Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

Humans are a social species, so it’s a very serious matter when people are exiled, whether political exile, social exile, or self-imposed exile. The person who’s forced to leave has to start somewhere else, presumably mostly or completely alone. There’s a lot of adjustment and very little social support. Sometimes exile means the opportunity to forge a new identity and a new life. Other times the result is disastrous. Either way, it’s a major, often traumatic, life change.

Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost introduces ten-year-old Kate Meaney. She lives in a rather dull Midlands town where there’s very little to do. Kate dreams of becoming a detective. She even has her own agency called Falcon Investigations. Kate spends a lot of her time at the newly built Green Oaks Mall where she believes crime is likely to happen. Kate’s content with her life but her grandmother thinks she’d be better off going away to school. So, Kate is sent to sit the entrance exams at the exclusive Redspoon School. Her friend Adrian Palmer goes with her for moral support. Tragically, Kate never returns. There’s a massive search for her but she isn’t found.  Everyone assumes that Adrian is responsible for Kate’s disappearance, and he is more or less made an outcast. Things get so bad that he leaves town, vowing not to return. Twenty years later his younger sister Lisa is working at the mall. One night she meets one of the mall’s security guards, and they form an awkward sort of friendship. Together, they go back to the past as you might say, and we learn the truth about what happened to Kate.

Kate Grenville’s The Secret River is the story of the Thornhill family. In 1806, William Thornhill, who’s a bargeman on the Thames, is convicted of stealing a load of wood. At the last moment, his sentence is commuted from execution to transportation. Thornhill, his wife Sal, and their children, are exiled to Sydney, where they’ll have to start over. William hires himself out to make deliveries up and down the Hawkesbury River, and Sal sets up a makeshift pub. In the course of his deliveries, William finds a piece of land that he believes will be perfect for the family, and he sets out to claim it. As the story moves on, he and his family are caught up in the violence and crime that accompany many interactions between the settlers and the Aboriginal people. William wants no part of what’s going on, but at the same time, he is driven to claim the land. This isn’t strictly speaking, a crime novel, but plenty of crimes take place within it.

William Ryan’s historical series features Captain Alexei Korolev, a police detective for the Moscoe CID. It’s the late 1930’s, just before WW II, and Stalin is firmly in control of the government. Anyone considered disloyal either to Stalin or the Soviet Union is swiftly exiled to Siberia or outright killed. Korolev is well aware of this, and he knows that he has to be careful of everything he says and does, even in his own home. When he’s investigating crime, he has to be especially careful. The Party insists that there is no crime in the workers’ paradise that is the Soviet Union; anything that suggests otherwise is immediately suspect. So, Korolev must act quietly and carefully in his job.

There are several crime novels in which a police detective is more or less exiled. For example, Garry Disher’s Bitter Wash Road is the first in his series featuring Constable Paul ‘Hirsch’ Hirschhausen. In the novel, Hirsch has been exiled from Adelaide to rural Tiverton. It’s believed that he acted as a whistleblower in a corruption scandal and for that, he’s become a pariah. When he gets to Tiverton, he learns that his new colleagues have heard about his case, and they treat him accordingly. It takes a long time for Hirsch to re-establish himself in this new place, and Disher shows what a challenge it can be.

C.J. Carver’s The Snow Thief introduces Police Supervisor Third Class Shan Lia Bao. She and her grandmother-in-law were exiled from Shenzhen to Lhasa when her husband and mother-in-law were arrested for disturbing the social order. Now she’s trying to do her job the best she can in Tibet. When a young boy is found dead of what looks like a broken neck, she begins to investigate. She soon finds that this death may be linked to others. It turns out that this case is connected to a much larger issue involving the ongoing strain between the Chinese government and Tibetans.

There’s also J.P. Pomare’s Call Me Evie. Kate Bennet lives in rural New Zealand with a man she calls Bill. She knows her real name is Kate, but Bill insists she call herself Evie. As the story goes along, we learn that she is originally from Melbourne, but had to leave because of something terrible she did. Kate/Evie has no idea what that something was, but she does know that no-one can ever find out. So, she uses the name Evie, stays at home as much as possible, and is basically self-isolated. Still, her natural curiosity and interest in other people lead her to want to know more about where she’s living. She also wants to know more about what happened. Bill tells her things, but is he telling her the truth? Soon enough, the carefully constructed life Bill has made for them starts to fall apart as Kate/Evie starts asking questions.

Exile is a difficult thing for anyone to face, even if it’s self-imposed. It’s hard to cut ties with everyone and everything familiar, but some people go through it. Their stories can add tension and suspense to a crime novel.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Styx’s Renegade.