Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

It can be very difficult to speak up against bullying, corruption, and so on. For one thing, there’s a great deal of social pressure to ‘just stay out of it,’ and it’s more comfortable to do that, anyway. For another, there can be serious consequences for anyone who does say something.  I’m sure you could name plenty of crime novels in which someone who speaks up pays a heavy price. That’s why most people will say that it’s important to take action, but not so many people actually do so. Just a quick look at crime fiction will show you what I mean.

In Agatha Christie’s Appointment With Death, we are introduced to the Boynton family. As part of a sightseeing trip to the Middle East, they’re planning to spend a few days in Petra. On the second day there, Mrs. Boynton, the family matriarch, is murdered by what turns out to be digitoxin. Hercule Poirot is in the area, and he is asked to investigate. It soon turns out that each member of the victim’s family had a good motive for murder. Mrs. Boynton was malicious and tyrannical, a ‘mental sadist,’ to use Poirot’s description. No-one in her family has ever spoken up against the bullying as they’ve been too afraid. In fact, her oldest son, Lenox, nearly loses his wife Nadine over the issue. It’s not until Mrs. Boynton is dead that her family members finally feel free to live their own lives. It’s hard to say if the bullying would have stopped if someone had spoken up, but it’s interesting to consider.

Cath Staincliffe’s Split Second begins as Emma Curtis is taking a bus home from work one day. Also on the bus is Luke Murray. At one point, three young people begin bullying Luke.  Emma sees what’s going on but says nothing. On the other hand, Jason Barnes intervenes and tells the group to stop. For a short time, the bullying does stop. Jason and Luke get off the bus at the same stop, and so do the bullies, and that’s when everything starts up again. It all ends up in a fight which leaves Luke severely injured, and Jason dead of stab wounds. Luke is rushed to the hospital where he lapses into a coma. Emma, of course, finds out the news and part of her is consumed by guilt for not doing anything to stop the bullies. On the other hand, as we learn about her past, we learn that she’s been a victim of emotional and mental bullying, both at home and at work. So it would have been particularly hard for her to speak up. And she learned what happened to Jason, who did speak up. The novel shows that to speak up or not is a very difficult dilemma.

The main action in Simon Lelic’s Rupture (A Thousand Cuts) takes place in a school environment. One day, recently hired history teacher Samuel Szajkowski goes into the school’s auditorium where an assembly is going on. When he gets there, he shoots a fellow teacher and three students before turning the gun on himself. Detective Inspector (DI) Lucia May is assigned to investigate, but she’s actually expected to ‘rubber stamp’ the police theory that Szajkowski simply ‘snapped.’ It’s not that simple, though, and as May investigates, she finds that the school had a deeply ingrained culture of bullying. Szajkowski was relentlessly bullied, and May can’t help but think of him as a victim, although he was the shooter. It complicates matters that May’s own workplace has a similar ‘bullying’ culture. Would there have been a shooting if someone had spoken up about the bullying? It’s hard to say, but it’s possible.

Brannavan Gnanalingham’s Sprigs also features a school. The First XV rugby players at St. Luke’s College win an important game one Saturday and decide to celebrate with a party at the home of one of their members. As you might guess, word gets around about the party, and a large group of young people show up. One of them is Priya Gaianan, a student at another school. While she’s at the party, Priya is gang-raped by four members of the rugby team, and someone records the incident. Worse, it’s uploaded and shared. Priya herself is devastated, and it gets even worse when the video is circulated. Her mother does what she can to help Priya, but it’s still a horrible experience. When it comes to the attention of school officials, they worry more about the school’s reputation than they do about the culture that supported the rape. Priya tries to speak up about what happened, but she pays the price for that, since the boys involved are much-valued rugby players. No-one at the party spoke up or tried to protect Priya, and no-one at St. Luke’s speaks up to support her, either. One wonders what might have happened if that weren’t the case.

And then there’s Tamron Hall’s As the Wicked Watch. Chicago television reporter Jordan Manning has been covering the story of the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Masey James. The police have called the girl a runaway, but her mother Pamela is sure she wouldn’t have done that. When Masey’s body is discovered, Jordan sees that this is a very important story. She also feels a connection to the case and wants justice for Masey. So, she starts to look more deeply into what happened. It turns out that this case is linked to others, and that a very dangerous person is now targeting Jordan. In the end, one of the saddest facts Jordan uncovers is that all along, several people knew things that very possibly could have saved Masey’s life. They didn’t speak up, and Jordan does reflect on what might have happened f they had.

And that’s the thing about speaking up against bullying and other injustices. It’s very, very hard to take a stand, and there are reasons that people don’t. That doesn’t mean we don’t wish that more people did.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Long Time Gone.