As this is posted, this week marks 44 years since the nuclear crisis at Three Mile Island. For those of you who don’t know about this/don’t remember it, a combination of faulty technology/mechanical failures and inadequate preparation caused a partial meltdown at one of the nuclear reactors on the facility. There was real fear that there might be a complete meltdown, which would have had devastating consequences. Trust me. I grew up not very far from Three Mile Island. Looking back, the plans people made in the event of disaster would not have succeeded. But I can attest that there was a great deal of deep-seated fear that the world as we’d known it was about to end. We were all very, very fortunate that a total disaster was averted.
That fear, and the tension that goes with it, are certainly there in real-life scares like the one at Three Mile Island. That same fear can play an interesting role in crime novels, too, and can add a great deal to the suspense of a story. It impacts characters’ choices, too, and sometimes their personalities.
For instance, Agatha Christie’s They Came to Baghdad features a secret meeting of a group of superpowers. The main concern at this meeting is the development of a secret superweapon. The members of the group don’t know the nature of the weapon, but they do know it could pose a disastrous threat if it’s real. The only invitee who does know more about the weapon, and could tell the group about it, is a British agent named Carmichael. But, the shadowy enemy group that developed the weapon has every interest in not letting any information about it get into the wrong hands. Still, it’s hoped that Carmichael can get to the meeting. As it turns out, he doesn’t. He turns up badly wounded in the hotel room of an adventurous young woman named Victoria Jones. Before he can say much, though, he dies, and it’s left to Victoria to make sense of his cryptic last words. This isn’t the only story, either, in which Christie explores people’s fear of worldwide catastrophes (right, fans of Passenger to Frankfurt?).
As Peter Robinson’s A Necessary End begins, a group of anti-nuclear protestors has gathered in the Yorkshire town of Eastvale. They are convinced that the continued use of nuclear power for any purpose will end in world disaster and are determined to stop any more nuclear development. Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Alan Banks is not too pleased about the group’s presence, because he knows that protests and demonstrations mean extra work, greater risk of trouble, and stress. Sure enough, the demonstration starts to turn ugly, with several of the protestors being arrested. Then, to make matters worse, Police Constable PC Edwin Gill is stabbed in the neck. Banks’ boss, Richard ‘Dirty Dick’ Burgess, wants Banks to arrest one of the demonstrators, as he is convinced that’s the explanation for the murder. But Banks isn’t so sure. He’s got to go up against his boss, the demonstrators, and the killer, to find out who murdered Gill and why.
Antti Tuomainen’s The Healer takes place in a dystopic near-future. Climate change has caused a number of disasters, and millions of climate refugees have poured in to Finland, many of them to Helsinki. The city is in near anarchy, as the police don’t have the staffing or money to protect the city. In some cases, even basic services are threatened, and people don’t even want to do ‘normal’ things, such as shop or go out to eat. Against this backdrop, a writer named Tapani Lehtinen gets worried about his wife Johanna. She’s a journalist who frequently is away for a day or so (sometimes more) to do her job. But she always gets in touch at least once every twenty-four hours when she’s following a story. She hasn’t been in touch in a few days, and her boss doesn’t have any answers. The only clue is that she was working on a story about someone called the Healer, who’s killed some major executives of companies deemed responsible for ruining the climate. Lehtinen decides that the best thing to do is to follow the story himself and find out the leads Johanna had. In that way, he thinks he’ll find her. Among other things, the novel explores the way people live in fear when there’s a major catastrophe or the threat of one.
In Kirsten McDougall’s She’s a Killer, climate change has become a frightening reality. New Zealand is one of the few places in the world where people can still manage, although for most people in the country, there are already hardships such as a limited water supply. The only people who are doing reasonably well are so-called ‘wealthugees,’ who can afford to live in protected, closed-off areas with plenty of food, water, and natural surroundings. In this dystopic landscape lives Alice, a thirty-something university employee whose job is to advise students. Things start to change for Alice when she meets a ‘wealthugee’ named Pablo. He takes her to dinner and buys her food she couldn’t possibly get otherwise. Soon enough, he talks her into temporarily looking after his fifteen-year-old daughter Erika, who is an intellectual genius. Soon, Alice finds herself drawn into a web of danger and conspiracy in a plot to save the earth. The main question is, will the plot work in time to save Alice?
There are also plenty of medical mysteries and thrillers that focus on people’s fears of a deadly pandemic (Oh, right…). In many of them, people are genuinely afraid they’re going to die. Some do. And that fear adds to the tension in the novel, as everyone feels the threat.
Crises such as the one at Three Mile Island can be frightening to live through. Fortunately, many of them are averted. While they’re going on, though, it can seem like the end of the world.
Ps Thanks to the York Daily Record for the image of Three Mile Island in the photograph.
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know it (And I Feel Fine).
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 
We were talking about this, 3 mile Island, the other day and of course the movie with Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda. Times has flown by so fast. Great article again, thanks. x
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Oh, yes, the film! Thanks for the reminder, Jane. When I was writing the post, I hadn’t thought of that, so I’m glad you mentioned it. And, yes, those years have gone by so quickly, haven’t they? I remember very clearly when it all happened…
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Yes, a really big scare. The there was Chernobyl! What next? then one in Ukraine? Makes you think. Have a fav weekend. x
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It does, indeed, make you think, Jane! Have a great weekend, yourself! x
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Such an interesting theme for a post, Margot – I hadn’t necessarily thought in terms of big events influencing crime novels, but in fact a war-set Christie I just read had themes of international issues. Fascinating! And one of my favourite REM songs!!
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Thanks, KBR. I think it’s sometimes hard to remember how big events affect fictional everyday lives, because in a well-written novel, it’s about characters and plot. But I think they do have an impact. I’m glad you mentioned Christie’s work, too, as I think she did a fine job of weaving those events so that they are there, but don’t overwhelm the story. And I love that REM song, too!!
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Very interesting article. It doesn’t always have to be a threat as big as Three Mile Island either. I live in Iowa and back in 1993 we had a flood that showed us just how vulnerable we were. Des Moines, our largest city lost it’s water supply when our Water Works facility flooded. The whole city was without drinking water for almost three weeks. I worked downtown and most businesses were flooded. They had a video of a young man surfing down a city street. Luckily I lived in a suburb and we had an alternate water source. National Guard delivered drinking water and there were porta potties lined up downtown for the businesses that were able to open. The water works has since worked to make sure it never happens again.
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That must have been so hard on everyone, Virginia! I remember reading about what happened, but that doesn’t come close to what it must have been like to live through it. And, of course, when something like that happens, it changes everything, and people get an entirely different perspective on things like everyday life. It’s scary!
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It’s interesting how the type of disaster that turns up in fiction changes over time as our real life concerns shift. In the middle of the last century nuclear was the big threat and fear, whether of accidents like Three Mile Island or of nuclear war, whereas today nearly every disaster novel uses climate change or pandemics as their kicking-off point. And going back to vintage times, the threat tended to come from those terrible Russians who all seemed to be conspiring to create some terrible weapon that would bring disaster on the West!
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You have such a good point, FictionFan! It’s all part of the way our society has changed over time. You’re right that in a lot of vintage crime fiction, the threat is Russians or Nazis, or some weapon they have, and then the whole nuclear capability. It is, indeed climate change now, and I’ve also seen pandemic in some crime ficiton. It’s just interesting how our big fears show up in the genre…
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Thank you for sharing this. We need the power, but we are under its control. Not forgetting the toxic waste it create
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You have a point, Paula, that anything as strong as nuclear power has a lot of risks associated with it. We need to aware of that.
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Yes, I remember Three Mile Island well and holding my breath. That must’ve been very unpleasant for you. Closer to home for Europeans was Chernobyl of course and I still wonder if the huge increase in cancers in people in their thirties and forties in Europe is down to that. For me, part of moving from childhood to adulthood was the realisation that the ‘safe’ world I thought I inhabited was actually very far from that and thus learning to cope with that knowledge.
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It all really was unpleasant and very unsettling, Cath. And, of course, Chernobyl was much worse, and very scary, especially for Europeans. You have a well-taken point, too, that there are probably many people who have health problems that can be traced back to that disaster. It’s a very hard lesson to learn, isn’t it, that the world we think of as ‘safe’ isn’t always that way. That’s one of the more difficult lessons of maturing.
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I remember reading Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith (before I started blogging). A lot of the story takes place in the dead zone around the Chernobyl disaster, and it was kind of an eye opener to me to read about that. It reminded me how many lives were impacted by the disaster. It was a confusing book and not my favorite in the Arkady Renko series, but I was glad I read it.
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Thanks, Tracy, for the reminder of the Arkady Renko series. It’s a fine series, although I must admit I haven’t gotten as far as Wolves Eat Dogs. That’s a powerful-sounding setting and context – the ‘dead zone’ of Chernobyl! I’ll bet the story is haunting just on that score.
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This post reminded me of The Expanse series for some reason. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s hard sci-fi which can be a headache sometimes, but in it an alien civilisation has developed a proto-molecule (biological weapon) that ushers in an intergalactic crises. The aliens haven’t entered the picture yet (they’re long dead I think) but the politics, the mystery and the suspense are all there.
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Oh, that sounds like a really interesting premise, OP. I’m not as much of a sci-fi reader, but it sounds as though there’s a solid thread of suspense from this biological weapon. I’ll have to tell my husband, who is our family sci-fi person.
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It’s a TV series too on Amazon Prime. I’m not sure if the aliens enter in the later books though. I still have to complete reading the series. But yes, there’s plenty of suspense.
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Oh, thanks for the information, OP. That’s good to know.
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