Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

When you visit someone’s home, especially for the first time, do you get interested in the books they have? I know I do; I always like to look at the books people read. Among a lot of other things, books tell us things about their owners. You can find out people’s hobbies, interests, cultural backgrounds, language(s) spoken, political leanings, and a lot more just by looking at their bookshelves. And when people don’t have books and bookshelves, that’s informative too. Books and bookshelves are useful in crime fiction, too. They can give the sleuth information and clue, they can hide evidence, and they can hide important clues.

In Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia, for instance, Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of Louise Leidner, who was accompanying her husband Eric and his dig team on an archaeological expedition in Iraq. The victim was found in her room, so Poirot examines the room, including the books that Louise Leidner had. Later, he discusses what he learned from those books:

  ‘She had, to begin with, an interest in culture and in modern science—that is, a distinct intellectual side. Of the novels, Linda Condon, and in a lesser degree Crewe Train, seemed to show that Mrs. Leidner had a sympathy and interest in the independent woman—unencumbered or entrapped by man. She was also obviously interested by the personality of Lady Hester Stanhope. Linda Condon is an exquisite study of the worship of her own beauty by a woman. Crewe Train is a study of a passionate individualist, Back to Methuselah is in sympathy with the intellectual rather than the emotional attitude to life. I felt that I was beginning to understand the dead woman.’

While the books don’t contain specific clues to the murderer, they do help Poirot see how Louise Leidner’s personality impacted the others on the expedition team.

Ellery Queen’s The Origin of Evil sees Queen staying in a house in the Hollywood Hills so he can get some writing done. Such is not to be, though. He’s approached by nineteen-year-old Laurel Hill to help solve the murder of her father. In the weeks before his death, he’d received some grotesque ‘presents’ that Laurel believes caused his fatal heart attack. Queen’s not interested in the case until Laurel tells him that her father’s business partner, Roger Priam, has been receiving similar ‘gifts.’ Queen starts investigating, and that process includes getting to know the Priam family. At one point, Queen looks through Priam’s library. The books are all expensive editions in luxury covers, but barely used. That tells Queen that Priam is probably the type of person who doesn’t read, but who wants a ‘rich person’s home,’ which to him, entails a library filled with ‘the classics.’ And as it turns out, that’s exactly the sort of person Priam is. He himself has no interest in books or anything intellectual, but he has money, and he wants to show that he’s ‘cultured.’ He has those books because ‘that’s what you’re supposed to do.’

Robert Barnard’s Death of an Old Goat takes place mostly in Drummondale, a small Australian town that houses the University of Drummondale. As the book opens, Bobby Wickham and the rest of the English faculty are preparing for a visit from renowned Oxford Professor Belville-Smith. He’s on a lecture tour of Australia and has chosen Drummondale as one of his stops. The visit doesn’t go well. Bellville-Smith is snobbish, pedantic, and dismissive of all of the faculty and their ideas. It’s still a shock, though, when he is murdered one day, and his body found in his hotel room. Inspector Bert Royle investigates. At first, it doesn’t seem as though anyone would have had a real motive for murder. The victim was insufferable, but not evil. But there’s more to the story than it seems. As a part of the investigation, Royle interviews the members of the faculty, and gets a chance to see their offices. Here’s what bookshelves tell him about one member, Alice O’Brien:

On one shelf of the book-case was Campbell’s Anglo-Saxon Grammar, a Middle-English dictionary, and an Agatha Christie. Just above these was a large flagon of dry sherry, three-quarters empty, a bottle of whisky, a bottle of gin, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of curaçao, two flagons of cheap red and white wine, and a large collection of tonic water, bitter lemon, ginger ale and a soda siphon.

It’s a satirical look at the academic life.

Barry Maitland’s The Marx Sisters introduces Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) David Brock and Detective Sergeant (DS) Kathy Kolla. In the novel, Brock and Kolla investigate the death of Meredith Winterbottom, who lived with her two sisters in the Jerusalem Lane area of London. At first, the death looks like a suicide, but Kolla’s not so sure, and Brock supports her looking more deeply into the case. The detectives learn that the three sisters are the great-granddaughters of Karl Marx. As such, they’ve inherited a collection of books and papers that could have much more than sentimental value. In fact, the detectives look closely at that fact as a motive. There are other possibilities, too, but it shows that a person’s collection of books can give information about that person’s background, too, and that information could be valuable.

A collection of books turns out to be very important in Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal. In it, journalist James ‘Qwill’ Qwilleran gets involved in a case of murder when local high school principal Hilary VanBrook is found murdered. There are plenty of suspects, too. He wasn’t popular as a principal, and he was even less popular among the cast of an amateur society play he was directing. There are other motives, too, that Qwill uncovers as the story goes on. At one point, he’s in VanBrook’s home, looking through his library. Not only does he find out more about the victim, but he finds an important clue.

People’s book collections are in some ways windows into their personalities. So it’s not surprising that they figure in crime fiction. What might your bookshelves say about you?

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Indigo Girls’ Closer to Fine.