Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

Many children grow up with toys of one kind or another. They may be very simple toys (like wooden blocks) or more complicated toys or games. Either way, toys can be an important part of a child’s growing and learning. And every toy company tries to convince parents that they must buy those toys in order to ‘be good parents.’ We also see toys here and there in crime fiction. That makes sense, since toys are so much a part of life for a lot of families. Sometimes toys can even be used as clues, warnings, or even a killer’s ‘calling card.’ Here are just a few examples to show you what I mean.

Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop begins as Richard Cadogan takes a late-night walk through Oxford. He comes upon a toyshop and, on a whim, tries the door and finds that it’s unlocked. He goes in and looks around at the toys for a few moments, then makes his way to the second floor, where he finds the body of a woman. Badly shaken, he tries to leave to alert the police but is knocked unconscious. When he comes to, he finds that he’s not in a toyshop after all, but in a grocery. Completely confused, he leaves. He can’t see any sign of the toyshop outside, so he visits his friend, Oxford don Gervase Fen. He tells Fen his story, and Fen agrees to try to help him figure out what happened. The search for answers leads to a will and a plot to get a large inheritance.

In Agatha Christie’s Dead Man’s Folly, Sir George Stubbs and his wife, Lady Hattie Stubbs, are planning a charity fête on the grounds of their home, Nasse House. They’ve hired detective novelist Ariadne Oliver to create a Murder Hunt game for the event. She suspects there’s more to it than the game and asks Hercule Poirot to investigate. He agrees and attends the fête under the pretext of giving out the prizes for the Murder Hunt. While at the fête, Poirot is persuaded to try his hand at one of the games. To his surprise, he wins and is given a large doll as a prize. As you can imagine, he’s quite embarrassed to be carrying a doll around, so he gives it to the first child he sees. He’s happy to be rid of the doll; she is much cheered by the unexpected gift. You’re right, fans of Dumb Witness, a toy plays a big role in that story – well, a dog’s toy, anyway.

Karin Alvtegen’s Betrayal introduces Eva Wirenström-Berg. She thinks she has the perfect ‘white picket fence’ life with her husband, Henrik and her six-year-old son, Axel. One day, she discovers to her dismay that Henrik has been having an affair. Eva is determined to find out who the other woman is, and when she does, she makes some fateful decisions about what she’ll do. In another plot thread of the story, she picks Axel up at school one day and sees that he has a new toy. She asks where he got it, and his answer frightens her:

‘…he was standing outside the fence by the woods and then he called me while I was on the swing and said he was going to give me something nice.’

Now, Eva has to find out who’s been targeting Axel, and whether it’s related to her own troubles.

As Catherine O’Flynn’s What Was Lost begins, it’s 1984, and ten-year-old Kate Meaney is on the hunt for criminals. She has opened her own private detection agency called Falcon Investigations, and she is determined to find and catch ‘bad guys.’ She spends a lot of her time at the newly opened Green Oaks Mall,  where she suspects she will be able to stop crime. Her faithful companion is Mickey the Monkey, her stuffed toy monkey. He rides in her backpack and goes wherever she goes. Kate hasn’t had it easy. She lives in a dull, depressing town in the Midlands, and is currently living with her grandmother, Ivy, after the deaths of both of her parents. She’s content with her life, though. Her grandmother, on the other hand, thinks she should go away to school. So, she makes arrangements for Kate to sit the entrance exams for the exclusive Redspoon School. Kate goes to the school, but doesn’t return. A massive search turns up nothing, not even a body, and no-one seems to know what happened to her. Twenty years later, a mall guard called Kurt sees an odd thing on his security camera: a young girl with a backpack that has a toy monkey sticking out the top. Kurt knows about Kate’s disappearance, and in one plot thread, he starts to try to find out what happened to her.

In Carol Chase’s Murder on the Marshes, Cambridge-based journalist Tara Thorpe gets a very unsettling ‘gift;’ – a cloth doll. With the doll is a note that says: It was a warning. This is a warning. Shortly afterwards, she learns that a body has been found at St. Bede’s College, Oxford. The victim is Samantha Seabrook, Professor of Childhood Inequality. Could this be the warning mentioned in the note? If so, why would Tara have been singled out? Tara is given the assignment to do a human-interest piece, with all the lurid details. Detective Inspector Garstin Blake is officially investigating the murder, and he and Tara work together to find out the truth about Samantha Seabrook’s life and death.

Toys play a role in a lot of lives, so it’s not surprising they’d show up in crime fiction. Sometimes they’re comforting, sometimes they’re clues, and sometimes they’re warnings. Which ‘toy stories’ have stayed with you?

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Stevie Wonder’s I Wish.