Sometimes, people keep things secret for reasons they think are the right ones. For instance, for a lot of reasons, you might not tell a young child that his uncle and aunt are getting divorced because of infidelity. That silence can go on and on until it’s second nature, long after someone would be mature enough to make sense of things. And that’s when resentment can set in (i.e. ‘Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?’). Keeping secrets like that may be a wise decision on a lot of levels, but it can have unforeseen consequences later. And it can be an effective plot tool in crime fiction.
For example, in Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Mirror, Hercule Poirot is summoned to the home of Gervase Chevenix-Gore. It seems that Chevenix-Gore suspects that someone in his household is trying to steal from him, and he wants Poirot to investigate. Poirot is not accustomed to being summoned, but he goes to the Chevenix-Gore home. To everyone’s shock, Chevenix-Gore is found dead just before dinner on the night of Poirot’s arrival, before Poirot can speak to him. At first, it looks like a suicide, but the victim was assuredly not the sort of person to take his own life. Besides, Poirot finds a few things that aren’t consistent with suicide. So, he interviews the family members, including Chevenix-Gore’s adopted daughter Ruth. She knows she’s adopted, but there are facts about her that she doesn’t know, and they play an important part in the story. It’s interesting to wonder how it might have turned out if she did know those facts.
One of the plot lines in Babs Horton’s A Jarful of Angels concerns four children growing up in a small Welsh village during the summer of 1962. Since they don’t have a lot to do, they spend most of their time together and do a lot of exploring. They also happen to find out a lot about some of the people in their village. They don’t have a real understanding of what they learn, but the reader can make inferences. And as it turns out, there are secrets that people haven’t told them. Forty years later, we follow former police officer Will Sloane returns to the same village (he’d left for Spain). He’s been told he hasn’t much longer to live, and he wants to solve one case he was never able to solve: the disappearance of a child. As the book moves along, we see how his story and that of the children intersect, and we see how those secrets they never learned have impacted them.
Graeme Macrae Burnet’s The Accident on the A35 is the story of the death of Bertrand Barthelme, who drove his car off the road and into a tree. As a matter of course, the police investigate, and Chief of Police Georges Gorski interviews Barthelme’s widow Lucette and his son Raymond. In the normal course of things, the victim would never have been on that road; in fact, he was supposed to be somewhere else. So Gorski now has the task of processing what Lucette and Raymond say, figuring out what Barthelme was doing on that road, and what really happened to him. In the meantime, Ryamond wants to learn more about his father. The two were never close, and now he wants to find out what led his father to be on that road, what sort of person he was, and so on. As he starts to learn things, Raymond discovers that there are things he didn’t know about his father. At the same time as his curiosity is satisfied, he also finds that he has to look at life differently.
In Matthew Sullivan’s Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, we are introduced to Lydia Smith, who works at a quirky Denver bookshop called the Bright Ideas Bookstore. One day, she discovers the body of Joey Molina, one of the regulars at the shop. It’s not spoiling the story to say that Molina has committed suicide, but for Lydia, there’s more to it than that. Molina left her a note: You found me, Lydia. He also left her a long, coded message. Lydia doesn’t know what the note or message means, but she’s determined to find out. So, she starts to ask questions. Her search leads her to the truth about a long-ago tragedy and her own traumatic history. She also learns some secrets that people have been keeping for decades. It turns out those secrets have had a powerful effect on the people they concern.
In Charity Norman’s Remember Me, Emily Kirkland returns from London, where she’s been living, to her native New Zealand. She’s there to help her father Felix, who’s suffering from dementia. On the one hand, she’s hesitant to come back for several reasons. On the other hand, she does want to help her father. The small town they live in was devastated 25 years earlier by the disappearance of a young woman, Leah Paralta. In fact, Emily was the last person to see Leah before she went missing. No evidence has ever been found, not even a body. The incident still haunts the town. As Emily goes through her father’s things, she finds that her family may be connected to the Paralta family in ways she didn’t know. She also finds out other secrets that her parents never told her. And little by little, she finds out the truth about Leah’s disappearance.
When secrets are kept for decades, it can often be easier to keep them than to reveal them, even to people who are directly concerned. And it can seem kinder. But sometimes, that has consequences, too, both in crime fiction and in real life. Right, fans of John Grisham’s Sycamore Row?
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Through the Long Night.
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 
Babs Horton’s A Jarful of Angels sounds very interesting, Margot. Both the setting and the plot sounds good. I have been meaning to read Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, I am glad you reminded me of that.
It seems a lot of crime fiction revolves around secrets and I usually like that. It adds to the suspense. One of my favorites is The Expats by Chris Pavone. It is spy thriller, but also a good story about a marriage where each spouse is hiding big secrets from the other.
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I hope you’ll like Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, Tracy. It is sort of an unusual book, with unusual characters. But there’s a lot to it, and a really interesting past-linked-to-present sort of plot. You’re right, too, that a lot of crime fiction has some sort of secret as a part of the plot. It makes sense, too, since so many secrets can be absolutely devastating.
Thanks for mentioning The Ex-Pats, too. Pavone has talent, and that premise is compelling. It’s those sorts of secrets, too, that can really play havoc with a relationship…
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I’m reading one at the moment, Birthday Party by CHB Kitchin, where kindly relatives tell a young boy that his father died in an accident, although it was actually ruled as a suicide. Now the boy is approaching his 21st birthday when he will come of age and inherit his father’s estate. Not sure yet how the lie is going to affect the story, but I suspect it will!
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Ooh, that’s an interesting plot line, FictionFan! I suppose I could imagine why well-meaning people don’t want someone to know that a parent has committed suicide. There could be consequences for knowing that. But at the same time, I can also see how keeping a secret like that could have a real impact. I’ll be interested in your thoughts when you’ve finished!
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Your post was timely. Recently I read In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward. Secrets abound concerning the abduction of Sophie Jenkins 36 years ago. The surprises never ceased.
Sycamore Row is one of Grisham’s best books. I admire Jake Brigance as a lawyer.
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I completely agree with you, Bill, about In Bitter Chill. It’s an excellent novel, and yes, there are all sorts of secrets that come out as the novel moves along. Sycamore Row is an excellent novel, too, both on its own and as a follow-up to A Time to Kill. I very much like Jake Brigance as a character.
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Definitely an important trope in GA crime for sure – and when society was so much more judgemental there was plenty of motivation for blackmail or murder when a secret was at risk!
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You make such a good point, KBR! The more judgemental a society, the more likely it is that a secret will be dangerous. And there certainly is a lot of that in GA crime fiction!
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It seems that long-kept secrets are often a part of intriguing mystery stories!
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They really are, Becky! I think that makes sense, when you think about the kinds of secrets people keep and what damage that can do…
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Well done, Margot. Terrific topic, too. Secrets in fiction can create intriguing questions in the reader’s mind. The opposite is true in real life. LOL
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Thanks, Sue! And you’re right about secrets. They can really add intrigue and tension to a story. But in real life? Not so welcome…
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I wonder if attitudes have changed over the years – it seems that at one time people felt that secrets could and should be kept, possibly forever, ‘best not to stir things up.’ Nowadays I think most people believe that can be harmful.
I don’t think this is the only consideration, but there must also be a relevance in the fact that modern life is very different. So to take two examples – DNA testing means that eg paternity can be discovered (and proved) relatively easily. And a young person trying to find out about a past issue in the family might get a long way by googling, and perhaps finding an old crime case. In the 1930s it would have been much harder to discover facts.
It must change things for crime writers like yourself, Margot, but I think opens up new possibilities. I like the idea of a setup where a young person idly scrolling on the computer finds something out they weren’t expectin about family history.
In my own family (and this is a nice story) we were close to American relatives who had migrated from Ireland sometime after the First World war. But no-one knew exactly when, the exact circumstances were lost in the mists of time. And I can still remember the extraordinary moment (around 2000 I think) when it was announced that the Ellis Island Records had all been put online. The site kept crashing, so many people were looking, but late one night I entered the name of my Great-Aunt – and up popped an image of a hand-written manifest, with her details on the passenger list. It was an incredible moment! I was so happy to share that with the rest of the family.
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Oh, Moira, that must have been such a wonderful moment! You found a piece of your family’s history – how fabulous is that! And you’re right that that’s the sort of thing that people can do now that would have been much more difficult years ago. And then, there’s also the changing views you mentioned. As society changes, we have different ideas about what one should(n’t) discuss. Take adoption, for instance. Many years ago, a lot of people wouldn’t consider telling their children they were adopted. Now it’s as much a part of a child’s self-knowledge as anything else is. And now you’re making me think of those DNA testing places, or places like Ancestry where you can find out all of this information. It’s mind-boggling. But it, too, I think, can make for a fascinating story!
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