Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

One of the elements that moves a novel along is what’s often called a pinch point. It’s an event (doesn’t have to be a major event) that forces a character to act, just as you would react if someone pinched you. It’s the sort of thing that the character can’t ignore. If a pinch point is done well, it spurs the character along and gets (or keeps) the action going.

Agatha Christie used pinch points in many of her stories. For instance, in Hickory Dickory Death, there’s a seemingly minor pinch point right at the beginning of the story, when Hercule Poirot’s frighteningly efficient secretary Miss Lemon makes a mistake in a letter. Poirot feels forced to act on it because it’s so out of character for her. When Miss Lemon confesses that she made the mistake because she’s pre-occupied about her sister Mrs. Hubbard, Poirot feels compelled to ask why. It turns out that Mrs. Hubbard manages a hostel for students, and that some strange things have been going on there. When the odd happenings end up in murder, Poirot and Inspector Sharpe investigate. There are other pinch points in the novel, too, that keep the story moving.

The main pinch point in Michael Gilbert’s short story The Amateur happens when David Collet, who is the son of a wealthy manufacturer, is abducted. This forces his father to take action, and he brings the kidnappers’ list of demands to Inspector Hazelrigg. Both men start to do all they can to find the boy. Hazelrigg is a competent professional, but he’s reckoned without Collet’s skills and his determination to protect his son. In this story, that pinch point makes for a tense, dramatic plot.

A car accident serves as a pinch point in Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Nine Tailors. In the novel, Lord Peter Wimsey and his assistant/valet Mervyn Bunter are traveling through East Anglia when they get into an accident. They have to take some sort of action; it’s close to New Year’s Eve, and the weather is terrible. Then, they’re rescued by Reverend Theodore Venables, who takes them to the parsonage and lets them stay there while the car is being repaired. Lord Peter is drawn into the local village life, even substituting as a change ringer for the New Year’s Eve celebration at the church when one of the ringers falls ill. After the car is repaired, he and Bunter go on their way. But another pinch point – a letter from Reverend Venables – brings Lord Peter and Bunter back when an unexpected corpse is discovered in a burial spot belonging to the local squire and his wife. It turns out to be a complex mystery with several plot threads.

As C.J. Box’s Three Weeks to Say Goodbye begins, we are introduced to Jack McGuane, a Travel Development Specialist for the Denver Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau. He and his wife, Melissa, are the loving adoptive parents of baby Angelina, whose biological mother chose to give her up for adoption. The first pinch point in this novel comes when McGuane is informed that Angelina’s biological father, Garrett Moreland, never waived his parental rights and now wants to exercise them. At first, McGuane hopes that it’s all some horrible mixup. Then, there’s another pinch point when Garret and his father, a powerful local judge, visit the McGuanes to try to convince, and then bribe them, to give up the baby. When the McGuanes refuse, the judge issues a court order that the McGuanes have twenty-one days to relinquish custody of Angelina. This pinch point spurs McGuane into even more action leading him to do things he never thought he would do.

Karin Fossum’s Calling Out For You (AKA The Indian Bride) introduces Gundar Jormann, who’s lived all his life in the Norwegian village of Elvestad. He’s no longer young but he’s decent enough looking, has a steady income, and is a stable, hard-working person. He sees no reason why he couldn’t find a bride. Much to everyone’s surprise, he decides to travel to India and do just that. There, he meets a woman named Poona Bai and the two begin to see each other romantically. When he proposes to her, Poona accepts. The couple agree that Gundar will go back to Norway, and Poona will follow once she’s finished her personal obligations in India. On the day of her arrival, Gundar plans to meet her at the airport, but in a tragic pinch point, his sister Marie is involved in a car accident, forcing him to go to the hospital and be with her. Gundar asks a friend to meet Poona at the airport and his friend agrees. However, he and Poona miss each other, and Poona never makes it to Elvestad. Her body is found in a field not far from the town. Inspector Konrad Sejer and his assistant, Jacob Skarre investigate Poona’s disappearance, tracing her movements from the time her flight landed. It turns out that this is one of those cases of several people knowing a lot more than they’re saying.

Just about every good crime novel has at least one pinch point (often more than one). Pinch points force characters to act and sometimes set or change the course of a novel. Which ones have stayed with you?

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Get it Right the First Time