Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

As this is posted, it’s 87 years since Orson Welles’ famous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. That broadcast is said to have thoroughly frightened many thousands of people, who truly believed that the world was under attack from aliens. Although Welles announced at the beginning of the broadcast that it was all science fiction, that didn’t prevent mass panic. Welles did make a public apology, saying it was all a hoax, but that didn’t prevent the panic.

And that’s not surprising, really. Large-scale panics create any number of problems both logistically and mentally. A look at crime fiction shows what can happen when a lot of people start to panic, regardless of how well-founded their concerns may be.

In Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders, Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings work with Chief Inspector Japp and local police officers to solve a set of murders. The deaths are linked by cryptic warning notes that Poirot receives before each one, and by an ABC railway guide left near each body. At first, the public is kept more or less unaware of the crimes, but eventually, it’s believed that if people know about the crimes, they can be of assistance in catching the criminal. So, the press is informed. It’s not long at all before people all over the country begin to panic, and the newspapers don’t help with headlines like:

He Could Be In Your Town!

The case is solved, but the police have to deal with a lot of frightened people and false leads.

Emma Lathan’s Going For the Gold takes place at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in  Lake Placid, New York. The Sloan Guaranty Trust has been selected as the official bank of the games, so John Putnam Thatcher, a vice president of the bank, goes to Lake Placid to supervise the local banking operations. Soon after the games begin, French ski jumper Yves Bisson is shot by a sniper. There’s immediate panic, and as you can guess, a lot of comparisons to the 1972 Munich games tragedy. Everyone’s upset, and the police try their best to restore calm. Then, it’s discovered that a counterfeit check scheme has swindled the bank out of half a million dollars. As if all of that isn’t enough, there’s another attack on a skier, Switzerland’s Tilly Lowengard. As Thatcher follows the money trail to discover who’s passing the counterfeit checks, he finds that that case is connected to the murder and the attempted murder. And matters are not made easier by the ongoing panic as people worry about the sniper as well as about losing their money.

In Liza Marklund’s The Bomber, a major explosion goes off in Stockholm’s Victoria Stadium, which is to be one of the sites of the upcoming Olympic Winter Games. Annika Bengtzon, crime editor for Kvällspressen, gets a call about the explosion and goes right to the scene. At first, it’s believed that no-one was killed. But then, a body is discovered. It turns out to be Christine Furhage, one of Sweden’s business and civic leaders, and head of the committee that brought the Olympic Games to Stockholm. The police begin an investigation, but they have to keep it as quiet as possible. One very possible theory is that the bomb is the work of a terrorist group that doesn’t want the games to be held. As it is, people are uneasy and upset, and there’s no desire to cause a mass panic. So Annika has to be careful as she asks questions. Then, there’s another explosion and another death. It might or might not be connected with Chritina Furhage’s death, but if it is, this could cause even more panic, and it could mean that a very dangerous group, or at least a serial bomber, is at work. Annika soon faces great personal risk as she keeps digging for answers.

Kevin Wilson’s Now is Not the Time to Panic is the story of Frances ‘ Frankie’ Budge. It begins in the summer of 1996 in Coalfield, Tennessee. With school out of session, there’s not much to do, and Frankie is a bit at loose ends. Then, she meets Zeke Brown a gifted artist who’s staying in Coalfield for the summer. The two become friends, and one day, they create a unique poster that shows off Zeke’s artistic talent and Frankie’s writing skills. On a whim, they print copies of the poster and put them up all over town. The locals don’t know who’s responsible for the posters and start to worry. The posters even begin to cause a panic, to the point that later, the incident will be called the Coalfield Panic of 1996. Both Zak and Frankie are worried about what they’ve started, especially when tragedy falls out from the panic. They’re even more upset when someone else starts copying and posting their poster. At the same time, they don’t want to turn themselves in. But they go on and live their lives. Years later, Frankie has become a well-known writer. One day, a journalist called Mazzy Brower contacts her. It seems Mazzy’s been researching the Coalfield Panic of 1996 and wants Frankie’s perspective on that summer. Now, Frankie must decide whether to admit what happened, and whether to involve Zak.

There’s also D.V. Bishop’s Ritual of Fire, which takes place in 1538 Florence. One morning, the body of wealthy silk merchant Sandro Dovizi is discovered in the plaza. As it happens, this murder occurs forty years after the execution of a radical monk called Girolamo Savonarola. He had quite a following in Florence, so when a public notice proclaims that Dovizi was killed in retribution for Savonarola, people start to worry. What’s worse, the notice makes it clear that there will be more murders. When there’s another, similar death, the locals do begin to panic, and the midsummer heat of the city doesn’t help matters. Cesare Aldo, who works for the criminal court, happens to be in the city when the panic begins to strike, but he thinks the murders have a much more prosaic explanation. He works with his protégé, Constable Carlos Strocchi, to find out the truth.

It’s easy to understand how a group of people can start to panic if something frightening or eerie or tragic happens. Mass panic can also happen if a strange illness starts to take hold, and although I’ve not mentioned them here, there are several crime novels that touch on that, too. However understandable it is, mass panic doesn’t help at all when authorities are trying to handle an emergency. Still, it can make for real tension in a crime novel.

NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure.