Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

In my last post, I mentioned some of the terrible parents we find in crime fiction. There are a lot of them, so that post barely scratched the proverbial surface. Bad parents are definitely woven into the genre. But let’s be fair; there are also some horrible child characters in crime fiction, too. Admittedly, there’s likely some connection between terrible child characters and their home lives or the way they were raised. But let’s put that aside for a moment and take a look at some of them.

There’s a small example in Agatha Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. In it, Hercule Poirot travels to the village of Broadhinny to investigate the murder of a charwoman. Her unpleasant lodger James Bentley has been arrested, tried, and convicted in connection with the crime, and everyone assumes he’s guilty. Superintendent Spence thinks he might be innocent, though, and asks Poirot to investigate. One of Poirot’s stops is the home where Mrs. McGinty lived, which is now occupied by a new family. He wants to speak to the mother, but her children are rude and obstreperous. She shrugs it off:

‘Can’t do anything with children, can you?’

Poirot begs to differ. There’s another Agatha Christie novel in which there is a truly terrible child character, but… no title or even sleuth. No spoilers here! If you’ve read it, though, you know the one I mean.

Matthew Grant’s short story The Uses of Intelligence features eleven-year-old twins Patty and Danny Perkins. They’re both intellectually gifted, with high IQs. One day, they learn that an acquaintance of theirs, banana seller Aristos Depopoulos, has been killed. The police think that a worker from a nearby construction site is responsible. Patty and Danny decide to find out the truth for themselves, so they start sleuthing. When they find out who was responsible for the murder, they decide to engage in a little blackmail. What they don’t know, though, is that they’re not the only geniuses around…

Ruth Dugdall’s Humber Boy B is the story of two brothers who pushed a young boy named Noah over the Humber bridge to his death. They were caught and arrested and placed in the juvenile justice system. Eight years later, one of them is given a new identity and moved to Ipswitch, where he will hopefully have an anonymous life. Noah’s mother has never given up her desire to find out why the boys killed her son, so she’s started a Facebook search group. She wants to find ‘Humber Boy B’ and ask him the same question many people have when children do something terrible. Why do they do what they do? Along with other things, the book explores the boys’ lives before the tragedy, and takes up some of the issues involved when young children do horrible things.

Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin tells the story of the Khatchadourian family: Franklin, Eva, and their son Kevin. It’s a complicated and dysfunctional family, and as Kevin gets older, he behaves in more and more disturbed ways. He ultimately commits a terrible crime and is incarcerated for it. As the story goes on, we learn about Kevin’s childhood, his relationship with his parents, and the things that led up to his being imprisoned. The novel explores several issues, including the denial among some parents that there’s even a problem, let alone a severe problem.

Brannavan Gnanalingham’s Sprigs features a group of rugby players at St. Luke’s College, an exclusive New Zealand boys school. One Saturday afternoon, the First XV players win an important match, and decide to have a party. Word gets around very quickly, and plenty of young people attend. One of the partygoers, Priya Gaianon, is gang-raped by four of the players, and the whole thing is recorded and soon posted on social media. The experience is so terrible that Priya doesn’t even want to admit it happened. But it’s ‘out there’ now, so she has to live with that consequence as well as the physical and emotional damage. There is an investigation, but in the main, the boys cover for each other, and some of their parents do, too. It doesn’t help matters that school officials don’t want the bad press that the whole thing will mean for St. Luke’s.

Even children who don’t commit terrible crimes sometimes behave badly, even if they’re from ‘good’ families (I’m sure you’ve heard things like, ‘We taught her/him/them better than that!’). There are all sorts of explanations and theories about ‘awful kids.’ My guess is, several factors are involved, and they’re not the same for all children. Whatever the reasons, there are certainly some terribly behaved fictional kids out there. These are only a few examples. Your turn.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Beatles’ Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.