We Are Detective, Come to Collect*

One of the ways in which crime fiction has evolved in the last sixty or seventy years has arguably been the increasing variety of PI sleuths. And perhaps this is just my opinion (so do feel free to differ with me if you do) but I think it’s a good thing. In real life, private investigators take all kinds of cases, from spouses who suspect their partners of cheating to pre-hiring background checks to investigators who work with attorneys on their cases. And it hardly need be said that today’s PIs come from all kinds of backgrounds.

‘Gentleman detectives’ such as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes paved the way for the modern PI novel, which today ranges from the light (e.g. Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma. Precious Ramotswe series) to the noir (e.g.  Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series). One post is hardly enough to do the modern PI novel justice, but let’s just take a quick look at the sub-genre.

Authors such as Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and Mickey Spillane were at the forefront of the ‘hard boiled’ PI novel. In Macdonald’s The Drowning Pool for instance, Maude Slocum hires PI Lew Archer to find out who sent a slanderous letter to her husband James. The letter alleges that Maude’s been having an affair, and she is afraid that if James finds out, the marriage will end in divorce. Archer takes the case and begins his investigation. Right from the beginning he learns of the dysfunction in the Slocum family. James’ mother Olivia is quite wealthy and uses her financial power to manipulate the family. Maude and her mother-in-law have never been exactly friends, and Maude resents the fact that James is somewhat of a ‘mother’s boy.’ So when Olivia is found dead one day in her swimming pool, there’s every chance one of the family could be responsible. But then again, oil magnate Walter Kilbourne wanted to drill on the Slocum estate and Olivia was firmly set against the idea. So the murder could be the work of Kilbourne or one of his paid ‘associates.’ As Archer investigates, we get to see the seamier side of the way the wealthy live.

Anthony Bidulka’s PI sleuth Russell Quant also sometimes sees the not-so-very-nice side of ‘the beautiful life.’ In Tapas on the Ramblas for instance, wealthy business executive Charity Wiser believes that someone in her family is trying to kill her. She hires Quant to find out who it is and invites him on a family cruise to get to know the other members of the Wiser clan so he can ‘scope them out.’ As he does so, he discovers that just about everyone in the family had a motive for murder. It’s not just a matter of greed, either. There’s a lot of dysfunction in this family and the better Quant gets to know the family members, the more he uncovers about the undercurrents of resentment. Then, there are two attempts at murder and later, a death. In the end, Quant puts the pieces of the puzzle together but not before he comes close to being a victim himself.

We get an interesting look ‘behind the scenes’ of a PI firm in Julie Smith’s Talba Wallis series. Wallis lives and works in New Orleans, where she’s employed by E.V. Anthony Investigations. The firm does background checks on potential employees and at the beginning of Louisiana Bigshot, we learn that Wallis also investigates cheating spouses. In fact that’s what her friend Clayton Robineau (who goes by the name Babalu Maya) hires her to do. Babalu thinks that her fiancé Jason Wheelock has been unfaithful and wants Wallis to find out whether it’s true. At first Wallis doesn’t want to take the case; she would rather Babalu simply break up with Wheelock than learn all of the sordid details of any affair he’s having. But Babalu insists, so Wallis begins to investigate. She finds out that her friend was right and breaks the bad news. Shortly after that, Babalu is found dead, apparently a successful suicide. Wallis doesn’t think it was a suicide though, and neither does Jason Wheelock. So Wallis starts to look into the case more closely. She finds that Babalu’s family history and someone’s desperate need to protect a reputation are the keys to the murder.

Jill Edmondson’s Toronto PI Sasha Jackson doesn’t work for a firm; she’s set up in business for herself. And one of the very effective elements in this series is that we get to see what it’s like to try to build up one’s client base, take care of the bills and so on. And in Dead Light District we get an interesting perspective on why some people hire private detectives instead of going to the police. Candace Curtis owns a brothel which she staffs with only the best employees. The client list is carefully vetted too. It’s an illegal business though, so when one of her employees Mary Carmen Santamaria goes missing, she can’t call the police about it. So she hires Jackson to find out what happened to Mary Carmen. Jackson is uncomfortable about the case. For one thing, she’s not comfortable with the thought of young women who, as she sees it, are being exploited. For another, Mary Carmen could simply not want to be found. If so, why shouldn’t she be left in peace? But Curtis is persuasive and a fee is a fee, so Jackson begins her investigation. But this turns out to be much more than a missing person case. First an alleged pimp is stabbed to death in a hotel and then there’s another murder. Then Curtis becomes a target. Jackson finds that what started out being a case of a prostitute who’s disappeared has led her to the underside of Toronto’s sex trade.

Some PIs don’t really think of themselves as PIs – at least not at first. Walter Mosley’s Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins doesn’t. In the first few novels, before he gets his PI license, he thinks of it as ‘doing favours.’ So does Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder. In fact in The Sins of the Fathers, he says,

 

‘Sometimes I do favors for people. They give me gifts.’

 

And yet in both of these cases the sleuths learn that the PI business can be, if not exactly lucrative, at least a source of income.

Today’s PIs are a very diverse group. There’s the wisecracking ‘world’s greatest detective’ Elvis Cole (courtesy of Robert Crais), the not-domestically-inclined Kinsey Millhone (courtesy of Sue Grafton) and lots of others too. And that variety has added to the sub-genre.

Now, you may be wondering why I’ve not mentioned one of the best known PI sleuths, Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski. I was saving this mention because today is (or yesterday was, depending on when you read this) Sara Paretsky’s birthday. So this post is in honour of what Ms. Paretsky has contributed to the crime fiction genre. V.I. Warshawski is one of the most popular PI sleuths in crime fiction. She’s a unique character with a strong commitment to social justice, a deep love of her home town (Chicago) and a true-blue sense of loyalty to her friends. She was one of the groundbreaking fictional female PIs and the novels featuring her have gained Ms. Paretsky a worldwide audience.

Happy Birthday Sara Paretsky and many more.

 

 
 

*NOTE:  The title of this post is a line from The Thompson Twins’ We Are Detective.

Perhaps We Don’t Fulfill Each Other’s Fantasies*

An interesting comment exchange with Carol at Reading, Writing and Riesling has got me to thinking about the sets of expectations we have when we read work by a familiar author. Often those expectations help us to feel comfortable with that that author’s books and I think that’s in part because we know the kind of story to expect. Often, there’s also a group of ‘regular’ characters we get to know and enjoy.  Before I go on, I’ll give you a chance to check out Carol’s interesting blog.

Right. Back to expectations. On the one hand, that kind of familiarity can be a good thing. For the author, it means a loyal base of readers. For the reader, it means a certain confidence that what one’s about to read is probably not going to disappoint. On the other hand that kind of familiarity can be limiting. It’s treacherously easy for the author to fall into a pattern of what become ‘cookie-cutter’ plots; I’m sure we all can think of series like that. What’s more, when an author changes a character’s personality, or a plot style, or writing style, or something else important in the series, fans can be really put off. You can think of it if you like as ‘reader ownership’ – readers are attached to certain characters, a certain writing style and so on and when that changes it can feel like a personal affront. Like just about everything else, there are positives and negatives about the sort of ‘track record’ some authors build.

One of the more famous examples of this set of expectations is the story of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. From the time they first came on the scene, the Holmes stories were popular and Conan Doyle’s fan base grew and became intensely loyal (as we all know, there are still many clubs, societies and so on that are dedicated to Holmes). Readers knew what to expect from a story and eagerly consumed each instalment. And then Conan Doyle had Holmes go over Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls in The Adventure of the Final Problem. As Holmes fans know, this outraged readers. They had developed a set of expectations about these stories and had a sense of ownership of the character as you might say. In fact, readers were so upset that Conan Doyle felt obliged to bring Holmes back, which he did in The Adventure of the Empty House.

At the time that Agatha Christie wrote The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, readers of detective stories had certain assumptions about what to expect, not just from Christie but from the genre in general. For instance there would be a murder, there would be a group of likely suspects and there would be a sleuth who would unmask the killer. Christie had followed that pattern in The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Murder on the Links so readers had a set of expectations about what would happen in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But in this case Christie didn’t meet those expectations. She did something completely different and that choice upset a lot of readers. She was accused of ‘not playing fair’ and of breaking the rules of crime fiction if I can put it that way. In hindsight her decision has turned out to be a wise one. Today The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is considered by many to be one of her best works. But that’s not how her readers felt at the time.

Lilian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who… series won her millions of devoted fans. Her sleuth, journalist Jim ‘Qwill’ Qwilleran, his love interest Polly Duncan and the other regular characters in the series became favourites for a lot of readers who felt they had a certain amount of ownership. Readers came to expect certain kinds of plots, certain kinds of events and so on. But towards the end of the series many people saw some changes in the novels and they didn’t like it. For instance, Braun’s last novel The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers got quite a lot of negative press. In fact several reviews suggested that she hadn’t written the book herself. To be honest, I read that kind of thing about the last few of her novels. I don’t know whether it’s true, but I do know that even her devoted fans felt put off by what they saw as changes to the style, the focus and so on.

Sue Grafton’s ‘alphabet series’ featuring PI Kinsey Millhone also has a very devoted group of readers. Fans from all over the world have eagerly followed Millhone’s adventures since 1982 when A is for Alibi was published. And 22 books later, Millhone still has a huge following. And yet, not all of her fans have been happy about all of the developments in the stories. And this is what got Carol and me ‘talking’ about reader expectations. Readers have come to expect a certain writing style, a certain kind of plot, certain behaviours and so on from this series. Graftotn has experimented with different points of view, different kinds of pacing in the stories and other changes that haven’t always been well-received, and part of the reason for that may be that readers’ expectations have run up against the author’s choices. Despite some reader disappointment, I know that millions of readers (I’m one of them) are going to be interested in what Grafton does with Kinsey Millhone #23. W is for When….?

Camilla Läckberg created a very popular series featuring biographer Ericka Falck and her husband police detective Patrik Hedström. Beginning with The Ice Princess, this series has followed Falck and Hedström through several different criminal investigations, as well as developments in their personal lives. Many people (and I’m one of them) love the fishing-village setting, the mystery plots and the pacing and action. But as time has gone by, some readers have felt that the series has gotten away from what they saw as its initial ‘edginess.’ After The Ice Princess, readers had certain expectations for the kinds of plots that future novels would have, and the focus of those novels. And those readers have been a bit put off by what they see as the increasing focus on the domestic sides of these characters’ lives. That of course is a matter of taste; there are readers who really enjoy that aspect of the series. That’s why it’s such a good example I think of the way readers feel a sense of investment in a series and have very personal reactions when they feel that their expectations aren’t being met.

The whole question of readers’ expectations raises the issue of just exactly what authors owe their readers. The author/reader relationship is a complicated one really. Should authors write in the style and with the patterns that their fans have come to expect (and keep loyal readers but risk ‘sameyness’)? Should they innovate (and stay fresh, but  risk making readers cranky and creating books that simply aren’t good)? What about readers? Do readers really have a stake in series they love? To what extent? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. If you’re a reader how do you react when you sense a change in what an author is doing? If you’re a writer, what role do reader expectations play in what you write?

Thanks, Carol, for the inspiration and the great conversation.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Summer, Highland Falls. C’mon now, didn’t you expect a Billy Joel lyric from me? 

In The Spotlight: Sue Grafton’s A is for Alibi

Hello, All

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. Along with authors such as Marcia Muller and Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton helped to revolutionise the modern American PI novel and establish female PI protagonists in the sub-genre. Her Kinsey Millhone is one of best-known and most popular of fictional sleuths and quite frankly, it was about time I included a Grafton novel in this feature. So let’s do that today. Let’s turn the spotlight on A is For Alibi, the first of Grafton’s ‘alphabet series.’

Kinsey Millhone has recently hung out her shingle as a PI. She uses a small corner of a suite of offices owned by California Fidelity Insurance Company; they give her the use of the space in exchange for occasional investigation. One day Millhone gets a visit from Nikki Fife, who’s just been released from prison after being convicted of poisoning her husband, prominent divorce attorney Laurence Fife. Nikki claims that she is innocent of the crime. Now she wants to clear her name and find out who framed her. Millhone takes the case and begins to track down all of the people who were a part of Fife’s life at the time of the murder.

It’s not long before Millhone discovers that more than one person could have had a reason for wanting to kill him. For one thing, he was notorious for his affairs, so his ex-wife Gwen could have had a motive. There’s also his law partner Charlie Scorsoni, who knew Fife for decades and could have any number of motives. And then there’s Charlotte Mercer, wife of a prominent judge and one of Fife’s ‘conquests.’ As Millhone begins to learn more about the murder and about Fife’s life, she discovers that there was another very similar poisoning death not long after Fife’s. This time the victim was Libby Glass, who worked for the business management firm that represented Fife’s and Scorsoni’s interests. If she was killed because of something she knew, tthere could very well be a financial angle to this murder.

As Millhone begins to dig deeper and follow up on different aspects of Fife’s personal and professional lives, the trail leads her to one particular witness, who is murdered before being able to ‘fill in blanks’ in the case. Now Millhone knows that she’s on the right path and she continues to pursue some of the leads she’s uncovered. At first, she makes a few wrong guesses but in the end, she finds out what really happened to Laurence Fife and Libby Glass, and who is responsible for their deaths and the others that occur in the novel.

This is very much a PI novel, so we get to go ‘behind the scenes’ as Millhone talks to witnesses, digs for background information and so on. The novel was written in 1982, so Millhone doesn’t find it as easy as today’s PI sleuths do to get information. She depends on telephone calls, face-to-face conversations with witnesses (she does a lot of driving for that), newspaper accounts, and old records. She also depends on information she gets from sources such as other PI sleuths and Lieutenant Con Dolan of the local Homicide Department. That aspect of the novel lends quite a lot of realism to the story as Millhone doesn’t find the answers magically. She finds out the truth through dogged work, a network of contacts and some solid deduction.

We also get a close look at PI work of the time in a sub-plot of this novel that involves insurance fraud. California Fidelity is about to pay off on a claim by Marcia Threadgill, who has filed for disability compensation after a fall near a local craft shop. Millhone has been asked to take a look at the case just to ‘rubber stamp’ the claim. So she follows Threadgill, takes ‘photos (which, at the time, took days to develop…) and learns that Threadgill actually is perpetrating fraud. It’s an interesting sub-plot that shows not just what PI work was like at the time but also how determined Millhone is about her work.

There’s solid action in this novel. More than once for instance, Millhone finds herself in real danger. The pacing too is hardly plodding. But this novel focuses quite a lot on the characters involved. As Millhone talks to the various people in Laurence Fife’s work and personal life, we get to know them as humans. We also get to know some of the ‘regulars’ whom Grafton fans have come to love. There’s Rosie, who owns and runs Millhone’s favourite place to eat. There’s Millhone’s landlord Henry Pitts. And there’s Con Dolan, who’s come to respect Millhone even if he doesn’t always like her. The feeling is mutual too. These characters add depth to the story.

So does the character of Millhone herself, another very important element in the novel. She’s intelligent and a good detective, but she’ll be the first one to say that she’s far from perfect. She’s not good at intimate relationships (witness her two divorces) and she can be stubborn and prickly. She makes her share of mistakes too, and she’s not above telling a lie here or there to cover herself. And as her fans know, she is not domestically inclined. But she is refreshingly honest about her failings. And she’s believable as a detective; she doesn’t completely trust anyone involved in the case, including her client. She has a sense of humour too and doesn’t take herself overly seriously. But she does take her work seriously; in fact, it’s more important to her than just about anything else. And make no mistake: Millhone may get herself into danger but she’s neither foolhardy nor a stereotypical ‘damsel in distress.’

There’s also the Southern California setting of the novel. Grafton places the reader unmistakeably in that part of the U.S.:

 

‘In the morning, I drove over the mountain into the San Fernando Valley. At the crest of the hill, where the San Diego Freeway tips over into Sherman Oaks, I could see a layer of smog spread out like a mirage…’

 

Yup. That’s what it’s really like.

 

‘The public buildings look like old Spanish missions, the private homes look like magazine illustrations, the palm trees are trimmed of unsightly brown fronds, and the marina is as perfect as a picture postcard with the blue-gray hills forming a backdrop and white boats bobbing in the sunlight.’

 

It’s like that too in some places.

The mystery itself is believable and when we learn the truth about the deaths, we see that the motives behind everything make sense. This novel doesn’t have what you’d call a happy ending. We know who did what and why, but that doesn’t mean all is right with the world. But the ending is realistic.

A is For Alibi tells the credible story of a set of deaths and the people involved with the victims. It also introduces the complicated, appealing, hard-working and interesting Kinsey Millhone. The story takes place in a distinctive setting and its pacing and action are solid fits with the plot. But what’s your view? Have you read A is for Alibi? If you have, what elements do you see in it?

 
 
 

Coming Up On In The Spotlight

 

Monday 6 May/Tuesday 7 May – Fellowship of Fear – Aaron Elkins

Monday 13 May/Tuesday 14 May – Breach of Promise  – Perri O’Shaughnessy

Monday 20 May/Tuesday 21 May – When the Bough Breaks – Jonathan Kellerman

Some Fairly Safe Bets…

An interesting comment exchange with Moira at Clothes in Books and another with Sarah at Crimepieces have got me thinking about the way savvy crime fiction fans pick up on clues and patterns in crime fiction. Oh, and one other thing savvy crime fiction fans do is follow both Clothes in Books and Crimepieces. If you’re not familiar with those excellent blogs, do go pay ‘em a visit. G’head, I’ll wait.

Right. Patterns. When you read enough crime fiction, you get to the point where you can often make some fairly accurate predictions about what sort of thing will happen in a story. Some things just become fairly safe bets. Part of the reason for this is of course that crime fiction fans are intelligent and observant people. Part of it is also that certain things just seem to lead logically to certain consequences in crime fiction. If you see that pattern often enough, you get to know it and be ready for it. In a well-written story it’s not generally a problem if the reader recognises a pattern. A strong plot and well-written characters draw a reader in even if s/he can make accurate predictions about what’s going to happen.

 

Blunt Force Trauma and ID

 

This is the pattern that Moira mentioned. Her point was that when you have a novel where the victim’s had blunt force trauma to the face, there’s a pretty good chance that there’s going to be a question of the real ID of the victim. She’s right. That’s especially true in classic and Golden Age crime fiction, where DNA and other forensic evidence weren’t accessible.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (AKA The Patriotic Murders and An Overdose of Death), Hercule Poirot investigates the shooting murder of his dentist Henry Morley. The Home Office takes a special interest in this case since one of Morley’s other patients is well-known powerful banker Alistair Blunt, who has plenty of enemies. So it may be that Morley’s murder was an attempt to get to Blunt. But then another of Morley’s patients disappears. And another dies of an overdose of adrenaline and Novocain. Time goes on and Poirot and Chief Inspector Japp are not much closer to solving this mystery. Then, the body of a woman is discovered. Her face has been so disfigured by a bludgeon that any savvy crime fiction fan will know that ID is going to be at issue. Is it the missing patient? Is it the body of her friend, whom she visited shortly before her death? Is it someone else? The question of ID proves very important in this case.

Identity also proves very important in Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors. In that novel, Lord Peter Wimsey and his valet Mervyn Bunter are stranded on New Year’s Eve near the East Anglia village of Fenchurch St. Paul. They are rescued by Rector Theodore Venables, who takes them back to the rectory and arranges for them to stay there while their car is being repaired. While they’re in the village, the local squire’s wife Lady Thorpe dies of influenza. Wimsey and Bunter attend her funeral and then go on their way when their car is ready. A few months later Venables writes to Wimsey. Lady Thorpe’s husband Sir Henry has died, and preparations are being made for his burial next to his wife. But when the gravediggers opened the grave to prepare it, they found another corpse – an unknown man. The face of the corpse has been battered beyond recognition and the hands removed, so it’s impossible to tell who the dead man is. Venables asks Wimsey to return to Fenchurch and find out who the victim is and why the body has been buried in the Thorpe grave. Wimsey acquiesces and he and Bunter make the trip. It turns out that the unknown man’s death is related to a long-ago robbery and a stolen necklace, and that his identity was deliberately disguised.

 

The Fate of the Blackmailer

 

This was Sarah’s idea. She reminded me of an episode of Midsomer Murders in which a girl attempts to blackmail a killer when she’s seen a murder and as Sarah wisely said, we all know what happens to fictional blackmailers when they try to profit from what they know. Any crime fiction fan knows that a person who sees a murder and tries to blackmail the murderer is marked. That’s a fairly safe bet.

There’s a deliciously eerie instance of this pattern in Matthew Gant’s short story The Uses of Intelligence. Eleven-year-old twins Patty and Danny Perkins are particularly gifted intellectually and quite arrogant about it. That’s part of what makes them not exactly popular. One of the few people who like them is the local banana peddler Aristos Depopoulos. When he is killed one day by a brick, the Perkins twins decide to find out for themselves who is responsible. They trace the crime back to the culprit with very little difficulty and then decide to blackmail the killer. Well….you can figure out what happens next, I’ll bet.

A blackmailer also pays a heavy price for greed in Caroline Graham’s A Place of Safety. Charlie Leathers is out one night walking his dog when he witnesses a dramatic scene. Carlotta Ryan, a troubled teen staying with the local curate and his wife, runs out onto a stone bridge over the Misbourne. Running after her is her hostess, curate’s wife Ann Lawrence. For a short time it seems that Ann is trying to convince the girl not to jump off the bridge. Then, Charlie hears the girl tell her hostess not to push, and before he knows what’s happened, Tanya has gone over the bridge and disappeared. When she doesn’t turn up, it seems as though Ann Lawrence has committed a murder, however unintentionally. Charlie Leathers is not a nice person and it occurs to him that he could make a good living by blackmailing Ann. As you can guess, it’s not long before he’s murdered – in this case garroted. Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby and his assistant Gavin Troy investigate and find out the truth about Carlotta Ryan, Ann Lawrence and her husband, and the murder of Charlie Leathers.

 

Danger For the Sleuth

 

‘Bad guys’ are generally not stupid. And they usually don’t want to be caught. So it’s a pretty safe bet that if a sleuth goes anywhere alone during an investigation, she or he is bound to get into trouble. Smart sleuths know this and take precautions, but the safe money’s still on trouble for the sleuth.

For instance, in Donna Malane’s Surrender, missing person’s expert Diane Rowe has just learned that James ‘Snow’ Wilson has been murdered. This death has a real impact on Rowe because Snow was responsible for murdering her sister Niki a year earlier. Before his murder, Snow admitted – boasted even – that he’d been paid to kill Niki. Rowe believes that if she can find out who paid Snow, she can find out the truth about her sister’s death. So she begins to ask questions. Once word gets out that she’s looking into this case, you know that she’s going to run into trouble. And she does. But in the end (and honestly, with none of the traditional ‘damsel in distress’ stereotype), Rowe finds out who wanted her sister dead and why. And fans of Sara Paretsky’s V.I Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone will know that those two sleuths frequently get into trouble.

This kind of danger doesn’t just happen to female sleuths. In Anthony Bidulka’s Flight of Aquavit, Saskatoon PI Russell Quant gets into trouble almost from the start when he takes the case of Daniel Guest. Guest is being blackmailed by someone who knows about his secret relationships with other men. He wants Quant to find the blackmailer and stop that person. In the course of his investigation, Quant runs into all sorts of dangers including a near-car crash, an abduction and a too-close-for-comfort encounter with a gun.

The funny thing is, in well-written crime fiction, it doesn’t really matter so much that you can make those bets. The stories are still good and they still draw the reader in. What about you? Which predictions have you learned are pretty safe bets? Thanks, Moira and Sarah for the inspiration!

That I Can Tell You in One Word…Tradition!*

Tradition plays a very important role in our lives. Whether it’s family tradition, religious tradition, sport tradition or something else, our traditions give us a sense of continuity and stability. And that can be comforting and very helpful in a world that sometimes seems upside-down.

There are traditions in crime fiction too. For example, one tradition in crime fiction is that there is an obvious crime, usually murder, which is then investigated. That tradition began with the earliest crime fiction and has continued even to recent releases. For instance, Teresa Solana’s A Not So Perfect Crime, released just a few years ago, features the poisoning murder of Lídia Font. Her wealthy and politically powerful husband Lluís Font is a likely suspect. He believed that his wife was having an affair, and even hired Barcelona private investigators Eduard and Josep ‘Borja’ Martínez to follow her and find out if she was being unfaithful. But Font claims that he’s innocent, and he wants his name cleared. So he asks the Martínez brothers to continue working on his behalf and find out who the real killer is.

Another tradition in crime fiction is that the sleuth pursues leads, makes sense of evidence and finds out who committed the crime. Again, we see that tradition in a lot of modern crime fiction. For instance, Jørn Lier Horst’s Dregs begins with the gruesome discovery of a left foot that has washed up on shore near the Norwegian town of Savern. Chief Inspector William Wisting and his team begin the process of looking for clues, following leads and so on. Then another left foot is discovered. And another. It turns out that these discoveries are linked to the disappearance of a group of residents that have gone missing from the same old-age care home. Wisting and his team also discover that the missing people had another connection, this one going back to the years during and just after World War II. The tradition of narrowing down the list of suspects and finding out whodunit and whydunit is an important part of this novel.

And then there’s the tradition that crime fiction stories are told from the perspective of the sleuth and/or a sidekick/assistant. Although readers may get a look at what other characters do and say, the real focus of the novel is the sleuth. Of course not every early crime novel was written this way (for instance Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone wasn’t). But from the beginning, it’s been customary for crime stories to be told from the sleuth or sidekick’s point of view. And many modern novels follow this tradition. For instance, Elly Griffith’s Ruth Galloway series is told from the perspective of Galloway, who is a forensic archaeology expert at the University of North Norfolk, and the perspective of DCI Harry Nelson, the official investigator of these cases and also the father of Galloway’s daughter Kate.

These and other crime fiction traditions are a critical part of the genre. They are at its roots and they give readers and authors both a structure and a set of important parameters. But here’s the thing. Times change. Ideas change. People change. And if the genre didn’t evolve too, it would become stale and outworn. It wouldn’t meet the needs and interests of today’s readers and it would limit today’s authors. So traditions are perhaps most helpful if they are integrated with adaptation and innovation.

For instance, for many years, the crime fiction tradition was that PI sleuths were male (I know there were a few early female PI sleuths; I’m talking in generalities here). But authors such as Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky changed the PI tradition. The genre is better because it includes stories that feature Sharon McCone, Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski. Not only has that innovation welcomed many new readers and authors, it’s also breathed new life into the PI sub-genre. Yes of course there are still traditional male PI fictional sleuths and some of them are terrific characters. But adapting the sub-genre to meet new needs has improved it.

When Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published, she got quite a lot of criticism for it because she broke with one of the important traditions in crime fiction. She had kept with the custom of the sleuth (in this case Hercule Poirot) who investigates a murder (here, the stabbing death of retired magnate Roger Ackrody). But she did part with tradition in a fundamental way and plenty of people didn’t like that. There was a feeling she hadn’t ‘played fair.’ And yet, if you read through that novel, there are several clues as to whodunit. This novel was an innovation and helped to change and develop the genre. In hindsight, it’s often regarded as one of Christie’s best and has one of the most famous dénouements in crime fiction history.

We also see a break with tradition in Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. The story is told from the perspective of Central City, Texas deputy sheriff Lou Ford and concerns the investigation of a brutal beating and later, a murder. So far, so traditional.  But Lou Ford is not at all a ‘typical’ lawman. He has a hidden dark side – he calls it, ‘the sickness’ – that affects much about him and plays a critical role in the novel. Thompson’s creation added an innovation to the genre and opened it to all sorts of different kinds of plot twists and protagonists as well as new ways to build tension.

And then there’s the crime fiction tradition that a crime novel involves an obvious crime and the ensuing investigation. That tradition is one of the founding principles of the genre. And yet, opening up the genre to include novels where there isn’t an obvious murder or other crime has allowed for memorable novels. For instance, Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost tells the story of Kate Meaney, a ten-year-old would-be private investigator. She’s even got her own agency Falcon Investigations. Kate is content with her life until her grandmother Ivy decides she would be better off going away to school. She insists that Kate sit the entrance exams at the exclusive Redspoon School and Kate reluctantly agrees after her friend Adrian Palmer persuades her to go. Palmer even goes with Kate to the school to keep her company. Then, Kate disappears. Despite an intensive police search, no trace of her is found, not even a body. Palmer is blamed for her disappearance, although he claims he’s innocent. In fact, his life is made so difficult that he leaves town. We learn the truth about Kate when twenty years later, Palmer’s sister Lisa and a friend of hers Kurt return to the mystery and piece together what happened. Without spoiling the story I can say that this isn’t at all a typical crime-followed-by-investigation kind of novel. And yet it’s powerful.

Traditions link us with the past. They give us a safe structure and they are important in helping us order our lives. But without innovation and change, traditions become limiting. They seem to be most helpful to us when they are seasoned with evolution. What do you think? When you read, what sort of balance between tradition and innovation do you like? If you’re a writer, how does tradition fit into what you write? Or doesn’t it?

 

On Another Note…
 

 

This post is dedicated to the memory of Jackie Robinson. On 15 April 1947, he became the first African-American to play in a major-league U.S. baseball game. Baseball has always been a sport rich with tradition. It still is. But then-Brooklyn Dodgers President and General Manager Branch Rickey saw that in order to attract new fans and make the game more popular, baseball would need to evolve and change the tradition of fielding only White players. Rickey had the idea and Robinson had the courage, the class and the baseball talent to make that idea a reality. And baseball is far better for it. So are we as a people.

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the prologue to Jerry Brock and Sheldon Harnick’s Tradition (Book by Jospeh Stein).