There’s More to a Picture Than Meets the Eye*

An interesting post by crime writer and fellow blogger Elizabeth Spann Craig has got me thinking about fictional murderers. Elizabeth’s very well-taken point is that it’s important for an author to make the murderer a human being – someone who isn’t all bad. I’m sure we’ve all read books in which the killer is a ‘cardboard cut-out’ character who has no redeeming qualities and that doesn’t make for a good story. It’s much more engaging when the murderer is a normal human being – a person who kills not because it’s fun but because there seems little other choice. We may not condone what a murderer like that does, but we understand it. It’s a tricky balance to strike because at the same time, committing murder is a horrible crime and it’s important not to miminise that fact. That said though, when the murder is presented as a complete person, with good qualities as well as the fact of having killed, this invites readers to care what happens. In whodunit type novels it’s also an effective way to keep readers guessing who the killer is. If none of the characters are really all bad (or all good) it’s harder to pick out the murderer.

We’re invited to see the murderer as a full human being in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Linnet Ridgeway Doyle has just gotten married, and she and her husband Simon choose a cruise of the Nile as a part of their honeymoon. On the second night of the cruise, Linnet is shot. The most obvious suspect is her former best friend Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ de Bellefort. Simon is Jacke’s former fiancé and since the marriage, Jackie’s been following the newlyweds wherever they go. She even threatened Linnet. But Jackie can’t have committed the murder and several witnesses can attest to that. Hercule Poirot is on the same cruise, as is Colonel Race; the two of them will have to look among the other passengers to find the killer. Throughout this novel we see the killer as a sympathetic character in a lot of ways. Even Poirot, who ‘does not approve of murder,’ feels sympathy for that person. In fact, during their final confrontation, the killer explains why and how everything happened. Here’s a bit of their exchange:

 

‘Don’t mind so much, Monsieur Poirot. About me, I mean. You do mind, don’t you?’
‘Yes…’’

 

That doesn’t stop Poirot from letting justice take its course, so to speak…

In Colin Dexter’s The Daughters of Cain, Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis investigate two murders.  First Felix McClure, former Ancient History don at Wolsey College, Oxford, is found stabbed in his home. Morse and Lewis begin work on this case by looking at the people in McClure’s life. One is his former scout Ted Brooks, whom McClurse suspected of dealing drugs on campus. Another is a prostitute Eleanor ‘Ellie’ Smith, who counted McClure among her clients. There are other possibilities too, but Brooks seems the most likely. Then, Brooks disappears and is later found murdered. Now the case takes on a whole new dimension. Morse and Lewis have to investigate all of the connections between the two victims and there are more than one. Throughout this novel, we follow the characters involved in this case and all of them are presented as complete human beings, with strong points as well as weak. That’s just as true for the murderer as it is for the other characters and when Morse figures out the truth about the case, we can see that all along, Dexter has invited readers to look at the killer as far more than a ‘cardboard cutout.’

In Catherine O’Flynn’s The News Where You Are, we meet TV presenter Frank Allcroft. He’s got a basically happy marriage, a terrific relationship with his eight-year-old daughter Mo, and a decent job. And yet he’s hit a sort of plateau in his life. As the story begins he’s trying to work out how to handle his sense of floundering, his family life and his complicated relationship with his mother, who’s in a care facility. He’s also dealing with his sense of loss over the death of Phil Smedway, his mentor and predecessor at the network. Partly as a way of dealing with that loss, Allcroft finds himself drawn to the place where Smedway died in a hit-and-run incident. The police think the death was a tragic accident, but as Allcroft reflects on it, he begins to wonder. The roadway where Smedway was hit is flat and straight, with plenty of room for even a drunken driver to veer out of the way of a pedestrian. What’s more, the weather was clear and dry when Smedway was killed. So Allcroft begins to look into the death. As his interest grows, he speaks to the various people in Smedway’s life and slowly puts together the pieces of what happened. Throughout the novel, O’Flynn ‘fleshes out’ the characters so that when we find out what really happened to Smedway, we can feel some sympathy for the person behind the death.

Certainly Oslo police inspector Konrad Sejer feels that way in Karin Fossum’s He Who Fears the Wolf. That novel begins with the murder of Halldis Horn, who’s found dead just outside her home. The victim lived in a rather remote area so there aren’t many witnesses. But the evidence seems to point to Errki Johrma, a mentally ill young man who sometimes stays in that area. Sejer wants to interview Johrma but by the time he gets to that point, Johrma has disappeared. Serer and his team try to track him down, but they are distracted by a bank robbery. The team learns that the bank robber has taken a hostage and run off, so in order to rescue the hostage, the team has to turn all attention to the robbery. In the end, these two cases turn out to be related and when we find out the truth behind what really happened to Halldis Horn, and what really happened during and right after the bank robbery, we learn that the killer is not a ‘cardboard cutout’ evil person. We may not condone what the killer did – it’s impossible to do that. But we can see that this is a person with good points who has nevertheless taken a life.

That’s also the case with Geoffrey McGeachin’s The Diggers Rest Hotel. Melbourne cop Charlie Berlin is sent to Wodonga to help the local police solve a series of robberies committed by a motorcycle gang. In the latest incident, which took place at a railroad station, the paymaster was wounded, so the police want this case solved. Berlin settles into the local hotel and begins to work on the case. Then the body of sixteen-year-old Jenny Lee is found in a local alley. Now Berlin has to divide his time between that case and the robberies. At first he thinks that the motorcycle gang that has been committing the robberies is responsible for Jenny Lee’s death, but he soon learns he’s wrong about that. When Berlin and journalist Rebecca Green discover the truth about both the robberies and Jenny Lee’s murder, we get a real sense that the ‘bad guys’ here are not all bad. In both cases it’s a matter of normal people with real personalities who have strengths as well as weaknesses – and who’ve committed crimes.

Wendy James’ Out of the Silence also tells the story of a complex – and sympathetic – person who has taken a life. In 1900, nineteen-year-old Maggie Heffernan was imprisoned for the drowning murder of her infant son. On the surface of it, it seems like a very heartless and cold thing to do, but as James shows us, Maggie Heffernan was not a heartless murderer. As we learn in this fictionalised retelling of these true events, Maggie was born and raised in rural Victoria. In the novel, she meets and falls in love with Jack Hardy, who seems to love her too. The couple secretly gets engaged and Hardy goes to New South Wales to earn his living. When Maggie learns that she’s pregnant, she writes to Jack to give him the news. He doesn’t respond but Maggie is facing the very real problem of where to go, since she knows her family won’t accept her. So she moves to Melbourne and finds a job, believing that Jack will respond to her when he can. Time goes by and Maggie gives birth to a son she names for his father. Meanwhile, she spends what time she can looking for Jack. When she finally finds him, he pretends not to know her and in fact, he says that Maggie is crazy. Completely distraught, Maggie goes looking for lodging and is turned away from six different places. That’s when the baby’s death occurs. As we learn about what happened to Maggie, it’s hard to see her as a one-sided cold-hearted murderer.

And that’s the thing about a well-told crime story. Of course murderers are guilty of taking lives, and that has to be acknowledged. But well-drawn murderers are also human beings with positive character traits and a motivation for the killing that we can believe. I know I’ve only touched on a few examples of this; which are your favourites?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Neil Young’s Hey, Hey, My, My (Into the Black).

Somewhere in Sydney*

The ‘photo you see is of Sydney’s famous Opera House. I’ve not seen it (yet) in person, ‘though I hope to get a peek at the city soon (thanks, Sydney Opera House, for the use of the image). But there’s a lot more to Sydney than just the Opera House. It’s a large and very diverse city with a long history. That means that there’s a lot of grist there for the crime fiction mill if I can put it that way.

As I say, Sydney’s history goes back a very long way, and Kate Grenville’s The Secret River shows us a part of that history. William Thornhill is a London bargeman who’s caught stealing a load of wood. He’s lucky to escape execution and instead is sentenced to transportation to Australia. In 1806 he, his wife Sal and their children are taken to Sydney Cove where they’re left to start over as best they can. Sal sets up a makeshift pub and the family begins to make a life. For his part, Thornhill finds work delivering goods and making trades with the various more remote places that are accessible only by water. He begins by working for Thomas Blackwood on Blackwood’s boat The River Queen. That’s how he finds the perfect piece of land that he wants for his own on the Hawkesbury River. He finally persuades a reluctant Sal to leave Sydney and start over on that new piece of land and the family settles in. Thornhill in particular develops a deep attachment to the land and that’s the problem. There’ve been people on that land for many thousands of years by the time Thornhill moves in, and he and his family and neighbours are going to have to deal with the fact that other people were there first. This isn’t a crime novel in the sense that there’s a crime, an investigation and so on. But as conflict between the settlers and the indigenous people becomes more and more likely, some terrible crimes are committed and even though Thornhill himself wanted to find a peaceful way to keep the land he loves so much, it’s less and less possible to avoid getting his hands bloody too. I’m looking forward to the next instalment of this family’s story Sarah Thornhill.

Peter Doyle’s Get Rich Quick takes place in 1950’s Sydney. Billy Glasheen is a small-time crook and con-man, who earns his living with one scheme after another. One morning after a night of drinking, Glasheen goes for a swim in Mahon Pool on Maroubra Bay. That’s where he finds the body of Charlie Furner. He and Furner had had a run-in at a local gym a week earlier, and in any case he’s not on very good terms with Furner’s boss Little Jim Swain. What’s more, Glasheen has no desire to spend a lot of time in the company of the police. So he leaves the body where he found it. But it’s not long before he finds himself framed for the murder. Some of Sydney’s more powerful criminals, as well as several cops and corrupt politicians, would like nothing better than to get rid of Glasheen anyway, and it will solve a lot of problems if he can be used to cover up this murder. Glasheen decides that if he’s going to stay alive and hopefully out of jail, he’ll have to find out for himself who killed Charlie Furner and why.

Peter Corris’ Cliff Hardy series also takes place in Sydney, ‘though it’s not exactly the Sydney that the tourists are encouraged to see. Hardy is a PI whom we first meet in The Dying Trade. In that novel, wealthy Bryn Gutteridge hires Hardy on behalf of his twin sister Susan. He tells Hardy that someone has been making threatening telephone calls and sending letters. The caller (whom Susan refers to as The Voice) seems to know quite a lot about her, and is using this knowledge to frighten her, possibly as a prelude to blackmail. Gutteridge wants Hardy to find out who’s behind the threats. Hardy isn’t exactly wealthy, so he’s only too happy to accept the fee. He begins with a look into Susan’s personal history and it’s not long before the case gets very complicated. It turns out that there are some interesting secrets in the family, and that someone knows too much about them. As Hardy gets to know this wealthy family though, he also gets involved in two serious confrontations, and for his own safety, Gutterdige calls him off the case. Then Gutteridge’s stepmother Ailsa Sleeman calls Hardy back into action when her life is threatened. By this time Hardy is deeply involved in the family’s story and is going to have to find out who’s behind what’s been happening in order to untangle himself.

Wendy James’ The Mistake also has a strong Sydney connection. Jodie Evans Garrow and her husband Angus live in Arding, a small New South Wales town, with their two children Hannah and Tom. Life is going well for them until Jodie’s past comes back to haunt her. Hannah is involved in a car accident and taken to a Sydney hospital – the same one where years earlier, Jodie gave birth to another baby Ella Mary.  When a nurse at the hospital remembers Jodie and asks about the baby, Jodie says that she gave the baby up for adoption. Then the nurse does a little checking and finds out that there is no formal record of an adoption. That’s when questions are raised, first privately and then increasingly publicly, about the incident. What happened to the baby? If Jodie didn’t give the baby up for adoption, did she kill the child? If the baby is alive and did grow up, where is she? Before long the questions and gossip make Jodie a social pariah and bitterly divide her family. In the end, we do find out the rest of Ella Mary’s story, and we see the havoc wrought in a family by public pillorying.

Sydney is ‘home base’ for Lindy Cameron’s Team Redback, a crack retrieval team that makes a specialty of rescuing people from extremely dangerous situations. In Redback, the team is sent to the Pacific island of Laui to rescue a group of delegates to the Pacific Tourism and Enviro-Trade Conference. A group of rebels has captured the delegates and Redback is called in to free them. This they accomplish successfully but they soon find that their work is far from done. The hostage-taking is soon connected to two murders, a train explosion in Europe, an attack on a US air base and later another murder, this time on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Australian Attorney General Barney Cross is killed and Prime Minister Robert Harvey is shot in the leg. Now Redback, led by Commander Bryn Gideon, has to act fast to stop the terrorist group that’s behind all of this devastation.

And I couldn’t really discuss Sydney-based crime fiction without mentioning Katherine Howell’s Ella Marconi series. Marconi is a New South Wales police detective who sees the best and worst sides of the city. Often she’s teamed with Dennis Orchard, but she also works with Murray Shakespeare. In Silent Fear for instance, she and Shakespeare investigate the murder of Paul Fowler, who is shot, execution-style, while he and some friends are throwing a football around in a park. As Marconi and her team look into Fowler’s life, they find that he was involved with some shady ‘business associates.’ They also discover that his ex-wife Trina has a habit of not telling everything that she knows, including the fact that she was having an affair with one of Fowler’s friends. So Marconi and Shakespeare have a list of suspects. Howell’s novels also include major characters who are paramedics and who are often dispatched to the scene of sudden deaths. In their stories and in Marconi’s story, we get a good look at many different places in Sydney.

Sydney is a multi-layered place with lots of history and many different kinds of people living there. So it really is a natural setting for a good crime fiction series. Which Sydney-based novels have you enjoyed?

 

ps.  So why am I mentioning Sydney in particular? Well, beyond the fact that it is a great setting for a mystery, I plan to make a short stop there later this month. That’s right! I’ll be giving a paper at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Northern Territories on 27 June and I’ll be making a few stops on the way. My trip to Australia will start with a very brief stop in Sydney. Then it’ll be on to… More later    Oh, and if you’re interested in my topic and so on, feel free to click on my Workshops and Presentations tab.

 
 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a Skyhooks song. A line from Midnight Oil’s Section 5 (Bus to Bondi) came in a close second…

I Need Attendance From My Nurse Around the Clock*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 
 

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

But the Press Let the Story Leak*

Today is (or yesterday was, depending on when you read this) World Press Freedom Day. Now, normally I don’t keep track of every observance like this, but this one is an important one. People depend on their news to be accurate, and they depend on journalists to help ensure the transparency of what government and corporations do. So it’s important that the media be free to report on stories. At the same time, I think most of us would agree that there are good reasons for certain limits to press access. For instance, it wouldn’t be appropriate for the press to report on certain matters of national security (of course, we could debate on what belongs in that category; I’m speaking in generalities here). Most people would also agree that we have a right to a certain amount of privacy and the media should not violate that privacy. ‘Freedom of the press’ is a crucial concept, but it gets complicated when put into practice. And that’s what makes this kind of issue so interesting and such an appropriate plot point/theme for crime fiction.

Agatha Christie’s novels don’t generally paint journalists in a very positive light. I don’t know for sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if that has something to do with what she went through with the press during and after her famous 11-day absence during December of 1926. In Death in the Clouds (AKA Death in the Air), for instance, London hairdresser’s assistant Jane Grey is returning from a rare holiday at Le Pinet when one of her fellow airline passengers suddenly dies of what looks at first like a toxic reaction to a wasp sting. But it’s soon proven that this was murder. And it’s not surprising; the victim is Marie Morisot AKA Madame Giselle, a well-known French moneylender who used information she found out about her clients as ‘collateral’ for loans. The only possible suspects are the other passengers so although she’s not seriously suspected, Jane comes in for her share of questioning. That’s how she meets Hercule Poirot, who was on the same flight and who is helping Chief Inspector Japp with the case. At one point, Jane is having tea with fellow passenger Norman Gale when a reporter interrupts them, asking for a story. Both of them refuse him, but the reporter unscrupulously writes a story about them anyway.

Wendy James’ The Mistake also takes a look at, among other things, the way the press treats a major news story. Jodie Evans Garrow has what most people would say is pretty much the perfect life. She’s in an enduring marriage to Angus, a successful lawyer and up-and-coming politician. She has two healthy children and she herself is in good health. Everything changes when Jodie’s daughter Hannah is involved in an accident and ends up in the same hospital where, years earlier, Jodie gave birth to another child – a girl she’s never told anyone even existed. When one of the hospital nurses remembers Jodie and asks her about her daughter, Jodie says she gave the baby up for adoption. But the zealous nurse can find no official adoption records. She feels compelled to report what she’s found and the media soon gets wind of a big story. What happened to this successful woman’s baby? If the baby is alive, where is she? If not, did Jodie have something to do with the baby’s death? Very soon, the media makes the lives of Jodie and her family members miserable. Certainly the stories fan public sentiment against Jodie and that makes her situation that much worse. In the end, we find out what really happened after Jodie gave birth; we also see exactly what damage the press can do to a family.

And yet, as we see in Peter Temple’s Bad Debts, journalists play important roles in exposing corruption, graft and more. In that novel, sometime-attorney Jack Irish gets several telephone messages from a former client Danny McKillop, who’s recently been released from prison. McKillop was convicted of the drink-driving killing of Melbourne activist Anne Jeppeson and now he wants to talk to Irish about the case. But by the time Irish tries to return McKillop’s calls it’s too late; McKillop has been murdered. Irish knows that he didn’t do a good job of defending McKillop and that, plus his guilt over not returning the telephone calls sooner, pushes Irish to start asking questions about his former client’s death. As he begins to look into the matter he meets journalist Linda Hillier, who works for Pacific Rim News. Hillier gets interested in the story because it’s looking quite possible that McKillop was not guilty of Anne Jeppeson’s murder and was framed. If that’s true then someone else committed both killings. Hillier uses her contacts and journalistic skills to help find out who the murderer is. The trail leads to some highly-placed people and a case of greed and corruption that Jeppeson was trying to fight.

Paddy Richardson’s Traces of Red also brings up several issues of freedom of the press, its limits and the effects on people of a big story. Rebecca Thorne is a Wellington TV journalist whose Saturday Night is very well-regarded. But she’s reached a professional plateau, and she’s getting concerned. Saturday Night’s ratings are slipping and what’s worse, there are younger ‘hungry’ journalists out there who are all too eager to take Thorne’s place. So Thorne is looking for the story that will cement her place at the top of New Zealand television journalism. She thinks she finds that story in the case of Connor Bligh, who’s in Rimutaka Prison for the murders of his sister Angela Dickson, her husband Rowan and their son Sam. The only survivor of that attack was their daughter Katy, who wasn’t at home at the time of the killings. During the initial investigation and trial, everyone assumed that Bligh was guilty and most people still do. But there are little hints that he may be innocent. If he is, then this story could be just what Thorne needs. So she begins to investigate. In the process of her search for answers, she gets very close to the story – too close, really. And we see in the way she goes about it how all-consuming the search for a story can be. As Thorne interviews friends, colleagues, neighbours, and finally Katy Dickson herself, we also see how devastating it can be to have something this painful raked up.

There are also of course plenty of fictional sleuths who are journalists. I’m thinking for instance of Michael Connelly’s Jack McEvoy and Liza Marklund’s Annika Bengtzon. Of course, since they’re the protagonists we see the question of exactly what ‘counts’ as journalistic limits from their perspectives. But even so, they remind us of how important it is that the press be free to investigate stories. That said though, I think crime fiction also reminds us that with that freedom comes an important set of responsibilities, including accuracy, the protection of people’s privacy (especially the most vulnerable), and professional behaviour.

What do you think of this balance? Which stories have you enjoyed that treat these themes?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Paul Simon’s Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Drowning

The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme continues on our treacherous journey through the alphabet. I’m pleased to say that thus far, we’ve had no casualties – yet. That’s thanks to our tour leader Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, who’s seen to all the arrangements.

Today we’ve arrived at the Hotel D. It’s quite a hotel, with its own fitness center, steam room and pool. That last is actually maybe not such a good thing, as my contribution for today’s stop is drowning.

The thing about drowning is that it can look deceptively like an accident. And it doesn’t really require a lot of specialised knowledge or weaponry. So it’s not surprising that there are a lot of cases of drowning in crime fiction.

Several of Agatha Christie’s works involve drowning. That’s what happens in for instance Hallowe’en Party. Thirteen-year-old Joyce Reynolds is with a group of young people who are helping to prepare for a Hallowe’en party. She boasts that she’s seen a murder and although just about everyone hushes her up she insists that it’s true. That evening Joyce is drowned in a bucket of water used for a bobbing-for-apples game. Christie’s fictional detective story author Ariadne Oliver was at both the preparations for the party and the party itself, and she is convinced that Joyce was killed because she really did witness a murder and the murderer wanted to keep her quiet. Mrs. Oliver asks Hercule Poirot to visit the village of Woodleigh Common and investigate. He agrees and starts to ask questions. Then there’s another murder. Poirot discovers that both murders are related to some events in the town’s past and a murder that occurred a few years earlier.

Minette Walters’ The Breaker tells the story of the murder of Kate Sumner, whose body is discovered on a beach near Chapman’s Pool in Dorsetshire. Forensics reports show that she was choked, drugged and then drowned. Shortly after her body is discovered, her toddler daughter Hannah is discovered wandering around a nearby town. PC Nick Ingram works with WPC Sandra Griffiths, DI John Galbraith and Superintendent Carpenter to find out who killed Kate Sumner and how Hannah got to the village. Their search for answers leads them to three main suspects: Kate’s husband William; Stephen Harding, an actor with whom Kate had flirted several times; and Harding’s roommate Tony Bridges. This murder turns out to be related to be much more psychological in nature than anything else.

DCI Hannah Scarlett and her Cold Case Review team investigate a case of drowning in Martin Edwards’ The Serpent Pool. Six years earlier Bethany Friend was drowned in the Lake District’s Serpent Pool. At the time, the case was put down as a suicide. But Scarlett has never quite believed that explanation. So she and her team re-open the case. At the same time, Scarlett’s friend and co-worker Fern Larter and her team are investigating two more recent murders. The two compare notes and it’s not long before they determine that the three murderers are related. And so they turn out to be. With help from Oxford historian Daniel Kind, Scarlett and Larter find out who killed all three victims and what the motive was.

Gail Bowen’s The Wandering Souls Murders also includes a drowning. Political scientist and academician Joanne Kilbourn gets involved in a case of multiple murders when her daughter Mieka discovers the body of a young girl in a trash bin. The police are just beginning to look into that case when there’s another death. Christy Sinclair is the former girlfriend of Kilbourn’s son Peter. When the two broke up, Kilbourn was only too happy to see Christy go. Then, she suddenly comes back into Peter’s life, going so far as to say they’re back together. One night she drowns in what looks like a tragic boating accident. But her death was quite deliberate. Kilbourn discovers that both deaths are related to a secret from Christy’s past and to some dark truths about some of the characters.

There’s a tragic case of drowning in Wendy James’ Out of the Silence, which is based on true incidents. Born and raised in Victoria, nineteen-year-old Maggie Heffernan was imprisoned in 1900 for the drowning death of her baby son Jacky. The novel is a fictional portrayal of Maggie’s life, her meeting with Jack Hardy, their brief affair and the resulting pregnancy. By the time Maggie realises that she’s pregnant, Jack has left for New South Wales to find work. Jack doesn’t respond when Maggie writes to tell him about her pregnancy, and she knows that her family won’t accept her. So she moves to Melbourne to find work and hopefully trace Jack. She gives birth and after a time, she finally traces Jack. When she does, he claims that she’s crazy and won’t have anything to do with her. With nowhere to go, Maggie searches through Melbourne for a place to stay and is turned away from six different lodging houses. That’s when Jacky’s death occurs. Through diaries, letters and news items, we read of Maggie’s experiences, the trial, and the efforts to free her once she is imprisoned.

And then there’s Domingo Villar’s Death on a Galician Shore. In that novel Vigo police detective Leo Caldas and his team investigate the mysterious drowning death of a local fisherman Justo Castelo. The evidence suggests that he committed suicide but there are just a few hints that suggest otherwise. So Caldas and his assistant Rafael Estevez dig deeper into the case. As they do so, they get to know about Castelo’s background they learn that his death could very well have to do with a 1996 tragedy in which he and two fellow fishermen were the only survivors of a boat tragedy that claimed the life of their captain Antonio Sousa. Bit by bit, Caldas and Estevez find out how Castelo’s drowning is related to the 1996 Sousa drowning.

See what I mean? Drowning happens a lot in crime fiction. Well, now; I’ve finished unpacking. What about a swim?