In Agatha Christie’s  Murder on the Orient Express, Hercule Poirot is traveling to London on the Orient Express train. On the second night of the journey, fellow passenger Samuel Ratchett is stabbed. Poirot’s friend M. Bouc, a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, is also on the train and asks his friend to investigate the murder. Poirot agrees and gathers evidence from all of the passengers. He listens to what everyone says and compares their statements with each other and with what’s known about Ratchett and about the murder itself. In the end, he gets to the truth, but along the way, he has to contend with a ‘wall of silence.’ Everyone gives a statement, but Poirot learns that these people are not telling everything they know.

Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse faces a similar ‘wall of silence’ in The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn. Nicholas Quinn is named to Oxford’s Foreign Examinations Syndicate, the first Deaf person to be a part of that group. The Syndicate is responsible for overseeing exams taken in non-UK countries with a British education tradition, and membership is considered ‘a feather in the cap.’ Quinn was not a unanimous choice for the Syndicate, but he settles in and starts his work. Then one day he is murdered with a poisoned glass of sherry. Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis investigate the murder and soon find that more than one person could have wanted to kill Quinn. The various members of the Syndicate give statements and so on, but it’s soon clear that there are secrets among the Syndicate members that everyone’s covering up. So Morse has to get beneath the surface so to speak to find out the truth about Quinn’s death. What’s interesting in this case is that some of those secrets have little to do with the murder; they’re just embarrassing to Syndicate members.

Sometimes the ‘wall of silence’ isn’t planned or even co-ordinated. It’s just that the people involved decide not to share what they know. That’s what happens in Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost. Ten-year-old Kate Meaney is a budding detective who’s just opened her own agency Falcon Investigations. She spends a lot of time at the newly-opened Green Oaks Shopping Center, where she believes she’s sure to find all sorts of criminal doings. Kate’s grandmother Ivy thinks the girl would be better off going away to school, so she arranges for Kate to sit the entrance exams at the exclusive Redspoon School. Kate doesn’t want to go but her friend Adrian Palmer persuades her, even promising to go with her to the school on test day. Kate and Adrian take the bus to Redspoon but Kate never returns. Not even a body is discovered. Everyone thinks that Palmer is responsible for Kate’s disappearance but he claims he is innocent. Still, he leaves town because he’s become an outcast. Twenty years later, his younger sister Lisa is working at a store in the mall when she befriends Kurt, a security guard who also works there. Kurt tells her of an odd thing he’s seen on the security cameras: a young girl with a backpack. Kurt’s description reminds Lisa of Kate, and each in a different way, the two slowly start to look into the past to find out what really happened when Kate disappeared. In this story, several people know at least parts of the truth about Kate, but for various reasons they don’t tell what they know. That ‘wall of silence’ is a big part of the reason for which it takes twenty years to learn what happened to Kate.

In Gail Bowen’s A Killing Spring, Saskatchewan political scientist and academician Joanne Kilbourn gets involved in the investigation when a colleague Reed Gallagher is found murdered in a seedy rented room. Kilbourn’s acquainted with Gallagher’s wife Julia, so she comes along to help break the bad news. As the investigation slowly develops, Kilbourn learns that there could be several motives for Gallagher’s murder. One person who may know more than she’s saying is one of Gallagher’s students Kellee Savage. Kellee has her own mental/emotional issues, but some of what she says is quite lucid. Then Kellee disappears. She doesn’t come to class, doesn’t turn in assignments and doesn’t contact her professors. At first Kilbourn thinks that, like many students, Kellee is very stressed with upcoming exams and other work, and just took off for a bit. But gradually it becomes clear that something more is going on. As Kilbourn tries to find out the truth though, she meets with what seems like a ‘wall of silence’ from Kellee’s classmates. They all tell Kilbourn what they remember about the last time anyone saw Kellee, but they don’t tell everything they know. Kellee is later found dead and in the end, Kilbourn finds out who’s responsible for that death and for Reed Gallagher’s death, and how the two are connected. The ‘wall of silence’ doesn’t make it any easier though…

There’s a very tragic ‘wall of silence’ in Karin Fossum’s Calling Out For You (AKA The Indian Bride). Gunder Jormann makes the surprising decision to travel to Mumbai and find a wife there. He may not be the quickest thinker in the world, but he’s honest, a steady worker, and although he’s no longer a young man, he hasn’t fallen physically to pieces. So he is hopeful of finding a bride willing to marry him. He arrives in Mumbai and before long, he meets Poona Bai. The two take to each other and Poona agrees to marry him. Poona needs to do some things to finish up her life in India, so Gunder returns alone to his Norway village of Elvestad. He and Poona keep in close contact though, and he is very excited for her arrival. On the very day he’s supposed to meet Poona at the airport, Gunder’s sister Marie is involved in a car accident that leaves her in a coma. Gunder needs to stay with his sister, so he asks an acquaintance to meet Poona for him. The two miss each other though and Poona never arrives at Gunder’s home. The next morning, her murdered body is found in a nearby field and Inspector Konrad Sajer and his assistant Jacob Skarre investigate. As they slowly put together what, exactly, happened on the night of Poona’s arrival in Elvestad, it becomes clear that several people in the village have pieces of the puzzle. But they aren’t willing at first to say what they know. In fact when one witness Linda Carling does talk to the police, everyone else freezes her out, so to speak. In one case of course, the reason for the silence is that the person has committed murder. In another it’s because of not wanting to be implicated in the murder. But in other cases it’s because everyone has tacitly agreed not to point the finger at people they know. After all, these people have known each other for years, sometimes decades. It takes a long time for Sejer and Skarre to penetrate this ‘wall,’ but eventually they find out what people haven’t been telling them.

Detective Ella Marconi and her police partner Murray Shakespeare have to get past a ‘wall of silence’ in Katherine Howell’s Silent Fear. Paul Fowler and some friends are tossing a football around one hot day when Fowler suddenly falls over dead. At first it looks as though he died of heat exhaustion, but in a very short time it’s discovered that he was shot, execution style. Marconi and Shakespeare interview Fowler’s friends and his ex-wife Trina to find out who would have wanted to kill the victim. Everyone gives the detectives information, but as the two learn, they also keep some important things to themselves. In fact, in this case there’s an agreement among some of the witnesses to keep their mouths shut. And as it turns out, there’s a good reason for that. It turns out that Fowler took a very dangerous decision that cost him his life.

A lot of witnesses don’t keep things from the police just to be difficult. There’s often a self-protective kind of reason for conspiring, tacitly or overtly, in a ‘wall of silence.’ But for the sleuth, it just makes the case harder to investigate. Of course, a novel in which everyone told everything they knew would end fairly quickly wouldn’t it???

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from October Project’s Wall of Silence.

Agatha Christie’s Death in the Clouds (AKA Death in the Air) is the story of the murder of Marie Morisot. a French moneylender who does business as Madame Giselle. One day while on a flight from Paris to London, Madame Giselle suddenly dies of what turns out to have been poison. The only possible suspects are the other passengers so Hercule Poirot, who was on the same flight, works with Chief Inspector Japp to find out which of the passengers is the killer. I don’t want to give away spoilers, so I won’t say what tipped me off to the killer, but I will say I figured out who it was before the answer was revealed. But a few things kept my interest throughout the novel. One was the motive, which I’ll admit I didn’t work out for myself; the motive is believable but it’s not obvious right away. Neither is the exact method of murder. This isn’t really an ‘impossible murder’ but it takes some figuring out, and I stayed along for the ride, so to speak, to find out how exactly the thing was accomplished.

In Dorothy Sayers’ Strong Poison, Lord Peter Wimsey attends the murder trial of mystery novelist Harriet Vane, who is accused of having poisoned her former lover Philip Boyes. There is evidence against her too. She had arsenic in her possession, the two had quarreled, and she was the last person known to give Boyes anything to eat or drink. So the prosecution thinks it has an ‘airtight’ case. But the jury can’t agree on a verdict, so she is given another trial. Wimsey has fallen in love with Vane, so he determines to clear her name during the month before her new trial. Little by little and with help from some friends and his valet Mervyn Bunter, Wimsey traces Boyes’ last days and weeks. In the end, he’s able to work out who really killed the victim and why. I admit I was able to identify the murderer before Wimsey did. But there’s more than just ‘whodunit’ in this novel. There’s the sub-plot of Wimsey’s interest in Harriet Vane, and her reaction to it. There are also some well-drawn characters in the story that keep readers (well, this one anyway) interested. For instance, there’s Katherine Climpson, who owns a temporary services agency. She and her employees prove to be very helpful to Wimsey; they’re quick-thinking, capable and interesting. There’s also a thread of humour throughout the novel. So at least for me, working out the killer’s identity didn’t stop me enjoying the novel.

Peter Robinson’s A Dedicated Man introduces us to Harry Steadman, an archaeologist who left his position at Leeds University when he inherited enough money to set him up for life. His passion is the Roman ruins in Yorkshire, so he and his wife Emma moved there to allow him to excavate them. One day, Steadman is found bludgeoned. DCI Alan Banks and his team begin the investigation with a close look at Steadman’s personal and professional lives. As they do so, they discover that there are several possible suspects, including people in Steadman’s professional circle as well as his friends. Then, sixteen-year-old Sally Lumb disappears and is later found dead. It turns out that Sally knew more than was safe for her to know about the murder of Harry Steadman, and when she put what she thought was the final piece of the puzzle together, she ended up paying with her life. I’ll confess I worked out who was behind the murders, but that didn’t stop me staying involved in that story. That’s in part because at first I didn’t know how the whole thing had been accomplished. I was really interested also in untangling the complicated set of relationships that we learn about in this novel. They all play a role in what happens, and they kept me wanting to know more.

And then there’s H.R.F. Keating’s Inspector Ghote’s First Case. In that novel, Ganesh Ghote has just been promoted from Assistant Inspector to Inspector in the Bombay (now Mumbai) police force. No sooner does he receive word of his new status than he is summoned to the office of Sir Rustom Engineer, who heads the Bombay police’s Crime Branch. Engineer wants Ghote to travel to Mahableshwar to follow up on a request from an old friend Robert Dawkins. Dawkins’ wife Iris recently committed suicide and Dawkins wants to know what led up to it. Ghote’s wife Protima is about to give birth to their first child, but he doesn’t see how he can refuse this request, so he reluctantly makes the trip. When he gets to Mahableshwar, he makes contact with Dawkins and his household staff, as well as with some of the people in Iris’ past. Soon enough Ghote begins to believe that Iris Dawkins was murdered. Although the local police are unwilling to upset someone with as much power as Dawkins has, Ghote persists and in the end, he finds out that he was right about Iris’ death. Part of the appeal in this story comes from the well-crafted setting, so even though I worked out who the killer was, I stayed engaged on that score. What’s more, although I had guessed who committed the crime, I wasn’t sure how that person managed to create an alibi. So I followed along eagerly as Ghote solved that part of the puzzle.

Donna Leon’s Through a Glass, Darkly takes Commissario Guido Brunetti and Ispettore Lorenzo Vianello into Venice’s glass-blowing industry. Giorgio Tassini is night watchman at Giovanni de Cal’s glass-blowing factory; late one night he is killed in what looks like a terrible accident. But Tassini had been quite vocal in his belief that that factory and others are guilty of illegal toxic waste dumping. In fact, he blames that waste for his own daughter’s disabilities. So Brunetti and Vianello have to consider the possibility that he was murdered. They begin their investigation with Tassini’s colleagues and bosses and soon find that more than one person could have had a motive for murder. I did work out who the killer was but the suspects in this case have alibis, and it was hard to break the killer’s. I didn’t feel too badly about that though, as Brunetti doesn’t break it either at first. And even if I had worked that one out, Leon’s depiction of Venice, and her portrayal of Brunetti’s family life are ‘draws’ for me. So are the ‘regular’ characters such as Signorina Elettra Zorzi, assistant to Brunetti’s boss, and one of the very interesting characters in this series. I had no trouble remaining engaged in this one even though I had guessed the ‘whodunit’ part.

Of course, your reading experience will be different to mine. Have you worked out whodunit before the author told you? Does that put you off a story? I’d be really interested in your input on this one. If you’re a writer, what do you add to your stories to keep readers turning/clicking pages even if they do figure out whodunit?

Thanks, Tracy, for the inspiration. Folks, I encourage you to add Bitter Tea and Mystery to your blog roll. It’s an excellent source of thoughtful and informed crime fiction reviews.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Richard Adler & Jerry Ross’ Seven-And-A-Half-Cents.

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. Stuart Palmer’s Hildegarde Withers novels may not be as well-known as, say, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple novels, but they are an important part of Golden Age detective fiction and Miss Withers is an enduring character (Palmer wrote about her for over thirty years). So today let’s meet Hildegarde Withers and turn the spotlight on Palmer’s first Hildegarde Withers novel The Penguin Pool Murder.

Miss Withers takes her Grade Three class on a field trip to the New York Aquarium. While they’re there, a pickpocket tries to steal Miss Withers’ handbag. She trips the man up with her umbrella and he is caught by a security guard. The man turns out to be John ‘Chicago Lew’ McGirr, a thief with a history of brushes with the law. Miss Withers’ handbag is recovered but Chicago Lew manages to escape temporarily.

The class is gathering together to leave when two things stop them. First, one of the students notices that Miss Withers’ hatpin is missing. The hatpin has just been recovered at the bottom of a set of stairs when Miss Withers notices that another of her students is not with the group. She finds him staring avidly at the penguins; suddenly, to everyone’s shock, the body of a man slides into the tank.  Police Inspector Oscar Piper is called in to investigate. At first, it looks as though the victim was drowned but it’s soon discovered that he was dead before he went into the penguin tank. The murder weapon was Miss Withers’ hat pin.

It turns out that the dead man is stockbroker Gerald Lester and Piper and Miss Withers start looking into Lester’s personal and professional lives to see who might have wanted to kill him. There are several possibilities too. Professionally, the Great Crash of 1929 has wiped out many of Lester’s clients (this novel was published in 1931). More than one of them could have a motive for murder. And then there’s the fact that Lester was an unfaithful husband whose wife Gwen was not exactly above reproach herself. In fact Gwen was at the Aquarium at the time of the murder and so was her lover, attorney Philip Seymour, so either of them could be guilty. But things aren’t that simple. When Chicago Lew escaped after trying to steal Miss Withers’ handbag, he ended up behind the penguin tank where he was eventually caught, and it’s very likely he saw something. He might even be guilty. And then there’s the fact that Lester got a mysterious ‘phone call on the day of his death, telling him that his unfaithful wife and her lover were meeting at the Aquarium; whoever made that call could have lured Lester to the tank to kill him.

Piper continues to work on the case and soon finds that Miss Withers is an observant and very helpful amateur detective although they do butt heads now and then. The evidence mounts up against both Gwen Lester and Philip Seymour. Both are imprisoned and bound over for trial. Chicago Lew has been arrested too for his thievery. Then, Chicago Lew suddenly dies, an apparent suicide. He even leaves behind a note confessing to Lester’s murder. But neither Piper nor Miss Withers is so sure of that. In the end, Piper and Miss Withers find out who the real killer is and what the motive for both murders really was.

This is a Golden Age novel and it bears many of the hallmarks of stories from that era. There’s the ‘impossible – but not really impossible – murder’ theme, the dramatic ‘big reveal’ scene, and some ingenious murder methods. There are also some suitably likely suspects, all of whom are hiding something and any one of whom could have killed Lester.

Being a Golden Age novel though, it also contains some sexist, racial and ethnic references that modern readers will probably find offensive. I have to admit that I had to keep reminding myself that this story is the product of its time in that sense. But as Golden Age fans know, that’s part of the proverbial package when you read a novel written during that era.

The character of Hildegarde Withers is in some ways reflective of the age, but she is hardly a ‘damsel in distress.’ She is independent, observant and highly intelligent. She thinks quickly, too. For instance, at the beginning of the novel it’s her quick reaction that trips up Chicago Lew. Later in the novel, she sends her students out to search for a particular witness, and her plan turns up an important clue. She has a sense of humour too (and so does Palmer). For instance, when she and Piper first meet shortly after Lester’s murder, he asks her several questions, since she’s a witness:

‘Okay, then. Your full name?’
‘Hildegarde Martha Withers.’…
‘Occupation?’
‘At present, answering foolish questions. Young man, I told you I was a teacher.’

And yet, Miss Withers isn’t perfect. She can be acerbic and impatient and she’s not always right. Still, she has compassion in her own way, and she makes solid deductions.  It’s easy to be on her side as she finds creative ways to outwit the killer.

Another element that runs through this novel is the look that we get at US stock trading just before and on the days of the Great Crash. As Piper and Miss Withers find out about Lester’s professional life, we can see how that business worked. We can also see how practices such as buying on margin contributed to the devastating losses that occurred when the system broke down.

The novel is set in New York City and Palmer makes that clear throughout:

‘She [Miss Withers] took a downtown Seventh Avenue express, changed to a local at Fourteenth, and got off at Canal. Then she walked leisurely toward the river for two blocks and took her stand on the corner.’

Both the mystery itself and Miss Withers’ personality are good fits for the setting, too.

The Penguin Pool Murder is a solid example of Golden Age storytelling with an appealing protagonist, a solid sense of humour, a distinctive setting and an interesting mystery. The solution to it isn’t obvious, but the careful reader will be able to pick up the clues; Palmer ‘plays fair.’ But what’s your view? Have you read The Penguin Pool Mystery? If you have, what elements do you see in it?

Coming Up On In The Spotlight

Monday 24 June/Tuesday 25 June – Violent Exposure – Katherine Howell

Monday 1 July/Tuesday 2 July – Quite Ugly One Morning – Christopher Brookmyre

Monday 8 July/Tuesday 9 July – Letter From a Dead Man – Dawn Harris

Knives are one of the more common weapons in crime fiction and that makes sense when you think about it. They’re easy to acquire, they don’t require any special preparation or background and when they’re sharp enough, just about anyone can use them. There are far, far too many examples for me to mention them all in this one post, so I’ll just offer a few.

One of the most famous knives used in crime fiction appears in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Wealthy American businessman Samuel Ratchett is en route through Europe on the Orient Express train. On the second night of that journey he is stabbed. Hercule Poirot is on the same train and he is persuaded to look into the case before the official police come on board at the next frontier. Poirot discovers who killed Ratchett and why, and there’s actually an interesting postscript, so to speak, about the knife. It’s mentioned later in Cards on the Table. In that novel Poirot investigates the murder (also with a knife, as it happens) of the eccentric Mr. Shaitana during a dinner party. There are only four possible suspects, so it’s a very interesting psychological puzzle. At one point, one of the suspects Anne Meredith and her roommate Rhoda Dawes pay a visit to Poirot. While they’re there he invites Rhoda to see the knife and in that invitation, Christie gives a major spoiler to Murder on the Orient Express. So if you haven’t read that one, read it before you read Cards on the Table…

In Lawrence Block’s The Sins of the Fathers, Cale Hanniford pays a visit to former NYPD cop Matthew Scudder. Hanniford’s daughter Wendy was brutally stabbed in her apartment and Hanniford wants to know what led to the murder. The police have caught the most likely suspect, Wendy’s roommate Richard Vanderrpoel, so Hanniford believes the case is solved. But he’s been estranged from Wendy for a long time and wants to know what kind of person she became. Scudder agrees to ask some questions, starting with an interview with Vanderpoel. That conversation doesn’t help much as Vanderpoel is either mentally unhinged or under the influence of drugs. Still, he says some things that make Scudder wonder whether he is really guilty. Shortly after that, Vanderpoel commits suicide. Now Scudder is even more curious about what exactly happened to Wendy Hanniford and he keeps digging for answers. As it turns out, both young people’s deaths have everything to do with their pasts.

Martin Edwards’ All The Lonely People features Liverpool attorney Harry Devlin, and begins when Devlin gets a surprise visit from his ex-wife Liz. He’s still in love with her, so his first hope is that she wants to patch things up. Instead, she says that she’s run away from her current lover Mick Coghlin because she’s afraid of him. She wants to stay with Devlin for a few days until she decides what to do next. Devlin agrees, still hoping he and Liz can get back together. The next night though, Liz is stabbed and her body left in an alley. It’s not long before the police begin to suspect that Devlin is guilty. So in part to clear his name, and in part to deal with his feelings for Liz, he begins to investigate. To find out the truth, he’s going to have to learn an uncomfortable about Liz’ complicated life.

In Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road, former prospector Albert ‘Doc’ Ozolins is stabbed one night after a drunken quarrel. The police, including Aboiginal Community Police Officer (ACPO) Emily Tempest, are called to Green Swamp Well where the murder happened. Tempest’s boss Bruce Cockburn believes that John ‘Wireless’ Petherbridge, with whom Ozolins had quarreled, is guilty. But Tempest sees little signs that something more might be going on than a drunken fight that ended tragically. So she begins to ask questions. Eventually, she finds that Ozolins was killed because he’d stumbled onto something that some very dangerous people wanted to keep secret.

T.J. Cooke’s Defending Elton tells the story of the stabbing death of the very enigmatic Sarena Gunasekera. When her body is found at the bottom of a cliff at Beachy Head near Eastbourne, the police find evidence that the killer is Elton Spears. Spears is a troubled young man with a history of mental problems and of inappropriate conduct towards women. There’s enough strong evidence against Spears that he’s held over for trial and in fact, the police think it’s an open-and-shut case. But some of the Spears’ comments suggest that he isn’t the murderer. Besides, under British law, Spears is considered innocent until proven guilty. So, solicitor Jim Harwood begins the work of representing Spears, with whom he’s worked before. Together with barrister Harry Douglas, Harwood intends to do everything he can to ensure that Spears is acquitted. That includes looking deeply into the victim’s life to see who else might have wanted to kill her. As it turns out, there are several hidden layers to Sarena and as we find out about her past, we also learn that more than one person could have wanted her dead.

And then there’s Cath Staincliffe’s Split Second. That novel begins on a bus, when three young people begin bullying Luke Murray. The harassment keeps up until Jason Barnes, who’s on the same bus, tells the others to stop. He gets off the bus, as does Luke, but so do the bullies, and the fight escalates. When it’s over, Luke has been gravely injured and may die, and Jason has been stabbed to death. The police investigate what happened, interviewing everyone and slowly getting to the truth about who the killer was. In the process we learn how the incident affects both boys’ families as well as how it affects Emma Curtis, who was on the bus when the tragedy started.

Of course, knives can also be handy for self-protection, as we also find out in a lot of crime fiction novels. I don’t want to give away titles because I think it has more impact when the reader doesn’t know that knife is going to be pulled out just in time to save the day, so to speak. But if you’ve read novels where that happens, you know what I mean.

Still, knives are extremely dangerous, mostly because they’re so accessible and it doesn’t take much for them to do a lot of damage. Now, I’m sure you’re ready for a good meal. How about we go to K & K’s Bar & Grill with the others and watch the staff chop up the steaks and the veges? 

Much of the action in Christianna Brand’s Green For Danger takes place in Heron’s Park Hospital, which has been designated as, among other things, a World War II military treatment facility. One day postman Joseph Higgins is rushed in with a broken femur. The injury itself isn’t life-threatening but it’s agreed that he should be treated as soon as possible. Tragically, Higgins dies during the operation and Inspector Cockrill is sent to handle the necessary paperwork. At first, the death seems like a terrible operating room accidental death. But Cockrill wants to make sure, and begins to ask questions. Then one night, one of the nurses Sister Marion Bates has too much to drink and says that she knows Higgins was murdered and she knows how it was done. Late that night she’s found murdered in the same operating room. Now Cockrill launches a full-scale investigation and narrows his search to the six people at the hospital who had the most to do with the two victims. Then there’s another death. The more Cockrill investigates, the more anxious the killer is to ‘cover up’ what happened. Cockrill gets to the truth in the end, but it’s an interesting question whether there would have been more than one death if there had never been any questions asked…

That’s also true in Agatha Christie’s Hickory Dickory Dock (AKA Hickory Dickory Death). Some thefts and other odd occurrences have been going on at a student hostel managed by Mrs. Hubbard, sister of Hercule Poirot’s ever-efficient secretary Miss Lemon. Poirot agrees to look into the matter and visits the hostel one evening. While he’s there, Celia Austin admits to many of the thefts and the matter seems to have been cleared up. But then, two nights later, Celia dies, apparently a successful suicide. One important clue though shows that Celia was murdered, and Inspector Sharpe begins to investigate. He and Poirot carefully examine the lives of the people who live at the hostel and they find that several people have been hiding things. Then there’s another murder and later, another. Poirot and Sharpe find out who is behind the killings and they discover that in some way or other, all of the victims were killed because of what they might reveal once the questions started. This is a case where it’s easy to wonder what would have happened if the original incidents of missing things had simply been put down to one resident’s thievery and left at that.

In M.C. Beaton’s Death of a Cad, Colonel Haliburton-Smythe and his wife Mary are planning a house party in honour of promising playwright Henry Withering. Withering has just become engaged to the Halburton-Smythes’ daughter Priscilla, so the party is a chance to celebrate the engagement. One of the guests is Captain Peter Bartlett of the Highland Dragoons. He’s boorish, drinks far more than he should, and won’t let the female guests alone. What’s worse, he treats his female ‘friends’ horribly. One night, Bartlett makes a bet with fellow guest Jeremy Pomfret that he can shoot a brace of grouse before Pomfret does. When Pomfret wakes up the next morning to get started, he finds that Bartlett has already broken their arrangement by going hunting before their agreed-upon starting time. It’s not long before Bartlett is found dead, apparently the victim of a terrible shooting accident. DCI Blair arrives to begin the investigation and he is content to put the whole thing down to accident. But Constable Hamish Macbeth isn’t satisfied and begins to look at the crime scene more carefully. What he finds proves that Bartlett was murdered. The evidence points to Freddy Forbes-Grant, whose wife Vera was having an affair with Bartlett, and Forbes-Grant is arrested. But Macbeth thinks he’s innocent and keeps asking questions. Then, Vera Forbes-Grant is poisoned. Since her husband can’t be guilty of that murder, the case changes completely. In the end, Macbeth finds out who the murderer is, and it’s interesting to speculate what would have happened if Bartlett’s death had been left alone.

In Andrea Camilleri’s The Snack Thief, Inspector Salvo Montalbano and his team investigate two cases. One of them is the shooting of a Tunisian sailor who is killed when a Tunisian fishing boat opens fire on an Italian boat. That death touches off a delicate situation between Tunisia and Italy, but it’s believed to have been a ‘line of fire’ kind of death. Still, Montalbano isn’t so sure. At the same time he is investigating the stabbing death of retired executive Aurelio Lapècora, who is killed in the elevator of his apartment building. That murder has all of the hallmarks of a private murder, but Montalbano thinks it may be connected with the killing of the Tunisian sailor. It turns out that he is right; sadly though, as the investigation continues, two people who are key to the mystery are killed. Montalbano figures out who is responsible for what’s happened but it’s interesting to speculate about whether some of the victims would have been killed if he hadn’t pursued the larger investigation…

Nelson Brunanski’s Crooked Lake is the story of the murder of Harvey Kristoff, who is on the Board of Directors of the Crooked Lake Regional Park and Golf Course. The most likely suspect in this case is Nick Taylor, who’s just been fired as head greens keeper of the golf course. Kristoff has never liked Taylor and was instrumental in getting him fired. What’s more, it comes out that Nick’s wife Wilma was having an affair with Kristoff. So the RCMP investigators are sure they’ve got the right man. But Nick Taylor’s friend John ‘Bart’ Bartowski isn’t so sure. At Taylor’s request he starts to ask questions and it’s not long before he learns that there is more than one possibility for this murder. Then, assistant greens keeper Andy Meyer is also killed. It turns out that he was killed so that he wouldn’t reveal what he knew about the murder. One the one hand, he might have been killed anyway. On the other, it’s an interesting question whether he would have been murdered if the investigation into Kristoff’s death had gone as it was ‘supposed to’ go.

And that’s the thing about police investigations. Cops are supposed to catch murderers and I, for one, wouldn’t want to think about what the world would be like if they didn’t. On the other hand, sometimes an investigation brings with it even more murder. Thanks, Moira, for the inspiration!!

Now, please do yourself a favour and stop by Clothes in Books; it’s an excellent resource for and has really interesting discussion about what clothes and fashion show us about people’s personalities and about the societies in which they live.

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by The Fixx.

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).

For example, there’s an interesting scene in Agatha Christie’s Cards on the Table that addresses exactly that question. In that novel, the very eccentric Mr. Shaitana hosts an unusual dinner party to which he has invited eight guests. Four are sleuths in various capacities (including Hercule Poirot) and the other four are people Shaitana thinks have successfully committed murder without getting caught. On the night of the dinner party, Shaitana is stabbed during a session of after-dinner bridge. The only possible suspects are the four people Shaitana suspected had gotten away with murder. So the key is to figure out which one of them actually committed the crime. At one point one of the suspects confesses to the killing. This is so against Poirot’s estimation of that person’s character that he is completely set back and admits it. In the end, we do find out who really killed Shaitana and why, but this is a fascinating and tense ‘stop on the way.’

In Nicolas Freeling’s Double Barrel, Amsterdam Inspector Van der Valk is assigned to an odd case. In the small town of Zwinderren, someone has been sending terrible anonymous letters to various residents accusing them of all sorts of misconduct and threatening to reveal everything. In a conservative town like this, where everyone knows everyone, that’s a frightening prospect. In fact the letters have wreaked havoc on the town, causing two people to commit suicide and one to have a complete mental breakdown. Van der Valk and his wife Arlette are sent to Zwinderen in the guise of conducting a Ministry study; the idea is that once he earns the locals’ trust, Van der Valk will find the answers that the local police haven’t been able to discover. He and Arlette move into town and he begins the investigation. The most likely suspect is M. Besançon, a French Jew who survived the Holocaust and just wants to be left in peace. He’s a little eccentric though, and seems to know more than he says. He says he didn’t write the letters, and Van der Valk believes him – he really does. And yet there’s some interesting tension as the two men have their interviews. Is Van der Valk misjudging Besançon? The question of whether he’s read Besançon’s character accurately adds to the suspense in this story.

In Gail Bowen’s A Killing Spring, political scientist and academician Joanne Kilbourn gets involved when Reed Gallagher, head of the Department of Journalism is killed. Reed Gallagher is also the second husband of an acquaintance (‘though not what you’d call exactly a friend) of Kilbourn’s. So when he is found murdered in a seedy rooming house, Kilbourn is asked to help break the news to his widow.. As Kilbourn learns more about the case, she finds that there could be several motives for murder. In fact, the more Kilbourn learns about the victim’s complicated (and hardly blameless) life, the more possibilities there are. Then there’s an incident of anti-gay vandalism in the Journalism Department. During the police investigation, the members of that department have to temporarily share offices with other faculty members until their own are available again. Kilbourn ends up sharing her office with Ed Mariani, who will take over the Journalism Department now that Gallagher is dead. Tension builds as Kilbourn wonders about him. On the one hand, she’s always liked him, she trusts him as a colleague and she considers him a friend. On the other, he did have a motive for murder – more than one as it turns out. Kilbourn’s questions about Ed and her rising concerns about him add an interesting layer of suspense to this story.

Michael Connelly’s The Fifth Witness is the story of the murder of Mitchell Bondurant, who is a mortgage officer for WestLand National, an LA bank. Lisa Trammel is arrested for the crime and with good reason. She had formed a citizens action group and was picketing the bank as a way of protesting its foreclosure policies. What’s more, Bondurant was handling Trammel’s own mortgage, which was in foreclosure at the time of the murder. Trammel hires Mickey Haller to defend her; they already know each other since he was working on her mortgage problems with her. Haller begins to work on the case and uncovers some evidence that the bank might have been engaging in some fraudulent practices. He also finds out that Bondurant’s relationships within the bank might have led to his murder. Of course, a lawyer’s job is to represent the client’s interests, personal feelings aside, and Haller does that. But there is a solid layer of tension in this story that comes from Haller’s assessment of Lisa Trammel. On the one hand, she claims innocence, and there are several other possible killers. On the other, she’s not been entirely blame-free in the mortgage disaster that led to the foreclosure; she has her own mental issues, too. So perhaps Haller is wrong about her. That debate adds to the suspense in this novel.

A similar sort of debate adds a great deal to the suspense of Paddy Richardson’s Traces of Red. Wellington television journalist Rebecca Thorne is doing well professionally, but she’s reached a professional plateau. She knows, too, that there are ‘hungry’ young journalists eager to supplant her. What Thorne needs is the story of her career, and she thinks she finds it in the case of Connor Bligh. He’s been in prison for several years for the murder of his sister Angela Dickson, her husband Rowan and their son Sam. Only their daughter Katy survived because she wasn’t in the house at the time of the murder. Everyone’s always assumed that Bligh is guilty, but there are some clues that he might not have committed the crimes. If he is innocent this could be the story that Thorne is looking for, so she begins investigating. As a part of her investigation she gets the chance to talk with Bligh; she also gets his side of the story, so to speak, in the form of a long letter that he writes to her. As her investigation continues, Thorne finds herself getting very close to this story. Is Connor Bligh innocent? Is Thorne misjudging him? Has everyone else misjudged him? That question of whether Thorne has been right about Bligh is an important element in this novel.

Too much indecisiveness can be off-putting in a character, especially the protagonist. But sometimes that doubt – that question of whether you’ve been right about someone – can add an interesting layer of suspense to a novel. I know I’ve only mentioned a few cases here. Which ones have I missed out?

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Jackson Browne’s Baby How Long.

For example, one of the important characters in Agatha Christie’s The Mystery of the Blue Train is Mme. Mirelle, a dancer whose performances have captured everyone’s fancy. Mirelle has a great deal of talent and glamour, but that doesn’t mean she’s at all perfect. When the story begins, she’s having an affair with Derek Kettering, who can, if I may put it this way, afford to keep her in the luxury she feels she deserves. But that’s only because Kettering is married to wealthy Ruth Van Aldin. When Ruth threatens divorce, Mirelle makes it clear that she was ‘not born to be poor’ and that she will leave Kettering too. Then, Ruth is murdered during a trip from London to Nice on the Blue Train. Hercule Poirot is on the same train and gets involved in the investigation. As he slowly puts together what happened during the trip, he learns that Ruth had with her a very valuable ruby that has since been stolen, so she could have been killed for the gem. On the other hand, it turns out that both Kettering and his mistress were on the same train, so one of them could also be guilty. There are other possibilities too as Poirot soon learns…

In Dorothy Sayers’ Have His Carcase, mystery novelist Harriet Vane is on a hiking holiday near Wilvercombe. She stops to take a rest near a beach which looks comfortable and peaceful. When she wakes up, the tide is out and she sees a dead man’s body. She goes for help but by the time she returns, the tide has come in again and there is no evidence as to who the man is or who killed him. Soon, though, the victim is identified as Paul Alexis, a Russian-born professional dancer who worked at the Hotel Resplendent. Once it’s known who the dead man was, the police begin to look for people he might have known who would have had a motive to murder him. Lord Peter Wimsey joins Harriet and together they find out that there are several possibilities. There’s some evidence that Alexis might have been mixed up in Russian politics and that this might be a politically-motivated killing. Alexis’ personal life also comes in for some scrutiny and there are some possibilities there too. In the end an interesting cipher leads Harriet and Lord Peter to the truth.

Christopher Fowler’s Full Dark House is really the story of two mysteries. One told in flashback form is the first case that Arthur Bryant and John May of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit (PCU) worked. In that flashback it’s 1940 and the Palace Theatre is planning a production of Orpheus. Dancer Tanya Capistrania is to have a solo part in the production, so she spends a great deal of time at the theatre rehearsing. One afternoon she’s just finished when she is killed and her feet removed. That’s just the sort of unusual crime that the PCU was set up to investigate, so Bryant and May begin their work. Then, Charles Senechal, who was to have another role in the production, is killed by a heavy piece of scenery. Then there’s another death, and the disappearance of one of the other dancers. It’s clear now that someone wants to ruin the production and Bryant and May have to find out who it is before there are more disasters.

In Tony Hillerman’s Sacred Clowns, Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee has been asked to find Delmar Kinetewa, who disappeared from his residential school. He tracks the boy to a Tano ceremonial event that involves sacred dancing. One of the dancers is Kinetewa’s uncle Francis Sayesva, who has an important part in the ritual. The dance finishes and the crowd watching it begins to disperse. That’s when Sayesva is found dead in an alley. When Chee discovers the relationship between Sayesva and Kinetewa, he is sure that the murder is related to the boy’s disappearance. As it turns out, it’s also related to the murder Eric Dorsey, a shop teacher at the school the boy attended. What’s interesting about this story is that it’s actually something Sayesva does during his part of the dance that leads to his death.

And then there’s Paddy Richardson’s Cross Fingers, her second novel featuring Wellington television journalist Rebecca Thorne. Thorne is working on an exposé that she hopes will reveal the shady dealings of crooked property developer Denny Graham. She’s got witnesses lined up and she’s ready to put the piece together when her boss Tim Morrow asks her to work on something else. It’s the 30^th anniversary of the protests against the 1981 Springboks’ tour of New Zealand, and Morrow wants her to do a piece on the events of that year. At the time of The Tour, apartheid was still in full force in South Africa and many New Zealanders thought that letting the Springboks play in their country would condone apartheid. On the other hand, rugby is extremely important in New Zealand, so a lot of rugby fans wanted the tour to go on. The police were tasked with protecting the guests, maintaining order and still allowing people to peacefully protest. As anyone who knows about The Tour can tell you, things went from tense to devastating. But at first Thorne is reluctant to do the story, as she is afraid she’ll lose the faith of the people who are willing to talk to her about Denny Graham. What’s more, she feels that the story’s been done already – she doesn’t have much new to add. Morrow insists though and Thorne gets started. Then she finds an angle on The Tour that no-one’s done. During the protests, two people dressed as lambs would come to the games to entertain the crowd. They’d dance, make fun and generally try to liven things up. Then, all of a sudden, they stopped appearing at the protests and games. Thorne wants to follow up and find out what happened to The Lambs. One of them turns out to be a professional dancer who was murdered during The Tour. As Thorne looks into that murder and into what happened to The Lambs, she uncovers some long-held secrets that someone is willing to do an awful lot to keep hidden.

Dancers look graceful, have a lot of talent and seem to have lives that a lot of the rest of us might envy. But they work incredibly hard to get to the proverbial top of the tree and not a lot of their lives is really all that glamourous Still, they spellbind us in real life and in crime fiction…

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Marvin Hamlish and Edward Kleban’s I Hope I Get It.

In the last two decades or so of Agatha Christie’s life, rock and roll infused itself into the culture. Although Christie’s novels aren’t heavily focused on rock music, there are mentions of it here and there. For instance in Hallowe’en Party, detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is visiting a friend Judith Butler in the village of Woodleigh Common. They’re helping to prepare for a village Hallowe’en party one afternoon when one of the local girls Joyce Reynolds begins to boast that she saw a murder once. Nobody believes her and most of the people there try to hush her up. But Joyce insists that she’s telling the truth. That evening at the party, someone drowns Joyce in a bucket of water being used for apple-bobbing. Mrs. Oliver asks Hercule Poirot to investigate and he travels to Woodleigh Common to look into the matter. It turns out that the murder of Joyce Reynolds is related to a murder and a disappearance from several years earlier. In one of the party games, the girls are given mirrors in which they’re supposed to see the faces of their future husbands. With a little makeup and wizardry, two local boys provide the ‘photos’ that are given to the girls in this game. Here’s what one of the guests says during that event:

‘‘Do look, do look. Don’t you think he’s rather wonderful? He’s like Eddie Presweight, the pop singer. Don’t you think so?’
Mrs. Oliver did think he looked like one of the faces she daily deplored having to see in her morning paper. The beard, she thought, had been an afterthought of genius.’

This snippet also possibly reveals Agatha Christie’s view of popular music…

Perhaps Mrs. Oliver isn’t much of a one for rock and roll music, but Ian Rankin’s John Rebus is a fan. There are many mentions of rock and roll in the Rebus novels; I’m just going to mention one. In Let it Bleed (which Rolling Stones fans will know is the title of one of the band’s releases), Rebus and Frank Lauderdale are chasing a pair of suspects across the Forth Road Bridge. When the suspects suddenly change direction, they go over the bridge into the water, and Rebus and Lauderdale are both injured. From his hospital bed, Rebus looks into the kidnapping case that prompted the chase to begin with. At the same time he’s investigating the suicide of Hugh ‘Shug’ McAnally, a former convict who picked a very specific place and ‘audience’ for his death. That leads Rebus to a corrupt development plan and in a vintage ‘Ian Rankin way’ back to the deaths of the men who went over the bridge. Here’s what Rebus thinks about the Rolling Stones:

‘After a drink, he liked to listen to The Rolling Stones. Women, relationships, and colleagues had come and gone, but the Stones had always been there…The guitar riff, one of easily half a dozen in Keith’s tireless repertoire, kicked the album off. I don’t have much, Rebus thought, but I have this.’

Half a century after they started making music, millions of people still feel that way about the Stones.

Jill Edmondson’s Toronto PI Sasha Jackson is a former rock singer. Although she’s no longer in the business full-time, she stays in touch with her former band mates and she knows the Toronto rock and roll scene. In Dead Light District for instance, she is hired to investigate the disappearance of Mary Carmen Santamaria, a prostitute who worked at Candace Curtis’ exclusive bordello. That case leads Jackson to the uglier side of Toronto’s sex trade and a case of human trafficking. In a sub-plot of this novel, Jackson gets a very enticing offer. Band mate and former lover Mick Houghton tells her that their band is planning a reunion gig and he’d like her to be a part of it. Jackson’s not sure she wants to agree though. On the one hand, she loved the creativity and energy of being a part of a band; it was intoxicating. On the other, she’s well aware that she and Mick are much better as friends than they were as lovers. She doesn’t want to put herself into the position of being attracted to him all over again. Still,

‘The thought of performing was appealing…It’s the kind of gig where everyone’s just there for a good time and no one takes anything too seriously. The prospect of jamming with Mick and the boys was also enticing.’

Jackson’s past as a rock singer adds a lot of interest to her character.

R.J. McDonnell’s PI Jason Duffy is a former rock musician who knows the San Diego music scene very well. So in Rock & Roll Homicide, he’s the one Chelsea Tucker hires. Her husband Terry was the lead singer for popular band Doberman Stub until he was murdered one day during rehearsal. The police suspect Chelsea, mostly because she is due to inherit US$5 million from an insurance policy taken out in her name. She says she is innocent though, and she doesn’t think the police will be fair to her. Duffy agrees to take the case and begins to look into it. He and his assistant Joyce Jeannine Joshlin make use of Duffy’s contacts in the business and his knowledge of contracts and the ‘business end’ of music to find out who the murderer is. It’s not long before they discover that some very nasty people have some important things to hide.

Rock and roll music is woven through a lot of other crime novels too. For instance, in Angela Savage’s The Half Child, Bangkok PI Jayne Keeney travels to Pattaya to investigate the death of Maryanne Delbeck. The police account is that she committed suicide by throwing herself from the roof of the hotel where she was living, but her father is not convinced. So he’s hired Keeney to find out the truth. Throughout this novel, as Keeney and her new business partner Rajiv Patel investigate, there are all sorts of mentions of rock music. In this scene for instance, Keeney is following up a lead:

‘She walked along the footpath sussing out the options, when a howling electric guitar called to her from amidst the pedestrian slow rock and R&B. Jimi Hendrix. He beckoned from a bar called B-52…’  

Oh, and rock music plays an important role in another very important scene in this novel…

Martin Edwards’ series featuring Liverpool attorney Harry Devlin isn’t heavily focused on rock music but it’s woven through subtly. For instance all of the Devlin novels are titled with the names of rock songs. All the Lonely People, Eve of Destruction, Yesterday’s Papers and Waterloo Sunset are just a few examples.

I know I’ve only played a few notes here; there are a lot of crime novels and series that feature rock and roll. Maybe Neil Young’s right; rock and roll can never die. Hey, hey, my, my…

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of an Eric Clapton song (and a line from the chorus).

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. In many crime novels the suspense and tension are more psychological than anything else. It takes a deft hand to do that well, as it can be a challenge to keep readers turning/clicking pages if not a lot seems to be happening. And yet, psychological suspense can be just as gripping as any other kind. To show you what I mean, let’s turn the spotlight on Marie Belloc Lowndes novel of psychological suspense The Lodger.

Ellen and Robert Bunting have both spent years ‘in service.’ Ellen was a lady’s maid and her husband was a ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ who still goes out on occasional temporary jobs. Times are very difficult though and the Buntings are financially at their wits’ end. They’ve opened up their London home to lodgers to supplement their income but it’s been a while since they had a lodger. In part that’s because Ellen Bunting is very particular about the kind of lodger she’s willing to have in her home.

One night not long before Christmas a stranger comes to the Bunting home looking for lodgings. He gives his name as Mr. Sleuth and Ellen Bunting in particular takes to him. To her he looks and acts like a gentleman who’s perhaps down on his luck. Still, he pays her in advance, takes two rooms and settles in. To the Buntings, Mr. Sleuth is a very fortunate solution to their problems. They can now afford to buy enough food and coal, and even take a regular newspaper again.

Still, Mr. Sleuth is a little eccentric. He’s sometimes restless, going out late at night, and he’s a little particular about who is allowed in his rooms. The only person who’s allowed to bring him his meals, clean his room and so on is Ellen Bunting. He doesn’t seem well, either and doesn’t join the Buntings for their meals, even when invited. But he treats Mrs. Bunting politely, pays his rent promptly and causes no trouble.

Besides, the Buntings have other things to think about at the moment. The London newspapers have been full of the story of a group of murders. All of the victims are women and they’ve all been committed by a killer who calls himself The Avenger and who leaves cryptic Biblical messages pinned to his victims’ clothes. Bunting is fascinated with the murders but at first, his wife wants to hear nothing about them.

Then, with a slowly building horror, she begins to suspect that their quiet lodger Mr. Sleuth might be The Avenger. At first she tells herself she’s being ridiculous, especially when she’s in his presence. But as time goes by she’s more and more convinced that he may be a dangerous killer. But now she has a real dilemma. Should she share what she suspects with the police? If she does, she and her husband may be ‘doing their duty, but they’ll lose their lodger and therefore, their income. Besides, it would be dangerous to be on the wrong side so to speak of a multiple murderer. On the other hand if she keeps silent, she may be aiding and abetting a killer. But she and her husband keep their income. Besides, what if the lodger isn’t The Avenger? Ellen’s dilemma gets more and more urgent as more murders are reported. Now, she’s even afraid to have family friend Joe Chandler around because he’s a police officer. In the end, The Avenger’s real identity comes out and Ellen’s dilemma is resolved. Saying more would spoil the story; suffice it to say that it’s not resolved in exactly the way the Buntings think it will be.

One of the very important elements in this story is the rising sense of menace as the Buntings wonder whether their lodger is a multiple murderer and if so, what they should do. As time goes by, we see that they get understandably more and more anxious, each in a different way, and that it affects them deeply. Lowndes uses several strategies to build that suspense too. Mr. Sleuth’s behaviour for instance is alternately odd and very suspicious, and perfectly innocent if a bit eccentric. So Ellen begins to wonder whether she might be overwrought and not seeing things clearly.

The feeling of menace is also developed when Bunting’s daughter from his first marriage comes to stay. Bright, innocent seventeen-year-old Daisy is hardly stupid, but she is a little naïve. She has the kind of almost ghoulish interest in the murders that any teenager might although given the times (the book was published in 1913), she behaves more circumspectly than today’s teens would. The contrast of her pleasurable interest in the murder stories with her father and stepmother’s real fear makes for a layer of tension. So does their determination to keep Daisy as far away from their lodger as they can.

Another important element in this novel is the London setting. The reader is placed squarely in the West End of London. The Buntings’ home is on Marylebone road not far from Madame Tussaud’s. (which plays a role in the novel) and Lowndes evokes the setting:

‘The fog had lifted, certainly. She [Ellen Bunting] could see the lamp-lights on the other side of the Marylebone Road, glimmering redly; and shadowy figures were hurrying past, mostly making their way towards the Edgware Road, to see the Christmas shops.’

And the thick fog for which London is famous adds to the suspense of the story.

The novel also gives readers a look at the attitudes and lifestyles of the times. Although the main point of the novel is not class issues, we do see the differences in social class reflected in the novel. The Buntings for instance are ‘decent, respectable’ serving-class people. There are several mentions in the novel of the ‘gentlemen and ladies’ they’ve served through the years and it’s interesting to see their views about their employers. Their attitudes combine the dutiful respect and even admiration that’s expected of their class with the cleared-eyed understanding of the foibles of the ‘better classes’ that comes from waiting on them.

More than anything, The Lodger is a story of psychological suspense as two respectable people are faced the terrifying possibility that they may be harbouring a multiple murderer. The story is set in a suitably chilly and foggy London and features a solid look at life shortly after the end of the Victorian age. It is said that this novel was inspired by the Whitechapel murders of the late 19^th Century and it’s easy to see that influence. But what’s your view? Have you read The Lodger? If you have, what elements do you see in it?

Coming Up On In The Spotlight

Monday 17 June/Tuesday 18 June – The Penguin Pool Murder – Stuart Palmer

Monday 24 June/Tuesday 25 June – Violent Exposure – Katherine Howell

Monday 1 July/Tuesday 2 July – Quite Ugly One Morning – Christopher Brookmyre