Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

As this is posted, it would have been Stephen Hawking’s 83^rd birthday. As you’ll know, he was a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. Whatever you may think of his theories, it’s hard to deny his brilliance and the advances he made in the scientific community. There’ve been other geniuses in real life, and we see them in crime fiction, too. They don’t always conform to societal expectations, and a few of them are criminals. But many of them contribute a lot to a fictional investigation.

Fans of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes will know that he has an older brother, Mycroft, who works for the British government and spends a lot of time at his club, the Diogenes. Unlike his brother, Mycroft Holmes doesn’t go looking for clues. But he is brilliant enough that he doesn’t really need to go to the scene of a crime to make solid deductions. In that way, he’s even better at deductions than Sherlock is, and his insights prove to be very helpful in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter and The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans.  He and his brother have a sort of friendly rivalry, and since Sherlock is no mental slouch himself, the two of them are fairly well-matched.

In Matthew Grant’s short story The Uses of Intelligence, we are introduced to ten-year-old twins Patty and Danny Perkins. They’re both intellectually gifted, with unusually high IQs. One day, they find out that an acquaintance, banana seller Aristos Depopoulos, has been killed. The police think that one of Depopoulos’ co-workers is responsible, but the Perkins twins don’t think so. They liked the victim, and want to find out the truth, so they decide to do a little sleuthing of their own. Their investigation proves fruitful, and they learn who killed the banana seller. Then, they decide to try a little blackmail. What they haven’t counted on is that they’re not the only ones with genius-level intelligence…

Keigo Higashino has written a series featuring Tokyo physics professor Manabu ‘Galileo’ Yukawa. He doesn’t officially work with the police in the way that a forensics lab might. But Detective Kusanagi, who is a recurring figure in Higashino’s series, was a student of Galileo’s, and respects his brilliance as a physicist. So, he sometimes discusses his cases with the professor and gets invaluable insights and assistance. He encourages his subordinates to consult Galileo, too, and they also benefit from the professor’s insights. For instance, in Salvation of a Saint, the police are faced with a puzzling case when Yoshitaka Mashabi dies of poisoned coffee. His wife, Ayane Mita, is the most likely suspect, since the two had been having marital trouble. But it’s soon proved that she was not in Tokyo at the time of the murder, so if she is guilty, it’s impossible to see how she could have poisoned the coffee. The death could be suicide (although that’s not likely), or, it could be that someone else murdered the victim. But if so, who was it and what was the motive? It’s not an easy case, but with Galileo’s help, the police team solves the crime.

In Kinae Minato’s Confessions, we are introduced to a middle school teacher and single mother called Yūko Moriguchi. As the book begins, she is addressing the class. In part, she’s doing so to announce her retirement. She also brings up the topic of her four-year-old daughter Manami, who has recently died. She tells the class that she knows two of the students are responsible for the child’s death; furthermore, she knows who the students are. She doesn’t name names, but her meaning is not lost on the students. She duly leaves her position, and her class is taken over by a new instructor. But she knows the Japanese legal system won’t prosecute the young people and punish them appropriately. So, she makes her own plans. At first, it seems as though things are going along well enough. But soon, things begin to spiral out of control, especially for three students. One of them is Shūya Watanabe. He’s an academic genius, and that plays a role in the story. But he has difficulty fitting in with his peers, and as the story goes on, we see how his combination of ultra-high intelligence with poor social skills impacts him and his fellow students.

There’s also Kirsten McDougall’s She’s a Killer, which takes place in a dystopian near future. Climate change has made a large portion of the world unlivable; only the very rich can afford a pleasant living situation, and many of them are coming to New Zealand as so-called ‘wealthugees.’ In fact, New Zealand is one of the few places where it’s still possible to have a decent life. Against this background, we meet Alice, a university employee whose job it is to recruit and support students. She isn’t much good with people; in fact, you could say she has sociopathic tendencies. But she does a solid job and she’s making the best of her life. One day, she meets a wealthugee named Pablo who’s able to treat her to things like restaurant meals that she couldn’t begin to afford on her own. Before long, he’s talked her into looking after his fifteen-year-old daughter Erika while he’s out of the country. And Erika proves to be more than an intellectual match for Alice. Soon, they’re drawn into a complicated plot to save the world. Alice isn’t interested in getting involved, but she finds herself joining in. Now, the question is whether the plan can be pulled off before Alice pays with her life.

True intellectual geniuses don’t see the world the way others do. And there are different kinds of genius, so not all geniuses see the world in the same way. They are fascinating people, though, and can often contribute a great deal to a story – including solving fictional crime.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Smokey Robinson and Bobby Rogers’ The Way You Do the Things You Do, made famous by the Temptations.