You’re as Cuddly as a Cactus*

I think most of us try, most of the time, to get along with other people. But if you’ve ever been subjected to really shoddy customer service, gotten the ‘one (or two) finger wave’ from a complete stranger for no reason, or been ambushed by multiple telemarketing calls, then you probably have those days where you wonder why you bother. Those are the times when we can identify with people who are misanthropic. Now, I’m not saying it’s a good thing to dislike other people, but sometimes that attitude is at least understandable.

Misanthropic characters can add to a novel too. As I say, we’ve all had those negative experiences, so we can identify with at least a little of the misanthrope’s bitterness about other humans. And misanthropic characters sometimes have a certain dry, sarcastic sense of humour that can be appealing. Creating that kind of character can be tricky though. Misanthropes aren’t generally very pleasant people. If they don’t have any redeeming qualities it’s hard to get readers to care what happens to them. But well-drawn misanthropes can also be really interesting characters.

In Agatha Christie’s 4:50 From Paddington (AKA What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!) we meet Luther Crackenthorpe, a misanthropic patriarch who lives with his daughter Emma at Rutherford Hall. Crackenthorpe doesn’t care much for other people; in fact, he’s fairly bitter. When his sons Harry, Alfred and Cedric gather at the family home for Christmas, we can see that he even has contempt for his own children. The Crackenthorpe family gets drawn into a case of murder when Miss Marple’s friend Elspeth McGillicuddy witnesses a woman being strangled on a train. She tries to raise the alarm but no-one believes her because there is no dead body on the train and no-one has reported a missing person who matches the woman’s description. Miss Marple believes her friend though and deduces that the body must have been thrown from the train and ended up on the grounds of Rutherford Hall. She arranges matters so that her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow is hired as the Crackenthorpe’s housekeeper, her hope being that Lucy will do some sleuthing. Lucy does indeed discover the body and soon the police are involved. Then there’s a case of poisoning. And another murder. Luther Crackenthorpe wants as little to do with the investigation as possible and it’s interesting to see his response as the investigation continues. He isn’t a nice character (although he’s not evil) but he is interesting and sometimes darkly humourous.

Marek Krawjewski’s Police Counsellor Eberhard Mock is another misanthropic character whom we first encounter in Death in Breslau, which takes place beginning in 1933. In that novel, he’s assigned to investigate the murders of Marietta von der Malten and her governess Françoise Debroux, whose brutally murdered bodies are found in a railroad car. Around the bodies the police discover scorpions, and a cryptic message is written in blood on the wall of the car. Mock follows the clues, which seem to lead to Isador Friedländer, an importer and an expert in arachnids such as scorpions. When he is arrested for the crime, the Nazi authorities who are gaining increasing power are only too happy about it since Friedländer is Jewish. Mock is promoted and the matter seems settled. Then, Friedländer dies, officially a suicide. Mock receives a cryptic note and a clue that suggests to him that Friedländer’s death was not what it seems and that the killer is still free. Now, Mock has to navigate a very dangerous political landscape as he searches for the murderer. Mock is not a nice person. He’s sarcastic, has a sense of humour most people would find offensive, and he doesn’t care much for other people. But he is a good detective and a determined one. Oh, and he plays chess very well.

Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Southern Quilting series begins with Quilt or Innocence. In that novel, Beatrice Coleman has recently retired from her work in an Atlanta art gallery and moved to Dappled Hills, North Carolina. There she’s hoping for a relaxing retirement. Shortly after her move, Beatrice discovers that social life in Dappled Hills revolves around quilting guilds, so to be polite she joins the Village Quilters. When one of its members is murdered, Beatrice starts asking questions. She soon begins to receive threatening notes and at one point, she’s even attacked. In the end though, she finds out who the killer is. In a sub-plot of this novel, Beatrice tries to learn quilting and at first, she’s not very good at it. In fact, she’s so bad at it that she decides to give up. But one of the other quilters Miss Sissy shows her how to do the job. And that’s not at all like Miss Sissy. She is rude, outspoken and contemptuous of most people. In fact in one scene, she nearly runs Beatrice down with her car (accidentally) and unleashes her fury at Beatrice for getting in the way. But she is interesting, and she is a master quilter – truly gifted at it.

In Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Mercy (AKA The Keeper of Lost Causes) we are introduced to Copenhagen homicide detective Carl Mørck. He is just returning to work after recovering from a line-of-fire injury in which one of his colleagues was murdered and another left with paralysis. Even before the incident Mørck was not exactly brimming with the proverbial milk of human kindness. But this incident has left him more bitter than ever. In fact, he makes himself so difficult to work with that he is ‘promoted’ to a newly-formed department, Department Q. That department has been hastily formed to investigate cases ‘of special interest.’ Mørck is soon granted a cleaner/assistant Hafez al-Assad, who calls Mørck’s attention to the five-year-old case of Merete Lynggaard, a promising politician who went missing. In spite of himself Mørck gets interested and takes another look at the case. He and Assad find clues that Lynggaard may still be alive, and they begin a search for her. Mørck is not at all friendly. He’s brusque, rude and sarcastic. He really doesn’t enjoy the company of other people at all and has contempt for most of his colleagues. But he is interesting and he is a skilled detective. What’s more, he has the kind of wit that makes it hard to keep from snickering, even if you do think he’s being rude.

And then there’s Thea Farmer, a retired school principal who tries to make a life for herself in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains in Virginia Duigan’s The Precipice. Thea has had her dream home built and is looking forward to sharing it with her dog Teddy, but some poor financial decision-making has left her with no option but to sell her perfect home. She moves into the house next door, a house she calls ‘the hovel,’ and wants nothing more than to be left alone. To Thea’s chagrin, ‘her’ house is purchased by Frank Campbell and Ellice Carrington, who soon move in. Thea doesn’t like people very much to begin with, and the thought of these people (she calls them ‘the invaders’) moving in just makes things worse. Then of all things, Frank’s twelve-year-old niece Kim joins the family. What’s worse, Kim tries to make friends with Thea, not really seeming to understand that Thea wants nothing to do with her. Little by grudging little though, Thea gets to know Kim a bit. She even learns to like her in her own way, and sees promise in her writing. That’s part of why she gets very upset when she begins to suspect that Frank is not providing an appropriate home for Kim. Thea doesn’t have the kind of direct evidence that the police need to act on the matter, so she decides to take action herself. Thea is prickly, she can be self-righteous and she has her moments of outright rudeness. As the story evolves, we also learn that she may have some dark secrets in her past. But she is an interesting character. She is intelligent, independent and takes her own life decisions. She may be sarcastic and it’s obvious she doesn’t think much of people, but her wit is sometimes quite funny.

It’s not easy to create misanthropes because there’s a big risk of making them so objectionable that the reader is pulled out of the story. But if they’re drawn well, they can also be interesting, even funny, and can add leaven to a story. Which are your favourite misanthropes? If you’re a writer, do you like creating people like that?

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Thedor Seuss Geisel (yes, he wrote the lyrics) and Albert Hague’s You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.

In The Spotlight: Virginia Duigan’s The Precipice

Hello, All,

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. Some crime fiction novels are not what you’d call ‘typical’ crime fiction, where there’s a murder or murders and an investigation. These unusual sorts of crime novels add variety to the genre, give readers a chance to experience something different, and allow authors room for innovation. To show you what I mean, let’s take a look at an unusual crime novel. Let’s turn the spotlight on Virginia Duigan’s The Precipice.

Thea Farmer is a former school principal who had a custom-made, beautiful home built for herself in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. Her plan was to live in that house after she was forced to leave her position. However, she’s made some very poor financial decisions and has had to sell her perfect home and settle for the house next door – a home she refers to as ‘the hovel.’ Soon, that perfect house is purchased by Frank Campbell and Ellice Carrington. Right from the beginning Farmer resents her new neighbours, whom she calls ‘the invaders.’ For one thing, she mourns the loss of her beautiful home and doesn’t want it falling into other hands. For another, she is reclusive and bitter and didn’t want to live near anyone anyway. She’s perfectly content to live in solitude with her dog Teddy. However, she observes the courtesies and even develops an odd sort of friendship with Frank.

Then Frank’s twelve-year-old niece Kim moves in with Frank and Ellice. At first Thea is prepared to dislike Kim heartily, especially since Kim doesn’t seem to notice that Thea does not want her company. But little by little she and Kim develop a friendship. In fact, she sees a lot of promise in the girl, especially in writing. In time she even allows Kim to accompany her to the creative writing class she’s taking.

Then Thea begins to suspect that something sinister may be going on next door. She becomes convinced that Frank is not providing a supportive and appropriate home for his niece and the more time goes by, the more she comes to believe that something must be done to protect Kim. Because she doesn’t have concrete evidence that Kim is in danger, Thea knows that the police aren’t going to do much. So she decides to take the matter in hand and do something about it.

To say more about what that decision is and what its outcome is would stray too close to ‘spoiler-land’ for my taste. Suffice it that the tension in this story is in part built on the lead-up to what Thea decides to do.

And tension is an important element in this novel although it’s not a ‘typical’ crime novel. The tension is built up in part by Thea’s decision-making process but it’s also a result of the format Duigan chose for telling the story. This story is told in the first person through a series of journal entries based on prompts given by Thea’s creative writing teacher Oscar. As Thea responds to the prompts, we learn not just what happens between her and the people next door, but also about her personal history.

That personal history includes some strong hints that there may be more to Thea’s past than we think at first. The reader learns for instance why Thea retired when she did and what the scandal was that led to it. We also learn how she lost her money and so on. All of those pieces of information make for a very interesting case of the unreliable narrator, especially when we learn that Thea’s past may include something very dark.

Thea Farmer is an interesting protagonist and her character is a major element in this novel. She is prickly, set in her ways, reclusive and in many senses inflexible. What’s fascinating too is her reaction to Oscar’s responses to her writing, and to things that other people tell her. We see a strong sense of denial and moral righteousness in the way Thea interprets life and in the way she responds to what other people say and do. That said though, she is keenly intelligent and observant in the sense that she notices people’s behaviour and reactions. She’s a complicated person whom it’s hard to entirely dislike.

Another important element woven through this novel is the setting. There are good reasons for which Thea has chosen the Blue Mountains for her home.
 

‘The valleys are like oceans ringed by sheer cliffs. When you look down on them you are looking at a sea of rippling green leaves.’
 

It’s obvious throughout the novel that Thea loves the natural beauty of the area. In fact one of the few things about ‘the invaders’ that Thea can tolerate is that they, too, understand that beauty.

There is a certain caustic wit in the novel, and that makes sense given the kind of person Thea Farmer is. But it’s not a light story. As lovely as the setting is, there is a kind of foreboding in it. There is also a sense of darkness as Thea slowly learns more about the people next door and as we learn more about Thea. And there is real suspense as the reader is invited to sort out exactly what the truth is.

The Precipice is really two stories (Thea’s personal story and her neighbours’ story) presented in an unusual format. The suspense builds slowly but steadily, and (in my opinion anyway) Duigan uses the unreliable narrator plot point very effectively. But what’s your view? Have you read The Precipice? If you have, what elements do you see in it?

 
 
 

Coming Up On In The Spotlight
 

Monday 22 April/Tuesday 23 April – The Diggers Rest Hotel – Geoffrey McGeachin

Monday 29 April/Tuesday 30 April – A is for Alibi – Sue Grafton

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

I Found Her Diary Underneath a Tree*

Do you keep a journal or diary? A lot of people do. Journaling is one way in which people can come to terms with things that happen to them and it can be a really effective way to make sense of one’s life. Diaries are sometimes the most intimate look we get into a person’s life so they can tell an awful lot about what someone is like. And in crime fiction, diaries ‘flesh out’ characters and can add a great deal to a story. They can be useful clues too.

Diaries show up in more than one of Agatha Christie’s stories. For instance, both The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Murder in Mesopotamia are told from the first-person perspective of journal-keepers. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Hercule Poirot retires to the village of Kings Abbott to garden. His plans change abruptly when wealthy manufacturing tycoon Roger Ackroyd is stabbed in his study. Ackroyd’s niece Flora asks Poirot to find the killer, as she wants her fiancé cleared of suspicion. That story is told from the point of view of local doctor James Sheppard, who lives next door to Poirot. In Murder in Mesopotamia, Poirot is on his way back to London from Syria when he is asked to interrupt his journey and investigate the murder of Louise Leidner, wife of noted archaeologist Eric Leidner. Although she was in good physical health, she’d had various fears and said that she saw hands tapping at windows and faces looking in, among other things. So her husband hired a nurse Amy Leatheran to look after her. The story of Louise Leidner’s murder and the investigation is told from Amy Leatheran’s point of view. In these novels the narratives don’t look like a set of diary entries but they do serve to show some the character of the writers. And of course, crime fiction fans will know that some of Poirot’s adventures and all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are told in more or less journal form by respectively Captain Hastings and Dr. Watson.

In Barbara Vine’s The Minotaur, we meet Kerstin Kvist, a young Swedish nurse who takes a job in England to be closer to her lover Mark Douglas. Her position is with the Cosway family who live in a Victorian home called Lydstep Old Hall. Kvist’s patient is thirty-nine-year-old John Cosway, who is said to be schizophrenic. From the time Kvist meets the family, she dislikes almost all of them, especially John’s mother Mrs. Cosway, the family matriarch. The main events of the story take place in the 1960’s but the Cosway family lives very much an anachronistic Victorian lifestyle. It’s a dysfunctional family as only Ruth Rendell can portray, especially in her Barbara Vine persona, and Kvist isn’t comfortable there but she takes up her duties. Soon she begins to notice that John Cosway has been heavily drugged and is kept under sedation constantly. His mother is responsible for this regimen and as a nurse Kvist doesn’t think it’s either necessary or well-advised. So without letting Mrs. Cosway know, she begins to withhold the drugs John is used to getting. Her personal involvement in the family has tragic results. One of the key features of this novel is a leather-bound diary that Kvist begins to keep. Before her time with the Cosways, she never kept a journal and in fact wouldn’t have considered it. But the journal was a gift and as time goes by, Kvist becomes more and more attached to her diary. In the end it becomes an important piece of evidence as the events of the story unfold.

In The Hidden Child Camilla Läckberg’s Erica Falck finds her mother’s old diaries in the attic of her parents’ home. She wants to know her mother better through those diaries but mostly, she wants to know why her mother neglected her and her sister Anna. In the course of looking through her mother’s things Falck finds a Nazi medal. She’s taken aback by her family’s possible connection to the Nazi regime, so she visits retired historian Erik Frankel to try to get some answers. When he is killed two days later, it’s clear that someone in Fjällbacka wants certain secrets to be kept hidden. Although he’s supposed to be on paternity leave, Falck’s husband police officer Patrik Hedström gets involved in the investigation.  As the novel moves on Falck and Hedström look into what the connection is between the town’s World War II past and the present day investigation. Throughout the novel, the diaries Falck finds give us a way of knowing her mother and understanding more about Falck too.

Mike Befeler’s Paul Jacobson also makes of journaling. He’s a retiree who has to deal with short-term memory loss. In fact, that memory loss gets him into a very difficult situation at the beginning of Living With Your Kids is Murder. In that novel Jacobson moves from his home in Hawai’i to live in Colorado with his son Danny, his daughter-in-law Allison and their daughter Jennifer. When the plane lands he finds himself at the heart of a murder investigation. His seat-mate Daniel Reynolds has been killed and Jacobson is a suspect since he had an argument with Reynolds. The only problem is he doesn’t remember the argument or anything much about Reynolds. With help from Jennifer, Jacobson starts to keep a journal of what happens when he moves to Colorado and slowly tracks down leads to Reynolds’ real killer.In Jacobson’s case, that daily journal helps him compensate for his memory loss. Each day he writes down everything that happens and then re-reads his journal the next morning so he can remember what happened the day before.

In Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing, Delhi private investigator Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri and his team investigate the mysterious death of Dr. Suresh Jha. Jha has made a career out of investigating superstition and myth and debunking fraudulent practitioners. One day he’s attending a meeting of the Laughter Club, which uses laughter as therapy. During the meeting, what seems to be an incarnation of the Goddess Kali appears and stabs Jha. Many people believe that Kali has taken revenge on Jha for his unbelief, but Puri doesn’t. So he and his team look more closely at the Laughter Club and at other enemies Jha might have made. One of them is a spiritual leader who started life as a magician named Aman but who now calls himself Maharaj Swami. Jha had worked very hard to expose Aman as a fraud and the two had a very public feud. So Puri and his team look closely into Aman’s background. And for that they get unexpected help. It turns out that Aman keeps a diary in which he’s detailed all of his experiences since leaving home. While the diary itself doesn’t detail the truth about what happened to Jha, it does give an important perspective on Aman and his past.

And then there’s Virginia Duigan’s The Precipice, which is told more or less in journal form. Retired school principal Thea Farmer is taking a writing class and as a part of that experience she’s been instructed to keep a diary. Her entries detail her pride in the home she’d had built in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains and her chagrin and hurt when she loses her money in a bad business decision and has to settle for a small home she calls ‘the hovel’ that’s located next door to her dream house. When Frank Campbell and Ellice Carrington, whom Farmer calls ‘the invaders,’ purchase that home, Farmer writes of her deep resentment of both of them. Things get even worse when Frank’s niece Kim comes to live there. Bit by bit though, Farmer and Kim develop a sort of friendship and begin to get along. That’s when Farmer starts to suspect that something terrible may be going on next door. The journal she keeps recounts her suspicions and tells of the decision she takes because of them. One thing that’s interesting about Farmer’s journal is that many of the entries are written in response to writing prompts given to her and her classmates. It’s an innovative concept for telling a story.

Diaries and journals can reveal a lot about the writer. So it’s little wonder that they’re often one of the things detectives look for when they’re investigating. When they’re effectively woven into a novel they can add a solid layer of character development.

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Bread’s Diary.

There’s Something Happening Here, What it is Ain’t Exactly Clear*

When most of us think of crime fiction, we think of a story in which there’s a murder or some other criminal activity and a sleuth or sleuths figure out what happened. Of course there’s a lot more to a good crime fiction novel than that but the basic idea of a crime novel is that, well, there’s a crime. Most of the time. There are some well-written crime novels though in which it’s not really clear that a crime was committed. In novels like that, the appeal is often the psychology of the people involved. The suspense lies in unwrapping if you will people’s memories and discovering what really happened.  And of course there’s the suspense element of working out whether there really was a crime. Such a novel has to include very well-drawn characters though, or at least characters that keep our interest, as that’s usually the focus of this kind of story.

Agatha Christie’s Sleeping Murder has the flavour of this sort of novel. Giles and Gwenda Reed are newlyweds looking for their first home. For some reason Gwenda is particularly attracted to a house in Dilmouth and the couple duly buy the property and move in. Soon though, Gwenda begins to experience a disturbing sense of déjà vu although she doesn’t consciously remember being in the house before she and Giles bought it. What’s worse, she sees images of a dead woman lying in the hallway of the house. As time passes, Gwenda begins to wonder whether she’s having some sort of mental breakdown. So she’s open to the idea when her cousin Raymond West and his wife invite her for a visit. In the course of staying with the Wests she gets the chance to talk to Miss Marple, who as Christie fans know is West’s aunt. She tells Miss Marple what’s been happening and although Miss Marple doesn’t dismiss the episodes as psychosis, she does suggest that Gwenda should ‘let sleeping murders lie,’ if there even was a murder. Then one evening Gwenda has a bizarre reaction to a scene in a theatre performance. Miss Marple begins to suspect that perhaps something did happen in Dilmouth and that Gwenda may be more aware of it than she knows.

In Andrea Camilleri’s The Shape of Water the body of Silvio Luparello is discovered in a car in a notorious part of town called The Pasture, a meeting place for prostitutes and their clients and for small-time drug dealers and their customers. Inspector Salvo Montalbano is called to the scene and begins to investigate. All indications are that Luparello died of a heart attack during a sexual encounter and there’s nothing in the forensics reports or physical evidence that refutes that theory. Luparello was a wealthy and powerful local political party leader and the discovery of his body in such a compromising situation would mean a great deal of public scandal for his family and his political allies. So there’s a lot of pressure on Montalbano to quietly fill out a ‘rubber stamp’ report and go along with the theory of death by heart attack. But a few things about the case raise questions for Montalbano and he requests some time to look into the matter. He’s given two days and we follow the investigation and in the end we find out what really happened on the night of Silvio Luparello’s death. Throughout the novel, the question of whether there really was a crime adds an interesting layer of suspense.

Karin Fossum’s Bad Intentions also raises the question of whether a crime has really been committed. Three young men Axel Frimann, Philip Reilly and Jon Moreno decide to spend a weekend at a cabin on Dead Water Lake. Jon has recently been released from a mental hospital after having severe anxiety issues and the idea is to give him a change of scenery and a chance for some fun. One night the three are out on the lake when a tragedy occurs and only two of the young men return. Inspector Konrad Sejer and his assistant Jacob Skarre are called in and they question the two survivors. Sejer is certain that these young men know more than they are saying but they’ve obviously decided what they will and will not say, and Sejer can’t seem to break their agreement. What’s more there’s no real evidence to move the case along. Then the body of a teenager is found in Glitter Lake and Sejer and Skarre have another investigation on their hands. As the two detectives investigate, there are real questions about whether one or both incidents involved crime. The key here is much more in the psychologies of the characters than in anything else.

There’s also an interesting question of what, if any, crime was committed in Tarquin Hall’s The Case of the Missing Servant. Delhi private detective Vishwas ‘Vish’ Puri is approached by successful attorney Ajay Kasliwal. A Kasliwal family servant Mary Murmu has disappeared, and he is suspected of having raped and killed her. Kasliwal claims that he is not guilty and doesn’t know where Mary Murmu is. He wants to hire Puri to clear his name and to find out the truth about what happened to his missing servant. Puri takes the case and begins to ask questions. Then Kasliwal is actually arrested and it’s soon clear that part of the reason is that the police don’t want to give the appearance of showing favouritism because of Kasliwal’s wealth and position. So Puri faces the task not only of finding out what happened to Mary Murmu (if anything did), but also of dealing with official resistance to a case that the police want left alone. The question of whether there really was a crime in this case isn’t answered right away and that adds to the interest in this novel.

And then there’s Virginia Duigan’s The Precipice. In that novel, we meet former school principal Thea Farmer. She had a beautiful home built for herself in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains. But after making a terrible financial decision Farmer lost her money and had to sell her dream home and settle for the house next door, a house she refers to as ‘the hovel.’ Farmer is resentful when Frank Campbell and Ellice Carrington purchase what she still considers ‘her’ house and move in. It’s even worse when Frank’s twelve-year-old niece Kim joins the couple. Bit by bit though, Farmer and Kim get to know each other and take an interest in each other. That’s when Farmer begins to suspect that there is something sinister going on in the house next door. And that’s one of the main points of suspense: is there something criminal going on? If there is, what is it? If there’s not, then what does that imply about Farmer? Matters get even more intense when Farmer is so convinced that she’s right about the family next door that she takes a decision that has disastrous consequences.

Angela Savage’s short story The Teardrop Tattoos also raises the question of whether a crime is really committed. In that story, a woman who’s recently been released from prison is given housing not far from a childcare centre. Her only companion (for reasons which are also a part of the story) is her pit bull Sully and she is devoted to her dog. Then one day a complaint is lodged against her for owning a dangerous animal. The woman is devastated by the complaint because it means she’ll have to give up Sully. She is certain that she knows not just who lodged it but why so she makes her own kind of plan for revenge. In the end we find that things are not what they seem, and it’s an interesting look at how our perceptions affect whether or not we think there’s been a crime.

Sometimes a story doesn’t need to have an obvious crime in order to keep readers turning pages. I’ve only mentioned a few examples; which ones have you enjoyed?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Buffalo Springfield’s For What it’s Worth.

I Won’t Be Righteous Again*

Most of us don’t like to be wrong, or to be confronted with the fact that we might have a skewed view of things. But sometimes being too sure of ourselves and of our own motives can be very dangerous. That’s especially true if we think we have moral right on our side. Self-righteousness can blind us to what’s really going on in a situation and can lead to disaster. If you don’t already know what I mean, a quick look at crime fiction should suffice to make my point clear.

Agatha Christie explores this whole sense of self-righteousness in more than one of her works. Just as an example, we can look at Christie’s short story The Edge. In that story, we meet thirty-two-year-old Clare Halliwell. She’s well-liked in the village of Daymer’s End, is an efficient parish worker and is generally thought of as a good sort. For years, she and Gerald Lee have been friends and in fact, Clare thought they would marry. But then Gerald suddenly married Vivien Harper, a woman few in the village like very much. Clare certainly doesn’t like her. One day by accident, Clare finds out that Vivien has been having an affair. Now she’s faced with a dilemma: should she tell Gerald what she knows since they’re friends, or should she say nothing? As she debates about what the right thing to do is, she fails to really accept her own very personal interest in breaking up the Lees’ marriage. Vivien begs her to say nothing and Clare agrees, at least for the present. But very slowly their relationship changes. Vivien becomes afraid of Clare and in this story, the tension mounts as Clare moralises about what to do while Vivien becomes more and more afraid. In the end, Clare’s unwillingness to look at her own motives and her own behaviour leads to disaster.

Ellery Queen’s The Fourth Side of the Triangle is in part the story of the McKell family. Successful entrepreneur Ashton McKell seems to be having an affair with fashion designer Sheila Grey. When McKell’s son Dane discovers what his father’s been doing, he’s determined to confront his father’s mistress and stop the affair, mostly for the sake of his mother Lutetia. When he meets Sheila Grey he decides to make her fall in love with him so as to ruin her relationship with his father, or so he tells himself. But instead Dane McKell finds himself falling in love with Grey, and the two begin an affair. Then one night, Sheila Grey is murdered. Inspector Richard Queen is assigned the case and he and his son Ellery begin to investigate. All three of the McKells fall under suspicion at one point or another, but each has a solid alibi. In the end, it takes a cryptic clue that the victim left behind for Queen to figure out who really killed Sheila Grey. Throughout this novel we see how Dane McKell is not honest with himself about his motives. He tells himself that he wants to help his parents keep their marriage together. He also tells himself that his motive for continuing to see Sheila Grey is that he genuinely loves her. And it’s not clear if either of those things is really true.

In Margaret Truman’s Murder in the White House, Ron Fairbanks is tapped to be special counsel to US President Robert Webster. He doesn’t agree with Webster politically, but Webster doesn’t mind that; he claims that he wants Fairbanks’ unvarnished opinions. So with some misgivings Fairbanks accepts the job. Then disaster strikes. Secretary of State Lansard Blaine is murdered one night in a part of the White House without public access. Webster gives Fairbanks carte blanche to investigate so that it will be clear that the administration has nothing to hide. Fairbanks takes his boss at his word and begins his search for the truth. In doing so he uncovers some secrets in Blaine’s life as well as the lives of the Websters. In the end it turns out that the person who shot Blaine was convinced that the murder had what you could call an altruistic motive. That belief in the rightness of the murderer’s thinking turns out to have disastrous consequences.

We also see that kind of self-righteousness in Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Mma. Precious Ramotswe has recently opened the first female-owned detective agency in Botswana and is of course interested in getting new clients. So when wealthy Mr. Paliwalar Patel expresses interest in hiring Mma. Ramotswe, she is eager to find out what the case will be. When she hears what Patel wants though, she is less sure that she really wants to take it. Patel is convinced that his sixteen-year-old daughter Nandira is seeing a boy and he wants Mma. Ramotswe to shadow Nandira and find out who the boy is. Mma. Ramostwe doesn’t think that Patel is right to have his own daughter followed, nor does she see anything wrong with Nandira finding a boyfriend at the age of sixteen. She tries to reason with Patel, but he refuses to listen, insisting that letting children live their own lives is “modern nonsense.” Mma. Ramotswe finally agrees to at least find out what she can. When she discovers the truth behind Nandira’s behaviour, we see even more clearly how Patel’s self-righteousness has affected his thinking and his relationship with his daughter.

And then there’s Thea Farmer, whom we meet in Virginia Duigan’s The Precipice. Farmer is a retired school principal who had a beautiful home built in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains. After making a disastrous financial decision, Farmer lost her money and her beautiful home and has had to settle for a house she calls “the hovel” next door to her dream home. Farmer resents it greatly when Frank Campbell and Ellice Carrington purchase the home that was once hers and move in. Not only does she mourn the loss of her home but she doesn’t want to live near anyone. So she feels nothing but hostility toward her new neighbours whom she refers to as “the invaders.” She doesn’t like it any better when Frank’s niece, twelve-year-old Kim, moves in with Frank and Ellice. Bit by bit though, Farmer gets to know Kim and gradually develops a friendship with her. In the meantime she’s also met Frank and Ellice a few times and finds herself thawing towards especially Frank. The better she gets to know Kim the more suspicious Farmer becomes about what may be going on in the house she thought of as hers. Those suspicions may be completely groundless – or not. But Farmer is thoroughly convinced of the rightness of her own views on the matter and is unwilling to see clearly how her own past affects her judgement in this particular matter. She’s also unwilling to question her own behaviour in the matter. That self-righteousness turns out to have devastating consequences.

And that’s the thing about self-righteousness when it goes too far. When one’s convinced one’s on the moral high ground it’s hard to look closely at one’s own motivations and behaviour. Not doing that though can lead to tragedy.

 

 
 

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