Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

People don’t ‘get over’ a traumatic event. They can heal from it, but that process takes time and sincere effort. It doesn’t magically happen. Crime novels that acknowledge that process can be realistic and invite readers to identify with the characters. At the same time, a book that has too much focus on what happens to people who’ve experienced trauma can pull the reader out of the story. Crime fiction fans don’t need every detail to get a sense of what a character is facing.

In Agatha Christie’s Sad Cypress, for instance, Elinor Carlisle is arrested for the murder of Mary Gerrard, the daughter of the lodgekeeper at Elinor’s family home. There’s solid evidence against her, too, and she had two motives. For one thing, her fiancé, Roddy Welman, was infatuated with Mary. For another, Mary was due to inherit a large sum of money at the death of Elinor’s wealthy aunt, Laura Welman. Local GP Dr. Peter Lord has become smitten with Elinor and wants to clear her name. So, he asks Hercule Poirot to investigate. Poirot finds out that there are other possibilities when it comes to people with motives for Mary’s murder. Even so, Elinor is devastated by the experience of being arrested and tried for murder. It’s not spoiling the story to say that she’s had a traumatic time of it, and Christie makes reference to the healing she will need to do.

Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch has endured his share of trauma. His mother was murdered when he was eleven, and he was brought up in the world of foster care and residence schools. Add to that his experience in the Vietnam War, and it’s not hard to see how he would have endured a lot. He’s been impacted, too, even years later. He has his own personal demons, he’s not good at maintaining a long-term, healthy marriage, and sometimes his anger gets the best of him. He doesn’t really hide at the bottom of a bottle, and Connelly doesn’t go on and on about Bosch’s healing process. Still, the stories acknowledge that Bosch has been through some real ordeals that will always be a part of him, and he needs to find ways to move forward.

Alan Orloff’s Killer Routine introduces Channing Hayes. He’s a former standup comic who now co-owns a Northern Virginia comedy club called The Last Laff. Hayes was successful as a comedian until a tragic car crash in which his fiancée Lauren Demspey was killed. Hayes was badly injured himself, so he’s had to deal with a great deal of grief, guilt, physical pain, and more. It shouldn’t be surprising that he hasn’t been onstage since the accident; in fact, he’s retreated from life in several ways. Things begin to change when Lauren’s sister Heather decides to try out her own comedy routine. Hayes gets her a spot in the club, but she never shows up. At first, it looks as though she simply didn’t go through with the routine because of last-minute nerves. But when she doesn’t resurface, Hayes knows that something is very wrong, and he decides to find out what happened to her. Throughout the novel, we see that Hayes has been damaged in more than one way by the accident. It’s not a constant focus of the book, but it’s clear that Hayes’ healing process will take time.

In Finn Bell’s Dead Lemons, the main character (also named Finn Bell), is at a crossroads in his life. His marriage has ended, and he’s suffered a car crash that has left him needing a wheelchair. As the story begins, he’s faced the fact that his drinking had a lot to do with both of those things, and he’s gone sober. Getting started again is an extremely difficult process for him, but he’s not ready to give up. He takes a cottage in a small town on New Zealand’s South Island and starts to try to make a home there. He soon learns that the previous owners of the cottage endured the terrible loss of their daughter, who went missing years earlier and has never been found. A year later, her father, too, disappeared. Now, Bell is curious about what happened, and with his therapist’s endorsement, begins to try to find out the truth. As the story goes on, Bell doesn’t play down the difficulty of starting life over again with a whole new set of ‘rules.’ At the same time, he doesn’t go on about the pain involved in healing from tragedy.

And then there’s Donna Morrissey’s The Fortunate Brother, which takes place in Newfoundland. Sylvanus Now, his wife Addie, and their children, Sylvie and Kyle, have spent three years grieving the loss of Sylvanus and Addie’s oldest child, Chris. He was killed in a tragic accident in an Alberta oil field, and the Now family hasn’t really begun to heal. Because of that, they haven’t come together as a family to work through their grief, and that’s especially hard on Kyle. When a local bully named Clar Gillard is murdered, Kyle becomes a suspect, since he’d had an argument with the man. As the police look into the case more deeply, though, they find that there are other possibilities, including both Sylvanus and Addie. If the family is going to get through this experience, they’re going to need to depend on each other. As the novel goes on, we see the family slowly begin to heal, even as the police get closer to the truth about Clar Gillard’s murder.

The thing about trauma is that even when it’s over, that doesn’t mean people are automatically better. It can be a bit tricky to explore in a novel, though, because readers don’t want to get burdened with an overload of details about the healing process. When it’s done well, though, it can add real depth to a character.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Jonathan Edwards’ Sunshine.