Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

Police (and private detectives, for that matter) aren’t experts on everything. It wouldn’t be realistic if they were. So, detectives sometimes ask experts to help with a case. Art historians, anthropologists, musicians, and other experts are tapped to authenticate or identify or in some other way support an investigation. There are many examples of this in real life, and plenty in crime fiction, too. Here are just a few.

In Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral, for instance, Hercule Poirot is asked to investigate when family patriarch Richard Abernethie suddenly dies. At first, his death is considered sad, but not unexpected. Then, his sister, Cora Lansquenet, says that he was murdered. While the other family members brush her comment off, they privately begin to wonder if she was right. When Cora herself is murdered the next day, it seems clear that she was. As Poirot investigates, he finds that most of the members of the family had at least a financial motive for wanting Richard Abernethie dead. It’s less clear why anyone would want to kill Cora; she wasn’t rich and hadn’t made what you’d call enemies. As the case goes on, Poirot gets input and help from art expert Alexander Guthrie, and it’s interesting to see how Christie worked that expert help into the story.

Sarah R. Shaber’s Simon Said is the first in her series to feature history professor Simon Shaw, who teaches at North Carolina’s Kenan College. Archaeologist David Morgan (who is a friend of Shaw’s) has been excavating the centuries-old Bloodworth property, part of which has been deeded to Kenan College. Morgan and his team are going through the property when they discover a long-buried body. Sergeant Otis Gates of the Raleigh Police Department takes charge of the investigation, but he knows that he’s not an expert on history or archaeology. So, he asks Shaw to help in identifying the remains and giving some background and context. Shaw’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, but he’s not used to dealing with human remains. Still, he agrees to help. His expertise helps identify the body as belonging to Anne Bloodworth, who went missing in 1926. Now, the question becomes: who killed her and why? Shaw’s very interested in the case, so he digs deeper. He soon finds out that someone is willing to do whatever it takes to stop him from getting answers.

In Peter May’s The Fourth Sacrifice, the Beijing Police are faced with a very grim case. Four bodies have been discovered, each killed in a ritualistic way. It only complicates matters that one of them is a Chinese American diplomat. This means that there could be international repercussions. Detective Li Yan is in charge of the investigation and is under tremendous pressure to get it right. Then, he’s informed that the police have asked US forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell to assist with the case. She’s the last person Li wants to work with, as they have a history together. But he’s told in no uncertain terms that she will be working with his team, whether he likes it or not. So, the two reluctantly begin sharing information. It’s a complicated case, and they both have their work cut out for them, as the saying goes. It turns out that forensic expertise is important in solving the case.

Fans of Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series will know that she is a forensic archaeologist based at the University of North Norfolk. When the police find remains, they sometimes call her in to provide information about how old the remains probably are, whether they are male or female, whether they are a child’s or adult’s remains, and so on. Ruth can sometimes, for instance, verify whether a set of remains matches a missing person report, and that information proves invaluable to the cases she works. I see you, fans of Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan series.

There are also series that feature psychologists as experts. For instance, Michael Robotham’s Joe O’Loughlin is a clinical psychologist. In his first outing, The Suspect, he’s drawn into a case when the body of a former patient is discovered. Detective Inspector (DI) Vincent Ruiz suspects that O’Loughlin may have had something to do with her death and matters only get worse for O’Loughlin when other bodies are discovered. His name is eventually cleared, and in the process, Ruiz discovers in O’Loughlin a valuable source of insight and information about the sorts of people he goes after in his cases.

In Gerald Elias’ The Devil’s Trill, music expert and music coach Daniel ‘Jack’ Jacobus is attending a Carnegie Hall performance one night when an extremely valuable Stradivarius violin is stolen. The insurance company that underwrites the violin hires former musician Nathaniel Williams to try to find it. In turn, Willams asks for help from Jacobus, with whom he used to play. These two music experts start to trace the violin from its last known location. Along the way, there’s a murder. Now, Jacobus becomes a ‘person of interest’ for the murder as well as the stolen violin. If he’s going to clear his name, he’ll need to find out the truth. Among other things, this book shows how an expert can identify, authenticate, and otherwise support detectives’ efforts.

And that’s one of the important reasons to get experts involved in the first place. After all, no-one knows everything, so it’s realistic to call in people with special knowledge when it’s needed. These are only a few examples. Your turn.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from George Robert Merrill’s, Narada Michael Walden’s, and  Shannon Rubicam’s How Will I Know, made famous by Whitney Houston.