Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

An interesting post from Kaggsy at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings has got me thinking about, well, how we think. Our thinking turns out to be much more mutable than a lot of people imagine. That’s why, for instance, you might be absolutely convinced that a meeting was supposed to be today, but it’s actually on Tuesday. Or, for instance, you’d swear your first date with your partner was at a certain restaurant, but your partner is just as convinced it was at a concert. It can be unsettling to come face to face with how our thinking changes and may not reflect things accurately. But it can make for a fascinating plot thread or character trait in crime fiction.

In Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs, for instance, Carla Lemarchant hires Hercule Poirot to find out who killed her father, famous painter Amyas Crale, sixteen years earlier. At the time, his wive Caroline was the most likely suspect, and she had motive, as Crale was carrying on a not-very-well-hidden affair with his painting model Elsa Greer. But Carla swears her mother was innocent. So, Poirot agrees to look into the matter. In the process, he interviews the five people who were present at the time of the murder. He also gets a written account from each of those witnesses. From that information, he works out what actually happened and who the murderer is.  What’s interesting about this approach is that each witness remembers things differently, and links (or doesn’t) certain things together. Some witnesses’ memories are faulty, too, because of not seeing or hearing things accurately. It shows just how mutable our thinking can be.

We also see that in Ellery Queen’s novella The Lamp of God. In it, Ellery Queen is asked to help escort a young heiress, Alice Mayhew, to the family’s home on Long Island. The idea is that Queen will help the family attorney protect Alice’s financial interests. The main house on the Mayhew property isn’t habitable, so when the group arrives, everyone settles into another, much smaller, house. The next morning, the larger house seems to have completely disappeared. Everyone’s rational mind is saying that something like a house does not disappear. On the other hand, the evidence of the eyes is that it’s gone. And that’s not the only weird thing that happens. Throughout the visit, other odd things occur (think the Gothic tradition), and there are dark undercurrents. Someone is using people’s mental mutability to accomplish a deadly purpose, and Queen doesn’t have much time to find out who it is. You have a good point, fans of Hake Talbot’s Rim of the Pit.

Honey Brown’s Through the Cracks is the story of fourteen-year-old Adam Vander. As the story begins, he’s finally old enough, big enough, and courageous enough to escape from his abusive father, Joe. He’s been so sequestered, though, that he has few survival skills, although he’s neither stupid nor unobservant. He meets a boy named Billy Benson, whom he’s seen at the house a few times, and with Billy’s help, he escapes. For the next week, Adam and Billy travel together. Billy shows Adam what he needs to learn, and looks out for him, and the two become friends. As the week goes by, questions from the past start to come up, and we learn that Adam and Billy are connected in ways they aren’t comfortable discussing. It all has to do with the ten-year-old disappearance of a boy named Nathan Fisher, and the story raises questions about what we know (or think we know), what we remember, and the difference between childhood memories and other memories.

Stella Duffy’s The Hidden Room is the story of Laurie and Martha, a happily married couple and parents to three healthy children. Laurie grew up in a cult in the American desert. She left as a young woman, but that experience has impacted the way she thinks and behaves. Still, she’s happy with her life, and loves her children. Everything changes when she and Martha begin to be a bit concerned about their daughter Hope, who’s just broken up with her boyfriend. As Hope continues to struggle, Laurie and Martha do what they can to help. Matters get worse when Laurie discovers that someone from her past has caught up with her. Laurie’s instinct is to protect her family at any cost, but how can she do that without letting some dark secrets out? And what will it all mean for her relationships with her family members? Among other things, this novel shows how cults alter members’ perceptions of reality, their memories, and more.

There’s also Paul Pilkington’s Long Gone. In one plot thread, we meet Natalie Long, a university student who’s been offered the chance of a lifetime: an opportunity to compete for a position with an enigmatic, but highly regarded, company called Brand New. Natalie is excited for the chance and eagerly (if nervously) travels to the company’s West End property. There, she’s settled in and meets the seven other competitors. Soon enough, the weekend’s activities begin. The candidates are not permitted the use of mobile phones or WiFi, so as they get to know each other, no-one knows who is telling the truth, who’s lying, and who might be very dangerous. No-one can check on the employees, either, for the same reason. That adds a really unsettling undertone to that part of the story. When the weekend is over, Natalie gets ready to board a train, and texts her best friend Amy that she’s on her way. Then, she disappears. Amy’s worried about her friend, so she asks her father, Detective Chief Inspector Paul Cullen, to investigate. One of the elements in this novel is the way people question what they think they know about others, about Brand New, and about what’s really going on.

There are a lot of other stories, too, in which characters are confronted with their own thinking. It is unsettling and can make people question everything. It can also add to a crime novel.

Thanks, Kaggsy, for the inspiration! Now please, treat yourself to a visit to Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings. Fine reviews and discussion await you!

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Pete Townshend’s You Came Back.