more about Alec Legge, we can have some sympathy for him. He had certain mild political leanings and got interested in a particular group. When he decided they were going too far for him and asking too much of him, he wanted to break with the group. As he says, though,

 

“…once you get into these people’s clutches, it isn’t so easy to get out of them. And I want to get out of them…You feel you’re caught like a rat in a trap and there’s nothing you can do.”

 

Poirot understands Legge’s situation and gives him a suggestion that promises to be successful. As he and Legge discuss the matter, readers can see why Legge has acted as he did.

In Robert Pollock’s Loophole or How to Rob a Bank, London architect Stephen Booker is in deep financial trouble. Hard economic reality has led his firm to fire him. After weeks and weeks of looking unsuccessfully for a new job, Booker is desperate for money. He takes a night job as a hired car driver, hoping that he can continue to look for a job in his field during the day. Then he meets Mike Daniels, who’s a professional thief. Daniels and his team are planning a major heist of the City Savings Bank, and he needs the services of someone like Booker. At first, Booker can’t imagine falling in with a group of bank robbers, but he’s got a wife and two children whom he loves. He can’t stand the thought of not being able to provide for them. Besides, he’s afraid he’ll lose his wife’s respect if he doesn’t do something soon. So he lets Daniels convince him to work with the thieves and they put their robbery plans into action. We might not think that robbing a bank is the right thing to do, but in this novel, it’s easy to identify with Booker’s reasons for being willing to do just that.

C.J. Box’s Three Weeks to Say Goodbye introduces us to Jack McGuane, who works for the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau. He and his wife Melissa are proud and loving adoptive parents to beautiful baby Angelina. One horrible day, the McGuanes are informed that Angelina’s biological father, eighteen-year-old Garrett Moreland, never legally waived his parental rights and now wants to exercise them. The McGuanes plan to fight this decision, but Moreland is the son of a powerful judge, so they don’t have much chance of being able to keep their daughter. The McGuanes meet with the Morelands and Judge Moreland tries persuasion, bribery and threats to get the couple to surrender Angelina. After that meeting, Jack McGuane resolves to do whatever he needs to do to keep his daughter. “Whatever he needs to do” leads McGuane to do things he would never have imagined. But throughout the novel, we can identify with him and it’s easy for the reader to think, “I’m not sure I wouldn’t do the same thing if this happened to me.”

And then there’s Sven Israelsson, whom we meet in Åsa Larsson’s The Black Path. He’s the former boss of SGAB, a Swedish chemical analysis company. That company is about to be taken over by an American company when Kallis Mining, another Swedish firm, buys enough stock to keep SGAB in Sweden.  Israelsson feels quite a lot of loyalty to Kallis Mining for saving his company and his job so when the mining company finds positive results from a test drilling, he helps the company cover up that information. Israelsson’s coverup helps lead to illegal insider trading and makes a fortune for Kallis Mining and for Israelsson. Attorney Rebecka Martinsson finds out about this insider dealing as she works with police detectives Anna-Maria Mella and Sven-Erik Stålnacke to solve the brutal murder of Inna Wattrang, head of information with Kallis Mining. Martinsson and the two detectives think that Inna Wattrang’s death may be connected to this coverup, so they interrogate down Sven Israelsson. As we learn more about him, we learn more of the truth behind the insider dealing, and although what he did is illegal, we can see why he did it. He turns out to be, as Sven-Erik Stålnacke puts it,

 

“A man with a conscience.”

 

So, in the end, is Ernest Fabià, who does freelance translation in Teresa Solana’s A Shortcut to Paradise. Illness and an accident have put Fabià out of work for quite a while and behind on the family finances. In fact, the family’s financial situation becomes so desperate, at least to Fabià, that he decides to take action. He makes the desperate decision to commit a robbery. He doesn’t plan to kill anyone, nor leave his victim financially ruined. All he wants is the nine thousand euros that he needs to keep his family in their home. One night, he goes to Up and Down, a trendy Barcelona club frequented by the very rich. He robs famous author Amadeu Cabestany, who’s gone to the club to drown his sorrows after losing a prestigious literary award to his bitter rival Marina Dolç. What neither man knows is that at the same time as the robbery is going on, Dolç is being murdered at the Ritz Hotel, where both she and Cabestany are staying. When Cabestany finally manages to get back to the hotel, he finds that the police believe he’s the killer, and in fact, they arrest him. The only person who can clear him is Fabià, who at first is unwilling to admit what he did. When he discovers that Cabestany’s in jail, though, Fabià finally decides to come forward. Rather than go directly to the police, though, he admits what he’s done to Barcelona private detective “Borja” Martínez, who’s been working on the case with his brother Edouard. Now the Martínez brothers have the evidence they need to clear Cabestany and convince the police to look elsewhere for the criminal.

What about you? Have you read novels where you can identify with someone who commits a crime? If you’re a writer, how do you balance the reality that something is a crime with the desire to make your characters appealing and encourage readers to identify with them?

 

 

 

*Note: The title of this post is a line from Neil Young’s Old Man.