Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

It’s an election year in several countries. That means that candidates for all sorts of public offices are campaigning. They’re talking to voters, making speeches, putting out all sorts of advertisements, asking for money, and a lot more. It gets wearisome and tiresome for voters, and it wears on the candidates, too. Political campaigns are often fraught with all sorts of stress and tension, and sometimes even scandal. So, it shouldn’t surprise you that we see them in crime fiction.

For example, in Margaret Truman’s Murder at the Kennedy Center, we are introduced to US Senator Ken Ewald, who is hoping to be elected president. One night, he attends a glittering campaign event at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center. Late that night, Mackensie ‘Mac’ Smith, a Georgetown University professor and friend of Ewald’s, is walking his dog when he discovers a woman’s body. The victim turns out to be Andrea Feldman, a campaign staffer for the senator. The police are notified, and an investigation is begun. The gun used in the murder belongs to Ewald, and it soon comes out that his son, Paul, was having an affair with the victim. The Ewald family now comes under intense scrutiny. Ewald’s career is over unless it can be conclusively proven that someone else is the killer. Ewald knows that Smith is an experienced lawyer, so he asks for Smith’s help. Smith soon learns that more than one person could have wanted Andrea Feldman dead.

Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn Shreve is a now-retired academic and political scientist. She’s been involved in politics for years and has seen her share of campaigns. In the first of this series, Deadly Appearances, Joanne attends a community barbecue where up-and-coming Saskatchewan politician Androu ‘Andy’ Boychuck will be making an important speech. Joanne is a political ally and a friend of Andy’s so she’s hoping he’ll do well. Instead, shortly after beginning his speech, Andy collapses and dies of what turns out to be poison. As a way of coping with her grief, Joanne decides to write a biography of Andy Boychuk. She begins to talk to his widow, his friends, and family members, and slowly starts to put together the pieces of his life. In the process, she also finds out who his killer is and what the motive was.

In Alan Orloff’s Deadly Campaign, Channing Hayes is part owner of a northern Virginia comedy club called The Last Laff. His friend Thomas Lee owns the restaurant next door to the club. One day, Hayes attends a speech given by Lee’s nephew Edward Wong, who’s hoping to be elected Congressional Representative for the area. During the speech, some thugs armed with baseball bats storm into the restaurant. They do their share of damage, but no-one is killed. Lee doesn’t want to call unwelcome attention to the restaurant or his nephew’s campaign, so he asks Hayes to find out what he can. Hayes soon learns that some very dangerous people have a stake in the campaign, and they are not likely to give up easily.

One plot thread of K.J. Backford’s The Blackmail Enigma concerns Andrew Tenyson, the Tory candidate for a hotly-contested upcoming election. Tenyson’s family has some shadows in its past, and the Tories would like nothing better than to keep that family history quiet. As you can imagine, the Labour Party and its candidate would love to make that past public. Both sides learn that a Swedish-American family, the Arnols, may have letters and a diary that reveal Tenyson family secrets, so both are determined to find out what the family has. In the midst of this, Hannah Arnol, who lives in Los Angeles, travels to Sweden to join her Uncle Noah for a long-planned trip. When she arrives, though, she finds out that her uncle is dead, ostensibly from an accidental fall down some stairs. But Hannah isn’t sure that’s what happened. Uncle Noah was a strong supporter of the Labour Party, and with the campaign in full swing, his death could be related to politics. She decides to take the trip they were going to take together and try to find out how her family’s history is related to the upcoming election. In the end, she learns some tragic secrets about her family, and we see how it’s all linked to the campaign.

Campaigns can get dirty, and there are all sorts of examples of the way corporate wealth, politics, and big money get mixed up together. For instance, in Edney Silvestre’s Happiness is Easy, we meet wealthy São Paulo businessman Olavo Bettencourt. He’s an advertising executive, so he’s much in demand by political groups and companies that want to polish their images. He lives in an exclusive area of town, has a beautiful ‘trophy wife,’ and a healthy son. All seems perfect in his life until a group of thugs decides to abduct his son and hold him for ransom. The group’s plans are made, and the kidnapping goes off as scheduled. But it turns out that the group has taken the wrong child. The boy who’s been taken is the son of the Bettencourts’ housekeeper, who is desperate to get him back. Now, the thugs will have to decide what to do. In the meantime, Olavo Bettencourt will have to decide how much to tell the media and the police. He’s been involved in some very shady business, and he’s not eager for the police to find out what he’s been doing. Among other things, this is a look at the way political campaigns can get mixed up in corrupt deals.

Political campaigns are often about a whole lot more than just the messages that the candidates send. They can be full of intrigue, tension, and corruption. And even the ‘clean’ campaigns have their share of tension and suspense. Little wonder they come up in crime fiction.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Simon & Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson.