Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

Have you ever dreamed of something you’d love to achieve? I’d guess that most people do. Dreams and hopes are part of what sustains us. And they can give us the motivation to work towards a goal and keep our focus. Like anything else, though, following a dream can have real consequences. And at least in crime fiction, those consequences can be disastrous.

There’s an Agatha Christie novel, for instance, in which someone’s dream ends up being the cause of murder, because that person is so determined to fulfil that dream. No sleuth or title here – I don’t give away spoilers. But if you’ve read Christie, you probably know the one I mean. Sometimes fulfilling a dream is so important to a person that it consumes just about everything else.

In Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost, we are introduced to ten-year Kate Meaney. She dreams of being a private detective. She even has her own agency, Falcon Investigations, and a prized notebook in which she writes down evidence of suspicious activity. She spends a lot of time at the newly opened Green Oaks Mall, because she is certain she’ll find crime there that she can solve. She’s content with her life and determined to make her dream come true. But her grandmother Ivy sees things differently. She wants Kate to go to a good school and get an education. At her grandmother’s insistence, Kate travels to the exclusive Redspoon School to sit the entrance exams. She brings her friend Adrian Palmer with her for moral support. Adrian returns, but Kate doesn’t. There’s a massive search for her, but nothing is found – not even a body. Everyone soon thinks that Adrian is responsible for whatever happened to Kate, although he insists he’s innocent. He’s more or less hounded out of town, and vows not to return. Twenty years later, Adrian’s younger sister Lisa is an assistant manager at Green Oaks. One night, she happens to meet Kurt, one of the security guards. Kurt’s been seeing strange images on the security cameras: a young girl with a backpack who looks a lot like Kate. Each in their own way, he and Lisa go back to the past, as it were, and we learn what really happened to Kate Meaney.

Peter May’s Runaway is the story of Jack Mackay and some of his friends. It’s 1965 Glasgow, and Mackay and his friends have big dreams of becoming music stars. They don’t think they’re going to get very far in Glasgow, so they make another plan. They decide to run away to London to make their dream come true. They get to London, but they soon find that things aren’t what they had hoped for. They get caught up in more than they’d imagined they would, and it all ends up in murder. Fifty years later, another band member claims that he knows who committed the murder, and that it’s not the person everyone assumed at the time. Now, the remaining band members return to London to put together the pieces of this fifty-year-old puzzle.

Musical dreams are also at the heart of Brian L. Porter’s: A Mersey Killing: When Liverpool Rocked and the Music Died. In 1961, Liverpool is the place to be when it comes to music. The Mersey Beat is winning fans all over the world, and lots of young musicians want to be in on that success. That includes Brendan Kane and his band, the Planets. They’re liked locally and have had a little success in the area. But they haven’t made the big time: not like Gerry and the Pacemakers. Brendan gets a little tired of waiting for their dream to come true, but he’s willing to give it one more try since that’s what his bandmates want. He insists, though, that if it doesn’t work out, he’ll leave the band and go to the US to try to make it there. Everyone agrees, and Brendan Kane and the Planets try once more for success. It doesn’t happen, though, and Brendan makes his plans to go. Fifty years later, a body is pulled from the river. Detective Inspector Andrew ‘Andy’ Ross and Sergeant Clarissa ‘Izzy’ Drake investigate. At first, they think it might by the body of Marie Doyle, a young woman who went missing in the early 1960s. It’s not, though, and Ross and Drake soon find themselves piecing together the past to find out who the victim was and how that person died.

And then there’s Tess Makovesky’s Gravy Train. Sandra Price has a dead-end job in a Birmingham pub. She dreams of a nice home with a white picket fence, but so far, she and her husband haven’t been able to afford anything like that. And, fond as she may be of Mike, he hasn’t made much of himself, and he’s not exactly a physical specimen. One day, Sandra overhears two customers talking about a betting scam they’ve been working. They don’t notice Sandra, but she pays attention to every word they say. It occurs to her that she and Mike could pull off the same scam, make a lot of money, and start living her dream. The scam works, and Mike and Sandra end up with £80,000. That’s when things start going wrong. First, a nearby mugger sees that Mike and Sandra have money and steals it from them. Then the money is stolen by a car thief who has her own dreams. Sandra appeals to her Uncle George, who has underworld connections, and soon enough, a group of desperate people are after that money.

And that’s the thing about big dreams. They can nourish us, but sometimes, they start to take over, and that can lead to tragedy. These are just a few examples. Your turn.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams.