I Have My Own Life and I Am Stronger Than You Know*

Most authors tap their own life experiences and world views when they write. And that makes sense; tapping one’s own experiences has a way of adding authenticity to a story and it allows the author to write in a more natural way. But some authors have taken interesting risks by creating protagonists who don’t have much in common with the author at all. Giving an authentic voice to that kind of character can be a real challenge. Essentially, the author has to re-think her or his assumptions about everything when writing the character. It’s not easy to do, but there are some examples of authors who’ve done it very well.

Agatha Christie created several protagonists who had different voices to her own. One of them is Captain Arthur Hastings (and I’ll bet you thought I was going to mention Hercule Poirot!). Hastings has in common with Christie an English background and wartime experience. But they are quite different, not least in terms of their genders. And it’s interesting to see how Christie goes about giving Hastings his unique voice. We see it for instance in The Murder on the Links. Hastings is returning by train to London after a business trip when he meets a mysterious young woman who is a fellow passenger. The woman, who refers to herself only as ‘Cinderella,’ turns out to play an unexpected role in the case that soon preoccupies Hastings and Poirot. Paul Renauld writes to Poirot to ask his help, and Poirot and Hastings travel to Renauld’s home in France in response. When they get there they find that Renauld has been stabbed. Poirot investigates and discovers that this stabbing is related to Renauld’s hidden past. Throughout the novel, we see Hastings’ interactions with ‘Cinderella’ as well as with other characters. His voice strikes the reader as authentic and his reactions are believable, despite the fact that he has little in common really with his creator.

The same is true of Christopher Boone, whom we meet in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Christopher is a fifteen-year-old boy with autism. When he discovers that a neighbour’s dog has been killed, he decides to be a detective just like Sherlock Holmes and find out who is responsible. In the process of investigating, he finds out not just the truth about the dog, but also some truths about his own life. Haddon has had experience working with people with disabilities and Christopher’s character shows that knowledge. But Christopher’s voice is quite different to Haddon’s. This story is told from Christopher’s point of view, so we get an authentic look at the way a person with autism might see the world and might process a series of events. Haddon took a risk in writing Christopher’s voice and it paid off (at least in my opinion, so do feel free to differ with me if you don’t agree). The voice is very believable and that’s part of what makes this novel work.

Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce has a voice that’s very different to her creator’s voice. While Bradley has said that he has some things in common with his protagonist, the two really are different. Besides the obvious gender difference, Flavia is English and Bradley is Canadian. Flavia is interested in chemistry and Bradley’s professional background was in electrical engineering and technology. And of course, Flavia is a child while Bradley isn’t. And yet, Bradley has created an authentic voice for Flavia. For instance, in A Red Herring Without Mustard, she attends a church fête where there are several attractions, including fortune-telling. Flavia has her fortune told, but the experience ends in disaster. Afterwards, she feels a sense of obligation to the Gypsy who told her fortune. When the Gypsy tells her that she and her husband were once forced off the property of Flavia’s own home Buckshaw, here is Flavia’s reaction:

 

‘And that was when it came to me. Before I could change my mind I had blurted out the words.
‘You can come back to Buckshaw. Stay as long as you like. It will be all right…I promise.’
Even as I said it I knew there would be a great flaming row with Father, but somehow that didn’t matter.’

 

In this we see a very eleven-year-old response. Flavia is bright and observant, but like any eleven-year-old, she hasn’t thought out the consequences of what she’s offering. And when the Gypsy is later found murdered, she uses that same enthusiasm to find out who the killer is.

Karin Fossum and her sleuth, Oslo police inspector Konrad Sejer, both live and work in Norway. But beyond that, they are quite different. Fossum is a poet as well as a novelist, but she has had other work experience too, including hospital work and working as a home aid caregiver. Her creation though is a cop. That’s been his life’s work. In other ways too, they are different. They have different perceptions of life just by dint of their being different sexes. And yet Sejer has a distinctive voice that doesn’t seem forced at all. He is a widower whose process of grieving his wife Elise seems natural, as does his relationship with psychiatrist Sara Struel, which begins in He Who Fears the Wolf and evolves as a story arc. He is believable as a middle-aged male cop and doesn’t strike the reader (well, at least this reader) as a female civilian’s perception of what a male cop would be like.

Shona MacLean (who now writes her series as S.G. MacLean) has created a sleuth who’s quite different to her in her Alexander Seaton series. Like MacLean, Seaton is Scottish, but there the resemblance ends. MacLean studied history; Seaton studied religion. MacLean lives in 21^st Century Scotland, but Seaton lives in the Scotland of the 17^th Century. And of course, there’s the gender difference. To MacLean’s credit though, Seaton’s voice is quite authentic. He inhabits his world just as naturally as we inhabit ours, and he sees the world in a believable way. His voice is very real too as he meets, gets to know, woos and marries Sarah Forbes.

And then there’s Adrian Hyland’s Emily Tempest. She is very different to her creator, being not just female but half-Aborigine. What’s more, her home is Australia’s Northern Territories, a very different environment to Hyland’s own Melbourne. He began by writing,

 

‘…a young whitefella who, whatever I did to him, always seemed to be too much like me’

 

Feedback from a manuscript assessment place caused him to re-think his story:

 

‘So I pulled the whitefella out altogether and Emily stepped forward. That forced me into a plot and some structure.’

 

Hyland took a risk in creating Emily, but fans of this series (of whom I am one) can tell you that Emily’s character is rich, authentic and certainly has a distinctive voice.

And that’s the thing about talented authors. They can create characters who have completely different voices and make those characters just as real as they themselves are. What are your thoughts on this? If you’re writer, have you written characters who have completely different voices to your own?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Stevie Nicks’ Leather and Lace.

It’s Witchcraft*

It’s often the case that we fear things that we don’t understand. That’s how myths and scary stories are handed down over time. And one of the most persistent set of stories is the set of stories about witchcraft and sorcery. Those stories come up in many different cultures and are told in different ways and that’s what’s interesting; it’s such a pervasive set of beliefs. The stories that are told at this time of year about wicked women who fly around on broomsticks and cast evil spells are just one kind of example. There are lots of others and as influential as they’ve been in history, it makes sense that they’d show up a lot in different kinds of crime fiction too. And no, I’m not going to mention crime fiction where there are paranormal explanations for things. Really my focus is crime fiction where belief in witchcraft and sorcery plays a role in the story.

For instance, many of Tony Hillerman’s novels feature Navajo beliefs and traditions. And one of those traditions is a belief in skinwalkers, or witches. These are people who practice what the Navajo people call the Witchery Way. They can assume the shape of animals and use their abilities to wreak havoc. Although not all Navajos believe in skinwalkers, it’s a well-known set of stories. We see how influential this belief is in Skinwalkers. In that novel Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Sergeant Jim Chee, each in a different way, investigate a series of deaths that seem to be connected to the Bad Water Clinic, run by Dr. Bahe Yellowhorse. As they piece together the clues, we find that although the deaths have a very prosaic cause, the belief that witchcraft is at work plays an important role in the novel. We also see in this series a real contrast between those beliefs and the Navajo tradition of healing. For instance, in the early Hillerman novels, Chee is studying to be a yata’ali, or Navajo healer. That spiritual tradition of the healing arts is not at all the same as witchcraft but it’s often been mistaken for it. That misunderstanding has led to quite a lot of damage.

There’s a lot of mention of traditional belief in what you might call witchcraft in James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels. Most of those novels take place in rural Louisiana where several different cultural beliefs have come together. One of them is juju, adapted from West African tradition. In the Burke novels juju is depicted as similar to, but not identical to, voodoo, and those who have skill at this kind of witchcraft are believed to have powerful abilities. For instance, in A Morning for Flamingos, Robicheaux is, among other things, trying to find out the truth behind the murder of Hipolyte Broussard. Tee Beau Latiolais has been convicted of the murder, but he claims that he isn’t guilty. Robicheaux promises that he’ll find out what really happened and begins to investigate. The trail leads to Gros Mama Goula, who runs a local brothel and who is said to be a juju woman. All sorts of stories have been passed around about her power, and although Robicheaux isn’t superstitious he knows that she has local clout.  When Robicheaux questions her, she startles him with what seem to be some eerie insights into what’s going on his mind. No, it’s not ‘mind-reading’ and no, witchcraft doesn’t solve this mystery. In fact, the scenes with Gros Mama Goula don’t take up a lot of space in this story. But her influence and the influence of traditional beliefs is obvious in this novel.

Belief in witchcraft – or at least uneasiness about it – shows up in M.C. Beaton’s Death of an Outsider too. In that novel, Constable Hamish Macbeth takes a temporary leave from his usual post at Lochdubh to fill in for a colleague in the village of Cnothan. He’s not exactly warmly welcomed and the feeling is mutual. But Macbeth takes up his temporary duties nonetheless and it’s not long before he finds that there are others even more disliked than he is. William Mainwaring and his wife Agatha are English ‘incomers’ who supposedly have taken up crofting. Everyone suspects that Mainwaring is involved in something much shadier, though. As if that’s not bad enough, he’s contemptuous of the locals, overbearing and has made more than his share of enemies. Agatha hasn’t been much easier to like and matters come to a head when she complains that she’s being pursued by a group of witches. She may not be particularly old-fashioned or overly superstitious but she’s uneasy enough about the possibility of witchcraft that she’s quite anxious and upset. Macbeth finds out that there’s a down-to-earth explanation for the incidents that have frightened Agatha Mainwaring but the situation turns tragic when Mainwaring is murdered. Now, Macbeth has to enlist the aid of wary and unhelpful locals to find out the truth behind the victim’s death.

Today there’s a lot more understanding of traditional healing and different kinds of spirituality than there was in earlier times. And we see that stark contrast in historical crime fiction and in crime fiction that includes connections with the past. There are a lot of examples of this; I’ll just refer to one. Shona MacLean’s The Redemption of Alexander Seaton takes place in 17^th Century Banff, Scotland. Apothecary’s assistant Patrick Davidson is poisoned, and everyone believes that local music master Charles Thom is responsible. He’s duly arrested and imprisoned, but he claims that he’s innocent. He begs his friend, schoolteacher Alexander Seaton, to find out the truth behind the murder and Seaton agrees. He begins to ask questions and in the course of his investigations, he finds that both Davidson and Davidson’s beloved Marion Arbuthnott may have been paying visits to a mysterious old woman who’s got the reputation of being a witch with the ability to cast spells, heal, curse and so on. If that’s true, then there are several local people who might have wanted Davidson dead, as feeling against witches is at the boiling point. Then, Marion Arbuthnott dies, too, apparently a successful suicide. When the locals find out that she might have been involved in witchcraft, that story has terrible consequences. In the end, though, it turns out that neither death has anything to do with casting spells. It also turns out that there’s more to the mysterious old woman than meets the eye.

In A Carrion Death by the writing duo known as Michael Stanley, we are introduced to Botswana police inspector David ‘Kubu” Bengu. In this novel, a body is discovered in the Botswana desert. It’s mostly been consumed by hyenas, so there isn’t much evidence as to what happened. The death is initially put down to accident but Kubu isn’t convinced. He begins to ask questions and investigate further. Then there’s another death. As he’s trying to make sense of what’s happened, he runs into traditional beliefs about witch doctors, who are said to have great power and of whom many of the locals are fearfully respectful. Kubu’s been university-educated and doesn’t believe in traditional spirituality. But he does understand that others do, and is reminded of that one Sunday when he tells his father of an encounter between one of his associates and an old man who’s said to be a witch doctor. Kubu’s father reminds him that for many in Botswana, traditional views of spirituality and of witch doctors hold sway and must be respected. No, the two victims were not killed by witch doctors. Their deaths are related to greed, corruption and land-grabbing. But it’s interesting to see the power that the traditional belief system has.

We also see those beliefs depicted in Adrian Hyland’s Diamond Dove (AKA Moonlight Downs). Lincoln Flinders is the leader of an Aborigine encampment at Moonlight Downs. When he is brutally murdered, it’s thought at first that his death is the work of Blakie Japanangka, who is a local sorcerer. The two had a heated quarrel, and just after the murder, Blakie disappeared. So everyone makes the obvious connection. But Emily Tempest, who grew up in that encampment and has recently returned, is not so sure. She starts to investigate and in the end, she finds that Flinders’ murder isn’t related to sorcery at all. She also finds out some surprising truths about Blakie Japanangka. In this novel Hyland shares traditional beliefs about sorcerers and the difference between them and those who practice traditional healing. There’s also a thread of that in Gunshot Road, the next novel in this series. It’s easy to develop misunderstandings about traditional healing and what people think of as sorcery and witchcraft and Hyland makes the distinction clear, at least in my opinion.

Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman series features Melbourne baker Corinna Chapman and nearly always involves the other residents of Insula, the building in which Chapman lives and has her bakery. One of those residents is Miriam Kaplan, usually known as Meroe, who practices Wicca and owns The Sibyl’s Cave, which sells everything needed for practicing traditional Wicca. She has a very deep knowledge of traditional forms of healing and if you want to, you can call her a witch. But she’s a long way from the stereotyped evil witch with an ugly face and a broomstick. She is in fact a really interesting character through whom Greenwood shares Wicca beliefs and customs. In Trick or Treat in particular we learn about the origins of Samhain, the end-of-harvest festival with which witches are most traditionally associated. You could say that she practices witchcraft as it was originally intended – as it was known before all of the stereotypes and awful legends came up. And her skill with traditional healing, herbs and so on proves useful in more than one case of poisoning that comes up in this series.

Whether or not you are spiritual, it’s hard to deny the power that beliefs about witchcraft and sorcery have had over the years. I’ve only mentioned a few examples of crime fiction where misunderstanding about spirituality and beliefs about witchcraft play an important role. But those beliefs show up in many different cultures too, and that’s what I find particularly interesting.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Frank Sinatra’s Witchcraft.

Nowhere to Look But Inside*

We all have our weak points, “sore spots” and let’s just say imperfections. Well, at least I hope I’m not the only one! Most of us find ways to compensate for them and sometimes hide from them. For instance, someone who’s never had to earn a living and make ends meet might have real difficulty surviving in “the real world.” That person may deal with that by choosing a wealthy partner, so avoiding any need to face that challenge. But we really learn a lot about our own characters and our own capacities when we’re forced to confront ourselves. In real life those experiences can help us grow. In crime fiction they can add a real layer of suspense to a novel and an interesting facet to a character or group of characters.

For example, in Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood (AKA There is a Tide) we meet the members of the Cloade family. Family patriarch Gordon Cloade has always taken care of his siblings and their children, and in fact he made it clear to his brothers Jeremy and Lionel and his sister Adela that they would never have to worry about money. So they didn’t. Then something happens that no-one had imagined: Gordon Cloade marries twenty-six-year-old widow Rosaleen Underhay. Before he gets the chance to change his will to protect the rest of his family Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast. Now Rosaleen stands to inherit everything and the Cloades have to consider what they will do without the wealth they’d always assumed. The family is reeling from this when a stranger calling himself Enoch Arden comes to town. He hints that Rosaleen might not have been a widow at the time of her marriage. If her husband was in fact still alive, her marriage to Cloade wasn’t legitimate and Cloade’s family will be financially safe. So everyone has a stake in finding out whether there is any truth to what Arden says. Then one night, Arden is killed. Hercule Poirot has already heard of Rosaleen Underhay from a member of his club, and he interests himself in Arden’s death. In the end we find out who Enoch Arden was and who killed him. Throughout this novel we see the various members of the Cloade family forced to confront their dependence on easy money. It’s fascinating to see how each of them reacts to that.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Velvet Claws introduces us Eva Griffin, who seeks out Perry Mason when she becomes the victim of a blackmailer. Griffin was at dinner with a “friend” up-and-coming politician Harrison Burke when the restaurant was held up. Gossip tabloid reporter Frank Locke found out about this relationship and has threatened to report the story in his paper Spicy Bits unless Eva Griffin pays him. Griffin wants Mason to stop Locke and he agrees to track the reporter down and try to convince him not to go ahead with his blackmail plan. In taking on Griffin as a client Mason takes on more than he’d imagined. In the first place, as Mason soon discovers, Griffin isn’t very honest. She doesn’t even give Mason her real surname, which is Belter. What’s more, she has a habit of constantly lying, so that it’s hard to tell whether anything she says is the truth. Then one night Mason gets a frantic call from his client. Her husband George has been murdered and she soon becomes the most likely suspect. In trying to clear his client’s name, Mason forces her to confront the fact that she’s a manipulative liar. And in fact it’s interesting to see how the dynamic between them develops as she continues to lie to him and he continues to call her on it, even while he’s trying to save her by finding out who really killed her husband.

Megan Abbott’s Die a Little is the story of Pasadena schoolteacher Lora King. She’s always been particularly close to her brother Bill so when he announces that he’s getting married she wants very much to be happy for him. But Bill has chosen former Hollywood wardrobe assistant Alice Steele, and from the moment they meet Lora doesn’t care much for her. Alice has what used to be called a checkered past, and she still has some associations with people who aren’t exactly pillars of the community. But for Bill’s sake Lora tries to get along with her new sister-in-law. Bit by bit though, she discovers disturbing things about Alice. For example, Alice claims that she’s got a teaching certificate, but Lora finds out that’s not true. There are other things too that don’t add up, so Lora decides to do a little digging. Then there’s a murder. Lora begins to wonder whether Alice might somehow have been involved, since the victim was someone Alice knew. So she starts to look into the case and ask questions. The more Lora learns about Alice’s life, the more she has to confront her own. On the surface, she’s a quiet, respectable schoolteacher and that’s how she’s always seen herself. But Lora finds herself just as fascinated by Alice’s life and her friends as she is repelled by them and one theme of this novel is Lora’s growing realisation of that. And in the end, readers are left to wonder just how successful that confrontation really was.

Shona MacLean’s Scottish teacher Alexander Seaton has been running from himself for quite a while as we learn in The Redemption of Alexander Seaton. At one point he was a very promising candidate for the ministry. His career ended in disgrace because of his relationship with his best friend’s sister Katharine Hays. In the 17^th Century world in which Seaton lives, that relationship was enough to keep him from ever getting a pulpit. To make matters worse, he treated Katharine very badly after their relationship was discovered. Seaton has buried himself in his teaching work and done his best to escape what happened. Everything changes when local apothecary’s apprentice Patrick Davidson is poisoned. Seaton’s friend local music master Charles Thom is accused of the murder but Thom swears he’s innocent and begs Seaton to clear his name. Seaton agrees and begins to look into the murder. In doing so, he’s forced to confront his own failings as well as his refusal to let go of the past. Seaton is also forced to confront his unwillingness to interact with the locals, whom he is convinced hate him as much as he hates himself. Seaton finds out who Davidson’s killer is and also re-discovers himself.

Katherine Howell’s Violent Exposure tells several stories of being forced to confront oneself. In that novel Sydney paramedic Carly Martens and her trainee Aidan Simpson are called to what seems like a basic domestic dispute between Connor and Suzanne Crawford. The next night, Suzanne is brutally murdered and Connor goes missing.  Detective Ella Marconi and her partner Dennis Orchard are assigned the case, which looks at first like a tragic case of domestic violence gone horribly wrong. But it’s soon clear that it’s not that simple at all. For instance, background checks on Connor Crawford show nothing. And it soon comes out that he was keeping a secret from his wife that she was desperate to learn. Then Emil Page, a teenage volunteer at the Crawfords’ nursery business, goes missing too. As this case goes on, several of the characters have to confront themselves. For instance Aidan Simpson is not at all a success as a trainee. He’s arrogant, smug, and inept when it comes to a real paramedic case. He’s habitually late, he’s rude and more. Several people have tried to help him but he’s ignored everyone. In the course of this case Simpson is forced to confront his own lack of knowledge and his own weaknesses. That process is an interesting sub-plot in this novel.

When we are forced to confront ourselves, we learn what we’re really made of and as painful as that can be it can help us grow too. It can also add “flesh” to characters and suspense and tension to a fictional plot.

 

 
 

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

And We Never Even Know We Have the Key*

The very fact that we’re human means that we make mistakes – sometimes big ones. We do stupid things, we hurt people without meaning to and so on. At least I hope I’m not the only one who screws up. It’s hard enough to apologise for our mistakes but sometimes it’s even harder to forgive ourselves and move on. In fact, what’s odd is that we are sometimes more forgiving of others than we are of ourselves. Of course it’s healthy to admit it when we make a mistake or hurt someone. That’s part of how we grow. But there’s a balance between accepting responsibility for our behaviour and carrying an unhealthy load of guilt that gets in our way. Certainly too much guilt impedes us in real life and it happens to characters in crime fiction too.

For instance in Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun, beautiful and notorious actress Arlena Stuart Marshall is taking a holiday with her husband Kenneth and stepdaughter Linda. They’ve chosen the Jolly Roger Hotel on Leathercombe Bay and at first all goes well enough. Then Arlena begins to notice fellow guest Patrick Redfern. He’s all too willing despite being married and before long it’s common gossip that they’re having an affair. Then late one morning Arlena Marshall is found strangled on Pixy’s Cove not far from the beach. The most likely suspect is Kenneth Marshall since he knew of his wife’s infidelity. But he has a solid alibi so the police have to search for another suspect. Hercule Poirot is staying at the same hotel and he works with the police to find the real killer. Kenneth Marshall’s daughter Linda hated her stepmother and that hatred makes her actually believe that she has killed her stepmother. Her guilt over that hatred drives her to drastic action and it’s interesting to see how she is affected by her inability to forgive herself for the way she feels.

Giorgio Scerbanenco’s A Private Venus is the story of Davide Auseri, a young man who’s developed a severe drinking problem and who shows other signs that something is seriously wrong. His father hires Dr. Duca Lamberti, who has just been released from prison on charges of euthanasia, to help Davide. Lamberti knows that if he doesn’t get Davide to really tell him the reason for the heavy drinking, it will never end. So he starts by getting the young man to open up to him in general. Bit by bit Davide tells Lamberti the problem. A year earlier a young woman named Alberta Radelli begged him to let her run away with him. She claimed she couldn’t stay in Milan but Davide didn’t believe her and she ended up being murdered with her body left in a field. Lamberti decides that the only way to free Davide of this guilt is to find out who the murderer is. So he begins to dig into the matter and finds that shortly after this young woman’s death, another young woman Maurilia Arbati was also killed. Lamberti believes that these two deaths are related and with help from Davide Auseri and Albert’s friend Livia Ussaro, he slowly finds out what really happened to the dead women.

In Michael Connelly’s Echo Park, L.A.P.D. Harry Bosch has to deal with a deep sense of guilt about the case of Marie Gesto. She walked out of a Hollywood supermarket one day and simply disappeared. Bosch was assigned the case and even had a suspect in mind but he couldn’t catch the criminal. Then a few years later Raynard Waits is arrested for two other brutal murders. There’s no question of his guilt as he was caught with grisly evidence. In order to escape the death penalty Waits offers to give the police information about other disappearances including that of Marie Gesto. Bosch has always felt guilty about not being able to solve this case and that’s part of what motivates him to work with Waits.

And then there’s Shona MacLean’s Alexander Seaton, a teacher in 17th Century Scotland. When we first meet Seaton in The Redemption of Alexander Seaton he’s the undermaster of a grammar school. He was a very promising candidate for the ministry but he fell into disgrace because of his relationship with his best friend’s sister Katherine Hay. Seaton’s professional disgrace is hard enough for him to forgive in himself. What’s even harder is that he treated Katharine very badly over the whole situation and ended up rejecting her. Seaton simply cannot forgive himself for what he’s done and doesn’t spend a lot of time with other people. But he does step in when his friend Charles Thom asks for his help. Thom’s been imprisoned for the murder of apothecary’s assistant Patrick Davidson, but he claims he is innocent. He begs Seaton to clear his name and find out who the killer is. In the course of this investigation Seaton begins to stop seeing himself as a pariah who deserves to be an outcast. He learns to forgive himself for the past.

Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Copenhagen cop Carl Mørck still hasn’t forgiven himself for a shooting incident in which one of his colleagues was killed and one left paralysed. Mørck himself was badly injured but of the three officers involved he’s the only one who’ll be able to make a full recovery. He feels a strong sense of guilt that he didn’t do more to save his fellow cops and that’s an ongoing struggle for him. In Mercy AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes we learn that Mørck has become so difficult to work with since the shooting incident that he’s “promoted” to a new department, Department Q, which is devoted to cases “of special interest.” One of them in particular, the case of the disappearance of promising politician Merete Lynggaard, gets the attention of Mørck and his assistant Hafez al-Assad and the two re-open the case. In part because of his guilt, Mørck shares the details of the case with his paralysed colleague Hardy Henningsen to try to spark some interest and get some insight. It adds an interesting layer to both men’s characters to see how each deals with the awkwardness of Mørck’s visits.

None of us is perfect, so learning to forgive ourselves and move on, with lessons learned, is an important part of functioning. When people can’t forgive themselves it can weigh them down and in a sense keep them trapped. It’s not particularly healthy in real life but it can add an interesting layer to a novel.
 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Eagles’ Already Gone.

Tell Me Why*

One of the things writers always need to think about when they’re creating stories is motive. For crime fiction writers that usually includes the motive for a murder or series of murders. But for any fiction writer, the characters have to have some sort of believable motive for doing what they do. Otherwise they’re not realistic characters. Sometimes those motives aren’t as compelling to the reader as they are to the character but they have to be there and the reader has to believe that a given character would really be motivated in the way that the author depicts.

In some crime fiction the murderer’s motive is fairly straightforward: financial or other gain, fear and revenge are a few of those kinds of motives. In other crime fiction the motive makes sense only to the killer but in well-written crime fiction we know what that motive is. For instance, in Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral (AKA Funerals Are Fatal), wealthy patriarch Richard Abernethy dies, seemingly of natural causes. At his funeral though, his younger sister Cora Lansquenet says that she thinks her brother was murdered. At first everyone hushes her up, not wanting to believe that what she says is true. But privately everyone wonders whether she was right. When Cora herself is murdered the next day it seems clear that she was. The Abernethy family lawyer Mr. Entwhistle asks Hercule Poirot to investigate and Poirot agrees. In this novel the motive for murder wouldn’t make sense to a lot of us but it does make sense to the killer.

That’s also true of the killings in Shona MacLean’s The Redemption of Alexander Seaton. Seaton is the undermaster of the grammar school in 17^th Century Banff, Scotland. One morning he is shocked to find the body of local apothecary’s assistant Patrick Davidson in his classroom. As if that’s not enough, Seaton’s good friend music master Charles Thom is accused of the murder and in fact imprisoned for it. Thom claims that he’s innocent and begs Seaton to clear his name. Seaton agrees and begins to ask questions. It’s not long before he finds that more than one person might have had a motive to kill Davidson. For one thing, it’s possible that Davidson was a papist spy who was willing to help his allies take over Protestant Scotland. There are several people in town who would consider that suspicion reason enough to murder him. And then there’s Davidson’s romantic rivalry with Thom for Marion Arbuthnott, the apothecary’s daughter. That’s a major part of the reason Thom’s suspected of the murder. There’s also the whisper that Davidson could have been involved with witchcraft. It certainly seems possible when Marion Arbuthnott, who was also rumoured to consort with witches, is murdered. When Seaton finds out who is responsible for the deaths, he learns that the motive makes perfect sense to the killer, even if it wouldn’t be a compelling motive for others.

In K.C. Constantine’s The Blank Page, Rocksburg Pennsylvania Chief of Police Mario Balzic and his team investigate the murder of Janet Pisula. Her body is discovered one day in her room at the rooming house where she lived while attending the local community college. At first there seems to be no reason for the murder. The victim was quiet, had few acquaintances, little money and seemed to know no-one’s dangerous secrets. So it’s difficult for Balzic to trace her movements and try to get to the truth about her murder. In the end though Balzic finds out something crucial about Janet Pisula and uses that to connect her with her murderer. When we discover the reason for the killing we see that to the murderer, killing her made sense even though it really doesn’t to a lot of other people.

That’s also true of the killer in Camilla Grebe and Åsa Träff’s Some Kind of Peace. In that novel, Stockholm psychologist Siri Bergman has to deal with not only her patients, some of whom are really suffering, but also her own deep sense of loss at the death of her husband Stefan. One day Bergman gets a letter that makes it clear she’s being stalked. Then she’s framed for a drink driving incident. Other frightening events happen too and before long, Bergman is convinced that someone is trying to destroy her professionally. Matters are made very much worse when the body of one of Bergman’s patients Sara Matteus is found in the water near Bergman’s home. Bergman herself is suspected of the murder and now it’s clear that someone is trying to ruin not just her practice but her life. Slowly Bergman and her friends Aina Davidson and Vijay Kumar discover who is behind Sara Matteus’ murder and the stalking and other incidents. When we learn the truth, the killer even explains why everything happened; to the killer it all does make sense. To others what the killer does is appalling.

But that is fiction. Fiction writers as I said have to explain characters’ motives. Readers want to know them. In real life it doesn’t happen that way. On Friday 20 July, a shooter opened fire in a crowded Colorado movie theatre, killing twelve people and injuring over 50 others. We don’t know, and maybe we never will, exactly why those murders happened. There will doubtless be dozens of profilers, psychologists and other experts who will give their opinions as to why it happened. There will be calls for more security, for greater gun control and for a lot of other things. The media will cover this horrible tragedy from every angle.

But that won’t change anything. And that’s perhaps the worst thing about this awful event. Twelve people are dead and nothing we say or do will bring them back. Dozens and dozens more are injured and although they may heal physically, they will have to deal with this always. We don’t even really know why the shootings happened and that makes things worse. It’s easy enough to say, “Oh, well, the shooter was a deranged person.” That may be true but it certainly doesn’t explain much to the families of the victims or to those who were injured. We can’t even give those people the admittedly sad satisfaction of knowing why it all happened.

Crime fiction writers have it easy; we’re allowed (expected even) to have everything make sense in some way. Those who have been affected by the Colorado shootings don’t get to have things make sense. Not now and maybe not ever. To the families of those who died on that awful night, my deepest condolences. To those who were injured and their families, I wish you strength and hope as you heal. I hope it’s of at least a little comfort to know that this is appalling to all of us. I wish you all peace and healing. I also wish I could give you answers.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Boomtown Rats’ I Don’t Like Mondays.