Novel approach to crime
I’ve been burying my head in a lot of crime novels lately. More often than you might imagine, this has involved much literal as well metaphorical head-burying. It has also involved keeping company with serial killers, sadistic abductors and paedophiles. Thank God there’s an army of smart and courageous fictional detectives out there dedicated to finding and apprehending the bastards.
I’ve been wading through blood and horror on the page because I’ve been wondering if I could write crime fiction. If so, which of the many genres could I comfortably occupy? What character would my detective have? What would be a good setting for my story?
Ultimately, I identified the genre I’m best qualified to write by consulting myself. I had to rule out anything which involved freshly spilled blood. Most crime writers have a higher Gore Tolerance (GT) than me. Gin and tonic is the only GT I’m even mildly interested in. I feel queasy looking at the hopelessly blunt knives in my kitchen drawer, and I faint unless I lie down while having blood drawn.
In effect, this means that any crimes I write about must not include puncture wounds. It must not involve bleeding corpses in baths or sprawled on blood-soaked sheets, either. Or slashings, thrashings and bashings, stranglings or hangings, shootings, drownings, decapitations or defenestrations.
No corpses at all, actually, not even a body wrapped in plastic and duct tape and turned into a human iceblock in a basement Kelvinator. I certainly don’t want to write about anything which makes me feel sick, disturbs my sleep or features misogyny or the abuse of children.
That doesn’t leave much except the ‘‘cosy crime’’ genre of crime fiction. I’m confident of my ability to write about the outline of a body chalked on a nice clean bit of lino. Murders do occur in cosy crime, but there are no harrowing CSI forensics.
Untimely, death is merely the excuse to launch a (usually) amateur sleuth on a quest to identify the dastardly culprit from a handful of suspects who live in a small, close-knit community. Sex, even between consenting adults, is rare, and mobile phones and computers even rarer.
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, an elderly spinster, is the epitome of the detective in cosy crime novels, and Christie’s books have sold over 2 billion copies.
These are encouraging facts: best sellers, female author, bloodless crimes, and best of all, a female detective who is a pensioner, like me. Why not, I thought, base my detective character on myself? So much easier than inventing one from scratch.
Hey presto! Let me introduce you to Argo McBride, a woman of 65, a columnist who lives in a small New Zealand town. Although she’s been marked by a dysfunctional family, she has not yet succumbed to the alcoholism or nicotine addiction which complicate the lives of so many detectives.
However, she is highly strung and slightly nervy, and spends an inordinate amount of time in op shops or the library, or simply mooching around town. Like all women over 55, she has no trouble being invisible. Argo has a natural talent for eavesdropping, although her hearing isn’t what it used to be, and neither is her memory.
Fortunately, poor memory isn’t incompatible with effective fictional sleuthing. Wallander, Henning Mankell’s Swedish detective, keeps solving crimes after he’s diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The narrator of Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante suffers from the disease, too. When she is accused of murdering her best friend, she sets out to prove her innocence even though she can’t remember committing the crime.
Maude, an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s, is the subject of Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey. Although the book isn’t exactly a detective story, it’s certainly a mystery: Maude searches her memory for clues about a friend who went missing 70 years ago.
Paul Jacobson’s ‘‘Geezer-Lit’’ mysteries feature an 80-year old man whose memory ain’t what it used to be but who goes on solving crimes anyway, many of them quite close to home, in novels entitled Living with Your Kids is Murder and Retirement Homes are Murder.
Every self-respecting detective has a sidekick, and Argo is no exception. She is ably assisted in her investigations by a Jack Russell called Nosey, a dog who can unearth anything, however well-hidden, as long as it pongs, including the necrotic and the poisonous. She’s under training to ignore pizza boxes, burger wrappers and other people’s picnics.
Nelson is the obvious setting for my crime fiction. I know it well, and it’s got a variety of distinct and picturesque locales. Even better, it has a deceptively tranquil and benign ambience beneath which seethe a mass of barely-concealed animosities and feuds, ancient and modern.
So, if you need the services of a local detective call, on Ms Argo McBride. NB: Please ensure that any crime scene is cleared of blood and criminals before her arrival. Her grip on sanity is tenuous, and it would be easy to trigger her homicidal rage.
Read more at www.greyurbanist.com
I had to rule out anything which involved freshly spilled blood ... I feel queasy looking at the hopelessly blunt knives in my kitchen drawer.