Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

When you think of nursing care, you may think of hospital nurses, or perhaps nurses who work in medical offices. But some people’s health needs are actually best met at home. For people who are recovering from an injury, or who can no longer care for themselves, for instance, home health care can be a better option on a lot of levels than hospital or institutional care. That’s when people who can do so sometimes hire live-in nurses to provide the medical assistance a patient needs. Those nurses can be real forces for good, but it’s always a bit awkward to have someone else – not a family member – living in a home. And, at least in crime fiction, the live-in nursing situation offers a lot of possibilities for a plot.

A live-in nurse called Amy Leatheran is the narrator of Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia. She’s been hired by Dr. Eric Leidner to look after his wife Louise while they are on an archaeology dig a few hours from Baghdad. It seems that Louise has been suffering from anxiety and fearfulness, and it will be Nurse Leatheran’s job to ease her mind, make sure she eats and sleeps well, and so on. From the moment she arrives, Nurse Leatheran senses that there’s tension among the people staying in the expedition house. Still, she tries to keep her focus on her patient. Then one afternoon, Louise is murdered in her room. Hercule Poirot is in the area, and he’s persuaded to interrupt his own plans and investigate. As he does, he gets to know Nurse Leatheran, and she’s able to give him useful information. It’s interesting, too, to get her point of view on Poirot and on the various suspects.

Robert Colby’s novella No Experience Necessary is the story of Glenn Hadlock, who’s recently been released from prison. He’s looking for a job, but has no success until he answers an ad for an escort/bodyguard. It turns out that wealthy Victor Scofield wants to hire a bodyguard for his wife Eileen. Scofield is permanently disabled and cannot leave his room. He relies on his live-in nurse/companion, Ben Kimble, to take care of him. As he tells Hadlock, he doesn’t want Eileen to be similarly confined. Scofield offers Hadlock the job, warning him that his relationship with Eileen must remain completely professional. Hadlock agrees and begins his work. It’s a good job with a good salary and an apartment. But soon enough, Hadlock becomes uneasy about everything. It doesn’t help matters that Eileen seems to want more than just a bodyguard, and that Ben Kimble doesn’t seem to be helping him settle in. As the story goes on, Hadlock finds that some jobs really are too good to be true.

As Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell wrote The Minotaur, which is the story of Swedish nurse Kerstin Kvist. She is hired by the Cosway family to look after thirty-nine-year-old John Cosway, who is said to be schizophrenic. Kerstin is eager to take the job, because it will allow her to live closer to her partner Mark Douglas. She settles in at Lydstep Old Hall, where the Cosway family lives, and soon sees that this isn’t an ordinary family. For one thing, the family seems to be still living in the Victorian Age, which is odd enough. More than that, Kerstin’s patient is kept under heavy sedation by order of his mother, the family matriarch. At first, Kerstin does as she’s told. But she soon comes to believe that John Cosway would be better off without being sedated. So, she slowly reduces the amount of medication he gets. Her decision ends up having tragic consequences, and we see how even the most well meaning of decisions can go very, very wrong.

James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential follows the careers of three LAPD police officers. The story begins in 1951, when all three are involved in what’s been called ‘Bloody Christmas,’ when a group of seven civilians was attacked by members of the police force. Later, all three cops are involved in the investigation of a late-night shooting at the Nite Owl, an all-night diner. One of the cops is Jack Vincennes, who among other things works as a technical advisor for a TV show called Badge of Honor. The show’s set designer, David Mertens, has a rare form of epilepsy, and needs regular care to be able to function. For that, he’s hired live-in nurse Jerry Marsalas to care for him. Marsalas also accompanies Mertens to the set to ensure his safety there. These two characters end up playing more important parts in the story than Vincennes would have guessed.

There’s also Laura Elliot’s The Silent House. Sophy Kingston has found herself in a desperate situation. Her husband Luke has a serious gambling problem, and they’ve had to sell everything to try to pay off his debt. It’s broken up their family, and devastated their two daughters, Isobel and Julie. In dire need of a job, Sophy agrees to work as a live-in nurse to Jack Hyland, who’s suffering from serious burn injuries. She and her daughters move from Dublin to Hyland Hall, about an hour from Cork. Jack Hyland is reclusive and, of course, in pain, and Sophy tries to care for him as best she can. But soon, there’s an uneasy feeling that something is very, very wrong at Hyland Hall. As it turns out, Jack has his share of secrets, and the house itself has a dark past. For Sophy, the job certainly doesn’t turn out to be the safe haven she needed.

In-home nursing can have a lot of benefits. It allows patients to be in their own homes, it frees up hospital resources, and it can be a positive situation for a nurse. But as with anything else in crime fiction, things don’t always go as planned…

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Beatles’ Help.