Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

Crime novels are often set against particular backgrounds of time, place, and so on. And sometimes, major historical events or movements are taking place as the novel goes on. This raises a question: how should the author handle those major events and movements? To completely ignore them would likely make a story too unrealistic, or at least, very much out of context. However, to focus too much attention on them can take away from the story, and even result in ‘information dump,’ which can be alienating. One way authors can avoid that particular trap is to show larger events through the eyes of the individuals who live through them. There are many examples of this in the genre; I’ll just mention a few.

Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood takes place just after the end of WW II. The armed hostilities are over, but that doesn’t mean everything is right again. There are shortages of many basic things, and the war has wreaked havoc on the economy, leaving many people with little money. It’s a difficult time, and Christie doesn’t gloss over it. The main focus of the novel is the Cloade family. The head of the family, wealthy Gordon Cloade, had always promised his siblings and their children that they’d be taken care of financially, so none of them has ever much worried about money. Then, to everyone’s shock, Cloade marries. Not long after that, he Is killed in a wartime bomb blast. Since he died intestate, his widow is set to inherit his whole fortune – until it comes out that she may have been already married at the time she married Cloade. As you can imagine, it all leads to strain and conflict. And then there’s a murder. Hercule Poiort is drawn into the case by two different members of the Cloade family, and he works to find out the truth about the case. The story is told from a few different points of view, and we see how the characters are coping with food shortages, the immediate post-war economy, and the other realities of life immediately after WW II.

Peter May’s Entry Island features Sergeant Enquêteur Sime Mackenzie of the Sûreté du Québec. He’s called to Entry Island, one of the Îles-de-la-Madeleine/Magdalen Islands, when James Cowell is murdered there. Almost immediately, Mackenzie feels drawn to the island, although he’s never been there. He also has vivid dreams of stories he was told about his ancestor, also named Sime, who emigrated to Canada from Scotland in the 19^th Century. That Sime’s story is woven through the novel in as the modern-day murder plot plays out. As we learn more about that Sime, we learn about the Highland Clearances, which lasted from the late 18^th Century through the mid-19^th Century. During this time, there were mass evictions of people who lived in the Highlands and Western Islands. Those people were removed, so that wealthy landowners could turn the land to sheep pasturage and other uses. It resulted in many thousands of people being forced to leave Scotland and find new homes in North America or elsewhere. In this novel, the Clearances are seen through the eyes of Sime Mackenzie, whose family is forced to leave. That approach allows the reader to really get a sense of what happened, but also care about the plot and the individual characters involved.

C.J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series is set during the reign of King Henry VIII. A great deal has been written about this era, about the major sociopolitical and religious events of the time, and about the notable historical figures of the time. Sansom’s series, though, tells the story of that era through the eyes of an ordinary person. Shardlake is a lawyer, neither particularly wealthy nor very poor. He is educated, but doesn’t enjoy a privileged status, really. His perspective is especially interesting, because through it, Sansom shows the reader what ordinary life in Tudor England was probably like.

Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series begins just before WW II, and it continues through the war years and the years after. Gunther is a former police officer-turned private investigator who lives and works in Berlin. As the first novel, March Violets, begins, Hitler is in power, and it is very dangerous to call attention to oneself, or to fall afoul of the Third Reich in any way. So Gunther has to be very careful of everything he does and says. Through Gunther’s eyes, we get to see what it’s like to live in Germany at this time. The changes sweeping through the country are brought to the individual, human, level, and woven into the stories, so that the plot remains the focus of the novels (rather than lots of descriptions of the larger forces at work).

There are also plenty of novels and series set in contemporary times that look at major events and movements through individuals’ eyes. For example, Brian McGilloway’s Garda Ben Devlin series is set in contemporary times on the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. That part of Europe has seen major changes in the last fifty years, and all sorts of sociopolitical forces are at work there. As the series goes on, McGilloway shares some of those forces and events as they are relevant to the stories. But the novels don’t go into exhaustive detail about the different forces that have shaped modern life in that borderland. Rather, we see their impact through the eyes of people who live there.

That perspective makes a story more appealing. It also makes the characters seem more real. And stories that share major events, movements, and so on from the perspective of individuals also have a way of making those things come alive. Which ones have stayed with you?

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