Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

Go into enough dive bars, garages, or basements, and you’re likely to find at least one band that wants to make it big. And it’s not just music, either. Plenty of amateur athletes would love to ‘go pro.’ Even small-time criminals sometimes dream of bigger things. Call it ambition or something else, there are plenty of people who are working hard and just waiting for that big break that will rocket them to the top. Of course, lots of things can happen on the way, so it’s little wonder that we see characters like this in crime fiction. Here are just a few examples; I know you’ll think of more than I could.

Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary serves as our introduction to Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. It’s shortly after WW I, and they’re a newlywed couple who are both adventurous and in need of money. So, one day over lunch, they decide to start their own company, Young Adventurers, Ltd., and hire themselves out to take on, well, any kind of adventure. They’re soon hired by a man who calls himself Mr. Whittington. He wants them to find a woman named Jane Finn, oddly enough, the same name Tuppence used to introduce herself. Soon enough, these amateurs are ‘playing with the big boys,’ as the saying goes. They get drawn into international intrigue and murder.

In Patricia Melo’s The Body Snatcher, an unnamed former telemarketer and sales representative from São Paulo has moved to the small town of Corumbá, not far from the Bolivian border. One day, he happens to be outside when he sees a small airplane crash in a field. He rushes to see if he can help, but by the time he gets there, the pilot is dead. The narrator notices a backpack among the pilot’s belongings, and on impulse, grabs it. When he gets home, he sees that the backpack contains a great deal of cocaine. He decides to sell the cocaine, just this once, so that he and his girlfriend can leave and set up a life for themselves. He partners up with a friend to make the best sale they can, and at first, all goes well. But they’re no match for the professional drug dealers they run up against. And when one of those dealers discovers that the cocaine is actually his, real trouble starts for these amateur partners.

Brian L. Porter’s A Mersey Killing: When Liverpool Rocked and Music Died features Brendan Kane, who lives in the Liverpool of the early 1960s. It’s a time when the Merseybeat sound dominates the pop charts, and bands like Gerry and the Pacemakers have skyrocketed to fame. Brendan and his band, the Planets, want that kind of success, too. They’ve been working hard, but haven’t ‘made it,’ although they’re well enough liked locally. Then, Brendan gets an idea. He wants to give the band one last chance at the big time. If they fail, he’ll leave the band and head for the US, where he’s more likely to find success. The other band members don’t want to break up, but they eventually go along with Brendan’s plan. When the band doesn’t have the success everyone hoped for, Brendan gets ready to leave. Thirty years later, a body is pulled from the river. At first, it looks as though it may be the body of Marie Doyle, who went missing in the early1960’s. When it turns out that’s not the case, the police have to connect the body they’ve found with what happened to Brendan Kane and the Planets.

Owen Laukkaanen’s The Professionals features four friends from university: Arthur Pender, his girlfriend Marie, and their friends Sawyer and Mouse. None of them has had any real success after graduating, and they’re all in need of money. So, Marie has the idea to do some small-time kidnapping. The group decides that if they target reasonably well-off men (but not really rich ones or celebrities), and ask for a modest ransom, they’ll get away with it. The idea is that these people won’t miss the money that much, and they’ll just be glad to forget about it, rather than pursue the kidnappers. They make the necessary preparations, and at first, everything goes according to plan. Then, they make the mistake of kidnapping the wrong man. This victim decides to go after the group. He involves the police, in the form of Minnesota Bureau of Investigations detective Steve Kirk. As if that’s not enough, their next victim is connected to the Mob, and is not shy about letting them know what happened to him. Now, Kirk has to catch the group before the Mob does, and the group has to evade both if they can. Going from amateurs to professional kidnappers turns out to be very costly.

In Peng Shepherd’sThe Cartographers, the New York Public Library is rocked when Dr. Daniel Young, who was in charge of the Rare Maps Department, is murdered. His office has been ransacked, and the police begin investigating. One ‘person of interest’ is Young’s daughter Nell, who has been estranged from him for seven years. It doesn’t help her case that she happens to have a copy of the only thing that was stolen: a cheap map from years ago – the kind that are sold at convenience stores. As Nell tries to find out why that map is so valuable, she learns that her father was one of a group of young cartographers – all working on their Ph.D. studies – who wanted to make their names. They found a way to do so, too, and the novel outlines their plan. As the story goes on, Nell finds out what happened to the group. She also finds out who killed her father and why.

Lots of people dream of making it big, whether in writing, sports, music, or something else (including illegal things). But it’s not as easy as it seems, and it can bring a lot of trouble (Right, fans of Peter May’s Runaway?).

ps. No, the photo isn’t of me…

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Bad Company’s Shooting Star.