Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison once said, ‘If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.’ One way we see how this plays out is in mentoring situations, where someone who is more experienced helps younger people or newcomers. Those mentoring relationships can be meaningful and rich for both mentor and mentee, and they allow for wisdom and knowledge to be passed from one generation to the next. Mentoring relationships can also add much to a novel. As this is posted, it’s International Women’s Day, so let’s take a look at how women mentor other women in crime fiction.

In Agatha Christie’s Cat Among the Pigeons, we meet Honoria Bulstrode, who runs an exclusive girls school called Meadowbank. She takes a great interest in the pupils and works hard to ensure that they get the best education possible. One of the teachers who works with her is young Eileen Rich, who is becoming quite a good teacher of great promise. As the novel begins, Miss Bulstrode is considering whether it’s time for her to plan to step down and choose a successor. One possibility is her deputy, Eleanor Vansittart. Another is Miss Rich. One sub-plot of the novel is the way in which Miss Bulstrode tries to mentor both women and come to a decision about them. That process is put aside when Games Mistress Grace Springer is murdered one night. Then, there’s a kidnapping. One of the school’s pupils knows Hercule Poirot and asks him to investigate. Throughout the novel, we see how Miss Bulstrode puts a premium on supporting younger teachers and, of course, supporting the pupils and doing what’s best for those girls.

Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo introduces Jane Gresham. She’s a Wordsworth scholar who lives and teaches in London, although she’s originally from the Lake District. Jane doesn’t earn much, and lives in a run-down former council block. One of the other residents is fifteen-year-old Tenille Cole. Tenille is bright, and shares Jane’s passion for poetry. But she has a disastrous home life, and little access to books and other learning materials at home. So, Jane steps in as a mentor. She lends Tenille any books she can, and provides her with learning tools, too. She listens to Tenille’s ideas and helps her develop her thinking. Then, Jane hears that an unpublished Wordsworth manuscript may have been unearthed in the Lake District. So, she goes back to her hometown to see if that’s true. If so, it could make her career. Her search for the manuscript leads her into grave danger and ends up in death for more than one person. Without spoiling the story, I can say that Tenille plays an important role in unravelling the mystery.

Kalpana Swaminthan’s protagonist is Lalli, a former Mumbai police detective who’s officially retired, but now serves as a sort of mentor to active detectives and to her niece, a writer who acts as the narrator for the series. In The Page 3 Murders, for instance, Lalli solves the murder of a world-class chef who knows more secrets than is safe. As she does, she coaches her niece in getting information, putting theories together, and so on. And she’s supportive of her niece’s writing. She also supports the development of the police officers who work at ‘her’ station. She helps them make sense of clues, draw conclusions, and get to the truth about cases.

Paddy Richardson’s Swimming in the Dark introduces Gerda Klein and her daughter Ilse. Years ago, they emigrated from what was East Germany to New Zealand, to escape the Stasi, the East German secret police. Now, Ilse teaches secondary school in Alexandria, a small South Island town. One of her prize pupils is fifteen-year-old Serena Freeman, who shows a great deal of promise. Ilsa lends her books, supports her writing, and talks to her about her future. That’s why she gets concerned when Serena starts missing school and showing no interest in learning when she’s there. Then, Serena goes missing. Now, Ilsa gets much more deeply drawn into Serena’s life than she could have imagined. In this novel, we see how Gerda still mentors her daughter, and how Ilse tries to mentor Serena. It’s an interesting look at how multigenerational mentoring can work.

In Lauren Roche’s Mila and the Bone Man, we meet Mila, who lives with her family in the northernmost part of New Zealand’s North Island. She’s always had the instinct of a healer, and her mother’s sister, Aunty Cath, mentors her and helps her learn. She teaches Mila all sorts of information about plants and their properties, and about living in harmony with the plants and animals around them. Mila and Aunt Cath have a special bond because of that shared world. Then, tragedy strikes the family when Mila’s younger sister Anahera dies (not a murder). The family is trying to put itself back together when another tragedy, with far-reaching consequences, happens. Because of this, Mila goes to Auckland where she trains as a nurse. As she gets ready for adulthood, she finds that she wants to balance the healing arts she learned from Aunty Cath with the medicine-based approaches she’s learned as a nurse. And as the story goes on, we see how Aunty Cath continues to mentor Mila, and how that mentoring gets passed down.

Mentoring can be an important way to empower others. So, ladies, I invite you to look behind you at girls and young women who are starting their lives. Take the time to support them, listen to them, and be there for them. Show them how to navigate the world. And if a young woman seeks you out as a mentor, consider it the highest of compliments, and be worthy of that trust.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Rod Stewart’s Forever Young.