Raise Up a Multiplex and We Will Make a Sacrifice*

An interesting comment exchange with Col at Col’s Criminal Library has got me thinking about land development. As the population increases and becomes ever more mobile, there are more and more land development projects. In a way, it makes sense, since bringing new people and new industries to an area means a stronger local economy. But a lot of people believe that too often, that economy grows at a devastating price: the loss of the land, the local wildlife and the ecosystem. That’s to say nothing of people who object to the changes that development brings to their small towns and their quality of life. That conflict between land development advocates and opponents is ongoing and has sometimes flared up into violence. So it’s little wonder we see it in crime fiction too.

A few of Agatha Christie’s stories touch on land development in a tangential way, (I’m thinking for instance of The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side and Death on the Nile). In those stories, there’s some dismay for instance at the coming of council housing and the uprooting of people so that a personal piece of property can be developed. But that theme isn’t a central part of the mystery.

In Peter Temple’s Bad Debts though, land development plays a major role in the story. Sometime-attorney Jack Irish gets involved in a case of greed, corruption and land development when a former client Danny McKillop is murdered. Irish had unsuccessfully defended MicKillop in a drink-related hit-and-run case in which Melbourne activist Anne Jeppeson was killed. When McKillop was released from prison after serving his sentence, he contacted Irish, trying desperately to reach him, but by the time Irish returned McKillop’s calls it was already too late. Now Irish feels a sense of guilt over not getting to McKillop sooner and over not doing a better job of defending his client. So he decides to look into the Jeppeson case again. He soon discovers that McKillop was framed for Jeppeson’s murder.  Before her death, Jeppeson had been spearheading a protest against the closing of a public housing estate in Melbourne’s Yarrabank district. And the more Irish looks into this planned closing, the more he sees that it’s motivated by greed, land development planning and corruption. In the end, Irish and journalist Linda Hillier trace the murders to very highly-placed people with much to lose if the planned closing doesn’t go through.

Science fiction novelist Zack Walker and his family get caught up in a fight between land developers and local eco-activists in Linwood Barclay’s Bad Move. Walker and his family move from the city to Valley Forest Estates. There, Walker hopes that life will be safer (and less expensive) for his family. He soon finds out how wrong he is though when he witnesses an argument between local environmental activist Samuel Spender and one of Valley Forest’s sales/development executives. Later that day Walker discovers Spender’s body in a nearby creek. Then, Walker is trying to return a handbag he’s found to its owner when he discovers the owner’s body. It’s now clear that something very serious is going on at Valley Forest. And even though the one thing Walker wants more than anything else is to have a safe, quiet life, he finds himself more and more involved in the murders, which have everything to do with greed and development schemes.

Ruth Rendell’s Road Rage tells the story of the conflict that arises over a planned road that will cut through Framhurst Great Wood. Many of the residents of Kingsmarkham, including Inspector Reg Wexford and his wife Dora, are not happy about this road. In fact, Dora’s joined a local citizens’ group that is actively opposing this development. But matters turn ugly when several groups of activists come to town. They end up taking hostages, including Dora Wexford. Then, there’s a murder. Now Wexford and his team have to work the murder case as well as try to rescue Dora and the other hostages before there’s any more death. The land development people aren’t exactly Citizens of the Year in this novel, but Rendell doesn’t oversimplify the issues and it’s interesting to see how she portrays what is sometimes the darker side of activism.

Vicki Delany’s In the Shadow of the Glacier has land development as one of its major themes too. Constable Moonlight ‘Molly’ Smith has recently joined the Trafalgar (British Columbia) police. One night while making her rounds, she finds the body of wealthy developer Reginald Montgomery. Sergeant John Winters is assigned to investigate the case and he and Smith begin to look into Montgomery’s professional and private relationships to find out who would have wanted to kill him. There are several suspects too. One important angle to this case is that Montgomery was co-owner of the soon-to-be opened Grizzly Resort, an upmarket resort/spa/holiday destination. Many people feel that Grizzly will bring in desperately-needed money and will provide jobs for several of the local residents. Others feel at least as strongly that the resort will ruin the natural beauty of the area and will be hard on the local ecosystem. They don’t want the influx of tourists either. That conflict adds an underlying layer of tension to the novel as Smith and Winters work to find out who killed Montgomery and why.

In C.J. Box’s Open Season, newly-appointed game warden Joe Pickett has an embarrassing encounter with local outfitter and poacher Ote Keeley. Shortly afterwards, Keeley’s body is found on Pickett’s property. What’s more, Pickett’s daughter Sheridan discovers something else – a family of endangered animals living in the woodpile near the post where Keeley’s body was discovered. Now that Pickett and his family are personally involved, he works to find out who killed Keeley. What he discovers is a long-simmering conflict among oil developers, a poaching ring and independent locals who do not want a game warden telling them what they can and cannot do. This isn’t the only novel in this series in which Box addresses issues of land development and what it may mean.

That’s also true of Carl Hiaasen’s work. In several of his novels (I’m thinking for instance of Lucky You and Tourist Season), we meet characters who want to develop the land. And it’s Hiaasen’s work that actually got Col and me ‘talking’ about the way land development is portrayed. As Col pointed out, Hiaasen uses a lot of humour in his stories but there’s a strong underlying urgency about protecting the land from over-development.

There are plenty of mentions of land development in cosy mysteries too. For instance in Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Prretty Is as Pretty Dies, retired English teacher Myrtle Clover is ‘volunteered’ to work with her local church’s women’s group. She goes to the church for a meeting of the Altar Guild where she finds the body of Parke Stockard. Myrtle wants to prove, especially to her overprotective son, that she’s not ready to be ‘put out to pasture’ yet, so she decides to investigate the murder. As it turns out, there are several suspects. Parke Stockard was a malicious real estate developer who used all sorts of unethical and illegal tactics to ensure her place in the community and to get the properties she wanted. Myrtle sifts through what she finds, what people tell her and what she overhears (deliberately and otherwise), and figures out who killed the victim and why.

The question of whether, how and for what purpose land ought to be developed is not an easy one. That’s why it’s been such a contentious issue for such a long time. Little wonder we see so much crime fiction that touches on land development.

Thanks, Col, for the inspiration. Folks, please do pay Col’s blog a visit; it’s a nicely focused set of crime fiction reviews well worth following.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s No Man’s Land.

I Need Attendance From My Nurse Around the Clock*

Within the last fifty years, the nursing profession has become a highly skilled and demanding field. Today’s nursing is far more than just checking blood pressure and giving medicines that the doctor orders. And yet, most people pay a lot more attention to the doctor than they do to the nursing staff. In part that’s because of the way society has traditionally viewed physicians. But the fact is, nurses are vital members of the health care team. Among other things, they get to know their patients very well and have a better idea of their health and their responses to treatment than a doctor might. And a wise detective, whether real or fictional, knows that nurses often have valuable insights that can help solve a case. Just a quick look at crime fiction should show you what I mean. Oh, and you’ll notice that I’m not going to mention novels that are considered ‘medical thrillers’ (e.g. the work of Michael Palmer). That would be too easy…

In Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia, Hercule Poirot gets quite a lot of information from Amy Leatheran, a nurse who is engaged to help look after Louise Leidner. Louise is the wife of noted archaeologist Eric Leidner, and goes with him to an excavation a few hours from Baghdad. One afternoon, Louise is murdered in her bedroom. At first, everyone thinks that a stranger must have committed the crime, but it’s soon shown that no strangers were at the house where the dig team is staying. So Poirot has to look among the members of the team to find the killer. One of the first people Poirot interviews is Amy Leatheran, who tells him that Louise had been fearful and had seen faces at her window, heard hands tapping and so on. It turns out that Louise was afraid because she’d gotten threatening letters from her first husband, whom she thought long dead. She was convinced her former husband had returned to kill her. This angle to the case gives Poirot some important information and he’s able to use it to find out who really killed the victim. What’s very interesting about this story too is that Poirot pays close attention to what Amy Leatheran tells him, but not in the way she (or first-time readers) may think.

Nurses also feature in Christie’s Sad Cypress. When Elinor Carlisle receives an anonymous letter about her wealthy Laura Welman, she and her fiancé Roderick ‘Roddy’ Welman travel to the family home Hunterbury. When they get there they discover that Aunt Laura has had a stroke. District nurse Jessie Hopkins and private nurse Eileen O’Brien take charge of the patient under the supervision of Dr. Peter Lord. While Elinor and Roddy are at Hunterbury, they renew their acquaintance with a childhood friend Mary Gerrard, the lodgekeeper’s daughter. Roddy soon finds himself besotted by her and almost before Elinor knows what’s happened, he’s in love with Mary. Then Aunt Laura dies without having made a will and as her next of kin, Elinor stands to inherit a fortune. One afternoon, Mary Gerrard is poisoned while having lunch at Hunterbury. Elinor becomes the prime suspect. She’s arrested for the crime and is about to go on trial. But Peter Lord wants her name cleared, so he visits Hercule Poirot and asks him to look into the case. Poirot discovers that there were several things about Mary Gerrard that weren’t generally known, and that her past is the reason she was killed. The two nurses turn out to have valuable information about the case, and we can see from their interactions with each other and with Poirot how being closely involved with a patient gives them a lot of ‘inside information.’

That’s also true in Barbara Vine (AKA Ruth Rendell’s) The Minotaur. Swedish nurse Kerstin Kvist is hired by the Cosway family to look after thirty-nine-year-old John Cosway, who is said to be schizophrenic. She’s eager to take the position because it will allow her to be closer to her lover Mark Douglas. Soon after arriving at the family home Lydstep Old Hall, Kerstin gets the feeling that something is very, very wrong. For one thing, the family seems to live and behave as though it were still the Victorian Era, which is strange enough. Kerstin also finds that her patient is kept under heavy sedation by order of his mother, the family matriarch. Kerstin is convinced that he doesn’t need such heavy medication so, concerned for his health she begins to withhold the dugs without telling his mother. Her decision leads to real tragedy and we learn about that tragedy and about the inner workings of this family through a diary that she keeps.

In P.D. James’ The Private Patient, we meet investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn, who makes arrangements with noted cosmetic surgeon George Chandler-Powell to have a facial scar removed. For that, she’ll be treated at his private Dorset Clinic Cheverell Manor. Soon after her arrival though, Rhoda is brutally murdered. Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are named to investigate the murder and they begin to look into both the victim’s life and what goes on at the clinic. Then there’s another murder. Now the team has to try to find out what might connect the two victims. It turns out that part of the truth can be found in the past, and that one person who knows more than she is saying is a nurse. Giving her name would give away part of the plot, but it’s an interesting example of the way nurses can know things that other people might not get to know.

Nurses play pivotal roles in Helene Tursten’s Night Rounds. One night there’s a blackout at Löwander Hospital, a private facility. During the blackout, a nurse Marianne Svärd is murdered. Göteborg detective Irene Huss and her team are just beginning their investigation when another nurse Linda Svensson disappears. Her body is later found in an unused hospital attic, hung in the same place where fifty years earlier, another nurse Tekla Olsson committed suicide. It’s soon clear that something is going on at the hospital, so the investigation team looks into the history of the facility and the people who work there. In doing that they get some valuable information from another nurse Siv Persson, who’s been at the hospital for a long time and who knows its history.

Wendy James’ The Mistake shows exactly how observant and alert nurses can be. In that novel, Jodie Evans Garrow goes to a Sydney hospital in a panic when she gets word that her daughter Hannah has been admitted there. Hannah’s been in an accident and although it’s not life-threatening, she needs medical care. While Jodie’s there, she has a reunion of sorts. Debbie West, a nurse-midwife at the hospital, remembers Jodie from a visit she made there years ago. At that time, Jodie gave birth to a girl Ella Mary whom she’s never told anyone about – not even her husband Angus. Debbie asks Jodie about the baby, and Jodie says she gave the child up for adoption. But then Debbie takes it on herself to do some searching and finds that there are no records of such an adoption. Now questions are raised, first privately and then very publicly, about what happened to Jodie’s first baby. There is even a strong possibility that she might have killed the baby. As the questions continue Jodie becomes a social pariah. Little by little, we learn what really happened when Ella Mary was born and we learn that things are not as simple as they seem.

And then there’s Andrea Camilleri’s Dance of the Seagull. That novel begins with the disappearance of Vigatà police sergeant Giuseppe Fazio. His boss Salvo Montalbano is eager to find out what’s happened to one of his best team members, so he begins to look into what happened just before Fazio went missing. It turns out that Fazio was working on a major case involving illegal trafficking, a vicious murder and some highly-placed Mafia people. Montalbano and his team know they’ll have to go up against some dangerous enemies, so when they find a wounded Fazio, they arrange for him to be transported to Fiacca Hospital where it’s hoped he’ll be kept safe. That’s where Montalbano meets Angela, a hospital nurse who ends up proving to be very important to this case.

Nurses are smart, educated and observant professionals; they are integral to good medical care. Little wonder they have so much knowledge about what goes on around them. Little wonder too that they are so often central to a crime fiction case. Now it’s your turn. What gaps have I left?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Gregory Isaacs’ Night Nurse.

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Garroting

The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme is moving right along, and we’re all quite enjoying the sights and frights. I am, as always, grateful to Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise for showing us all such a great time so far. And we’ve not lost anybody, either – yet…

Today, we’re stopping at historic G Castle, and we’re all looking forward to the castle tour and traditional meal we’ll be having later. While everyone’s busy unpacking and changing clothes, I’ll offer my contribution for this stop – garroting. Garroting is a very efficient way of committing murder and it doesn’t take a lot of physical strength or special background really. So it’s one of those ‘everyman’ kinds of murder methods that crime fiction authors like because it allows a lot of flexibility. Lots of different characters can be the murderer or the victim. Let me show you what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders, Hercule Poirot, Scotland Yard and several local police are up against what looks very like a serial killer. The first murder – of an old woman who keeps a newsagent shop – doesn’t get much press. But then, pretty, twenty-three-year-old Betty Barnard is found garroted with her own belt. The only things that these murders have in common are that both victims are women and an ABC railway guide is found near each body. That and the fact that Poirot is sent a cryptic note before each murder. The police are just getting busy linking those two murders when there’s a third one. Franklin Clarke, a respected retired throat specialist, is found bludgeoned to death. Again there’s a cryptic note beforehand and an ABC near the body. Bit by but, Poirot gets the clues that he needs to solve this case, but not before there’s yet another murder…

Caroline Graham’s A Place of Safety introduces us to Charlie Leathers. He’s a local resident of Ferne Bassett who’s got a reputation as a blackmailer and generally not nice person. One night, he happens to be walking his dog near a bridge over the Misbourne when he sees a drama played out. Carlotta Ryan, a troubled teen who’s been staying with the local curate and his wife, runs out onto the bridge. Ann Lawrence, the curate’s wife, runs after her. They quarrel and then Carlotta goes over the bridge. She doesn’t turn up and is soon believed dead. Only Charlie saw the incident and he pays a heavy price for his knowledge when he is later found garroted. DCI Tom Barnaby and Sergeant Gavin Troy investigate both incidents and they find that things are not as they may seem on the surface…

Inspector Reg Wexford and his team have to deal with a case of garroting in Ruth Rendell’s Simisola. It all starts when Wexford’s physician Dr. Raymond Akande asks his help. Akande’s twenty-two-year-old daughter Melanie hasn’t been home for a few days, and hasn’t called or sent a note. At first Wexford doesn’t believe it’s a serious matter, but when more time goes by, he looks into it. The last person to talk to Melanie was Annette Bystock, a jobs counselor at the local Employment Bureau. So Wexford and his team look to interview her. But by the time they do so, she’s already dead – garroted in her bed. Now it looks as though something is going on at the Employment Bureau, so the team pays special attention to it. As it turns out, those events, and another death that occurs, are all tied in, each in a different way, to the bureau.

Val McDermid’s Report For Murder is the story of the murder of famous cellist Lorna Smith-Couper. Journalist Lindsay Gordon is hired to do a piece on an upcoming fundraising weekend to be held at Derbyshire House Girls’ School. The weekend’s festivities will culminate in a gala dinner and concert and Smith-Couper, a very well-known alumna, is to be the feature attraction. When she is found garroted with a cello string, the media are prepared to make as much as possible of what’s happened. Of course the school authorities want exactly the opposite: a minimum of attention on the murder. So Gordon and Cordelia Brown, a TV personality and author who’s also there by invitation, agree to try to keep the media at bay. The only way this can be accomplished though is to find out who the killer is as soon as possible…

And then there’s Jonathan Kellerman’s A Cold Heart. In that novel, painter Juliet ‘Julie’ Kipper is poised to make big news with the opening of a new show at a gallery called Light and Space. One night, she’s attacked in the ladies’ room and garroted. Her body is later found carefully posed. LAPD cop Milo Sturgis thinks that this isn’t a ‘regular’ murder (if there is such a thing). The odd posing of the body, for instance, suggests something different. That’s what leads him to consult his good friend psychologist Alex Delaware. In the meantime, the LAPD are also investigating the stabbing death of talented blues guitarist Baby Boy Lee, who was killed outside a club called The Snake Pit after one of his sets. The two murders have in common that both victims are on the brink of real fame. But Delaware and Sturgis soon learn that there’s more to the case than that…

In Rennie Airth’s The Dead of Winter, which takes place in 1944, we meet Polish Land Girl Rosa Nowak. Late one night she is garroted outside the British Museum. At first, the police consider this a terrible but random act of violence and they’re frankly ready to let it go. It’s wartime and they’ve a lot of other things more pressing. But retired inspector John Madden isn’t so eager to let things go. It turns out that Rosa was employed at his family’s home and he feels a personal obligation to find out what happened to her. On his urging, the police look more closely into the matter and find out that Rosa’s death is connected to other, earlier murders and valuable stolen gems.

It’s not really surprising that garroting would show up in crime fiction the way it does. After all, it can be quick and efficient, and doesn’t need a lot of equipment or know-how. Now, how about I straighten that collar for you? Here, let me just step behind you…

These Are the Things I’ll Remember*

The main point of a well-written crime novel is usually to tell the story of a crime or crimes and the investigation that follows. There are of course myriad ways to go about telling that story, but when you get down to it, that’s at the core of most crime novels. But sometimes, other things about the novel – little incidents, minor characters, even a particular description – make a real impact on the reader too. An interesting comment exchange with Moira at Clothes in Books got me to thinking about those smaller flourishes that can add ‘flesh’ to a novel. It can be tricky to put them in because of course there’s the risk of taking away the focus from the plot and main characters. There’s also the risk of making the novel unwieldy. But when they’re done well, those flourishes and extra touches can stay in our minds and make a novel even more memorable. Of course, everyone’s different, but here are a few of those extra touches that have made an impact on me, to give you an idea of what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (AKA The Mirror Crack’d), Miss Marple takes a walk one day to explore St. Mary Mead’s new council housing. That’s where she meets Heather Badcock, who lives in one of the new houses with her husband Arthur. Heather is very much an admirer of famous actress Marina Gregg, so she is especially excited that Marina and her husband Jason Rudd have bought Gossington Hall and will be hosting a charity fête there. On the day of the fête, Heather gets to meet her idol, who is kind enough to spend a few moments with her. Shortly afterwards, Heather sickens and dies of what turns out to be a poisoned cocktail. At first, the theory is that Marina Gregg was the intended victim and Heather took the poisoned cocktail by mistake. If that’s true, there are certainly suspects. But soon enough, it turns out that Heather was the target all along, Now Miss Marple works with her friend Dolly Bantry to find out who would have wanted to murder Heather Badcock and why. At the beginning of the novel, Miss Marple is recovering from a bout with illness and her nephew Raymond West has arranged for Miss Knight to stay with her. Miss Knight is well-intentioned, but she’s condescending and overprotective, and Miss Marple feels more than a little smothered. Her successful ruse to get rid of Miss Knight for a morning so she can go out exploring is a minor, but memorable scene in this novel. It’s funny and readers can sympathise with Miss Marple’s wish to be treated as a competent, capable adult.

In her comment, Moira mentioned Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone. In that novel we meet wealthy and well-educated George and Jaqueline Coverdale, who share their home with George’s daughter Melinda and Jacqueline’s son Giles. The Coverdales hire a new housekeeper Eunice Parchman. At first, all goes well enough, although the family does think that Parchman is a little eccentric. The truth is though that Eunice Parchman is hiding a secret. She is determined not to let anyone find out that secret and practically pathological in her fear that someone will. When one of the family members accidentally finds out what the housekeeper has been hiding, the family is doomed, ‘though everyone is tragically unaware of it at the time. One of the minor characters in the novel is Jonathan Dexter, who is in a relationship with Melinda Coverdale. Dexter doesn’t play a critical role in the novel, but his reaction when he finds out what happens to the Coverdale family is memorable. It’s not dramatic, but it stays with the reader.

Andrea Camilleri’s The Shape of Water begins in a notorious area of the Sicilian town of Vigatà called The Pasture. The Pasture is a meeting place for prostitutes and very small-time drug dealers and their clients. One morning, two workers who are paid to clean up The Pasture make a ghastly discovery. The body of powerful businessman and politician Silvio Luparello is in a car left abandoned the night before. Inspector Salvo Montalbano and his team are called in to investigate the death. On the surface of it, it looks as though Luparello died of heart failure. But Montalbano is not completely convinced, and requests two extra days to investigate. He soon finds that among Luparello’s family members, political allies and enemies, and business contacts there are several suspects. In the process of this investigation, Montalbano has an interview with Baldassare ‘Saro’ Montaperto, one of the clean-up workers who discovered the body. Saro has a secret to hide, and although it is relevant to the story, it’s not a major point. He’s more or less a minor character, but he is memorable. Saro and his wife earn very little money, but they have a sick son who needs special treatment. Saro’s desperation, a decisions he takes because of it, and Montalbano’s response stay with the reader (well, this one anyway).

In Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road, Aboriginal Community Police Office (ACPO) Emily Tempest is called with the rest of her team to the scene of the murder of Albert ‘Doc Ozolins. The case looks on the surface like a drunken quarrel gone horribly wrong, and that’s where Tempest’s boss Bruce Cockburn wants to leave matters. In fact, John ‘Wireless’ Petherbridge, who’d had the quarrel with Ozolins, is arrested for the murder and there’s evidence against him. But Tempest is fairly sure that Wireless isn’t guilty. So she starts asking questions. It turns out that she was right. Ozolins had uncovered something that threatens some powerful people who want the case left alone. In the course of her investigation, Tempest talks to Ozolins’ brother Wishy, who gives her some interesting and important background information. While she’s there, she meets Wishy’s daughter Simone ‘Simmie.’ Simmie isn’t a major character in the novel, nor is she instrumental in solving the case. But she and Tempest discover they have in common a love for Emily Dickinson’s poetry and they forge a sort of bond. Simmie and Tempest’s interactions with her may be minor parts of the novel, but they are memorable.

And then there’s James Craig’s Never Apologise, Never Explain. Inspector John Carlyle from Charing Cross Station is called to the scene when Henry Mills reports the murder of his wife Agatha. Mills claims he was asleep at the time of the murder, and doesn’t know who killed his wife. He does say though that she had political enemies who wanted her dead. At first, neither Carlyle nor his assistant Joe Szyskowski believes Mills. In fact he’s arrested for the crime. But then Carlyle gets a clue that suggests very strongly that Henry Mills was right. So he begins searching into Agatha Mills’ past to find out how she would have made dangerous political enemies. In the meantime, Carlyle is working on another case as well, this one informally. One of Carlye’s acquaintances is Amelia Jacobs, a former prostitute who now keeps house and cleans for Sam Laidlaw, who’s still ‘in the business.’  Amelia is concerned because of Michael Hagger, a local gangster who’s the father of Sam’s son Jake. She believes Hagger may take Jake and she wants Carlyle to warn Hagger to stay away from Sam and their son. By the time he tries to contact Hagger though, it’s too late; Hagger has snatched Jake and disappeared. Now Carlyle will have to track them both through London’s underworld and try to find Jake before it’s too late. There’s a small scene during which Carlyle has a conversation with Amelia and Sam at their home, and it stays with the reader. It’s not essential to solving the mystery but it is memorable in its quiet way. It also shows the friendship between the two women – again, not key to the plot, but it adds to the story.

And that’s the thing about those well-done extra flourishes. They may not be important plot points or provide key clues to a mystery. But they add to a story and they are often the things we remember. Which of those little extra touches do you remember from your reading?

Now, let me suggest that your next blog-round stop should be Moira’s wonderful Clothes in Books. Talk about extra touches that can make a story memorable…  Moira has an expert eye for the way what we wear defines a character, an era, and a novel. Thanks, Moira, for the inspiration for this post!

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Nik Kershaw’s The Bell.

Honesty is Hardly Ever Heard*

Most of us keep certain things to ourselves. Lots of times it’s because they’re private, and sometimes we keep things to ourselves because they are embarrassing or could cause hurt and a rift in a relationship. So it may not always be such a bad thing to keep certain things quiet. But there also comes a time when not being forthright does a lot more harm than good. We definitely see plenty of that in crime fiction. If you’ve ever had the urge to shake a character and say, ‘Well if you’d only told ___ about everything, none of this would have happened!’ you know what I mean. It’s not easy to add that plot point to a novel without making a character either not credible (i.e. Really? You’re hiding that?) or not likeable. But when it’s done well, those points where characters aren’t honest when they should be can add tension to a crime novel. And in some cases, there really wouldn’t be a solid plot without those moments.

For instance, in Ruth Rendell’s A Judgement in Stone, George and Jacqueline Coverdale hire a new housekeeper Eunice Parchman. Jacqueline doesn’t bother to check her new employee’s references particularly well but at first, it doesn’t seem to matter. Parchman does her job well enough and the busy Coverdales don’t really notice a problem. But Eunice Parchman has not been honest with the Coverdales. She is keeping a secret that she’s desperate for them not to discover, and goes to great lengths to avoid telling them. When her secret is accidentally found out, this seals the Coverdales’ fates although they don’t know it at the time. And what’s tragic about it all is that if she had simply told the Coverdales the truth from the outset, a lot of tragedy could have been avoided.

In Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, Kindle County’s chief deputy prosecutor Rožat ‘Rusty’ Sabich is assigned to investigate the murder of a colleague Carolyn Polhemus. There is a lot of pressure to solve this case quickly and Sabich gets to work right away. What he doesn’t tell his boss is that he had a relationship with Polhemus that ended just a few months before she was murdered. On the one hand, one can understand why Sabich might not exactly trumpet the news of his affair. On the other, it’s not surprising that the news of it comes out anyway, and when it does, Sabich is in far more trouble than he might have been had he simply been honest at the beginning. Soon, pieces of evidence begin to turn up that implicate Sabich in the murder and before long he finds himself arrested for the crime. Now he’s on the ‘other side,’ so to speak, and hires attorney Alejandro ‘Sandy’ Stern to defend him. Together they work with Sabich’s friend detective Dan Lipranzer to find out the truth about Carolyn Polhemus’ death and clear Sabich of the charges against him. In this novel, the fact that Sabich isn’t honest with his boss at first doesn’t change the fact of who killed the victim. But it does add a really interesting and believable layer of tension to the story.

Linwood Barclay’s Bad Move is the story of science fiction writer Zach Walker and his family. Walker believes that his family isn’t safe in the city so he moves everyone to a new home in a suburb called Valley Forest Estates. They’re not there long when they learn that their house has all sorts of problems with it, so Walker goes to the housing development’s sales office to get someone to make repairs. While he’s there, he witnesses a loud argument between a Valley Forest sales executive and environmental activist Samuel Spender. Later, Walker finds Spender’s body in a local creek and gets drawn into finding out who killed him. And that’s where Walker begins to cover up too much, especially from his wife Sarah. For instance, at one point he and Sarah are shopping when he notices a handbag left in a shopping cart. Thinking it’s his wife’s he grabs it and puts it in the car. When he sees that it’s not hers, instead of telling her he took the wrong handbag, Walker says nothing and tries to secretly return the handbag (in which, by the way, he finds quite a lot of money) to its owner. Without telling his wife what he’s doing, he goes to the owner’s home where he finds another body. The more Walker tries to stay out of trouble, the more his dissembling and hiding things gets him into trouble. Still, he finds out who committed both murders and he finds out some other interesting secrets about the housing development. On the one hand, simply telling everything right from the start would have saved Walker an awful lot of trouble. On the other, his less-than-honest choices make for some funny moments in the books and Barclay handles them well (at least in my opinion).

There’s a much less humorous look at lack of honesty in Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal. Eva Wirenström-Berg and her husband Henrik have hit an unhappy point in their marriage. Eva thinks it’s temporary until she discovers that her husband has been unfaithful. Instead of openly and honestly discussing what’s happened, both Eva and Henrik hide things. Henrik won’t be honest with his wife about his new lover and Eva isn’t honest about the course of action she takes after she finds out about her husband’s infidelity. Their choices, and most importantly their decision not to be honest with themselves and with each other, lead to real tragedy. First, Eva’s course of action leads her in a direction she never could have anticipated. Then, Henrik too makes a choice that has an unhappy and unintended consequence. The result is devastation that could have been prevented if this couple had only been honest in the first place.

In Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri learns from news broadcasts and newspapers that a former client Dr. Suresh Jha has died in a bizarre incident. According to witnesses, the goddess Kali appeared and killed Jha in revenge for his ongoing efforts to debunk spiritualism. Jha was the founder of the Delhi Institute for Rationalism and Education (DIRE), a group committed to unmasking scams committed in the name of spiritualism, and he had dedicated his life to convincing people not to believe ‘the Godmen.’ The doctor’s report, witness statements and other pieces of evidence seem to suggest that Jha’s death has a supernatural cause and a lot of people believe that. Puri, though, is not convinced. It’s not that he’s not spiritual, but he is quite certain that Jha died at very human hands. So he begins to investigate. The trail leads to a famous magician, a cult leader and other members of Jha’s organisation. Then, two more murders happen. Little by little, Puri finds out what really happened to Dr. Jha. And when he does, we learn of a few people who could have prevented the murders if they had just been honest from the start, when Puri began his investigation. Their reasons for not doing so are believable, but one still wants to ask them why on earth they didn’t simply tell Puri the truth in the first place.

And then there’s Katherine Howell’s Silent Fear, in which Sydney police detective Ella Marconi and her team investigate the shooting death of Paul Fowler. One of the first paramedics on the scene is Holly Garland, who sees to her dismay that her brother Seth is among the people who were with Fowler at the time of his death. Holly has several reasons to keep as far away from Seth as she can but when Marconi interviews her, Holly isn’t completely forthcoming about why. Holly has a past that she doesn’t want to share with anyone, least of all the people with whom she works. So she’s taken to saying nothing. The problem is that her silence begins to cause her serious trouble when one of her colleagues remembers her from another time. At first Holly dissembles, hides things and does everything she can not to tell the truth to anyone. At the end though, she finds that if she had simply told the truth, she’d have saved herself a lot of stress and trouble. Holly’s secret isn’t the reason for Paul Fowler’s murder, but it makes for an interesting and tense sub-plot.

All of us keep things to ourselves; it’s a fairly natural impulse. But there comes a time when not being honest has much more serious consequences than simply telling the truth in the first place. In real life that can cause heartache and worse. In crime fiction it can spin things deliciously out of control and cause fascinating tension.

 

 
 

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