If you think about it, history is really made up of many individual stories. And very often, those individual stories can be more compelling than the larger historical events. So, fiction that focuses on individual experiences can be highly effective at exploring history. A look at crime fiction shows just how interesting history can be if it’s told by the voices of individuals.
Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood isn’t a historical novel (it was published in 1948). But it serves as a good example of how history can come more alive when it’s told through individual stories. The novel’s focus is the Cloade family, who are dealing with post-war privation and difficulties. Ration books are still in use, and many items are hard to get. The Cloades had always depended on their oldest brother Gordon, who’d promised them they wouldn’t have to worry about money. But to everyone’s shock, he then married and, shortly thereafter, was killed in a bomb blast. Now, his widow Rosaleen is set to inherit his fortune, while his brothers and sister are left with nothing. Hercule Poirot gets involved with the family when a murder occurs. Throughout the novel, we see what life was like immediately post-war. Everyone’s struggling financially, and businesses are suffering. There’s also the issue of returning military personnel; they’ve been deeply affected by the war and settling back into the routine of small-town life is a challenge. There are other difficulties, too, and Christie explores them. It’s all the more effective because we see them through the Cloades’ eyes.
C.J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake is a lawyer who lives during the time of King Henry VIII. It’s a very dangerous time for a number of reasons. Everyone knows the risk of running afoul of the king, so Shardlake knows that when the king sends him on any mission, he will have to work very carefully and sometimes quietly to do what he needs to do without incurring the king’s wrath. As this series goes on, we learn about several larger events of Tudor times (e.g. the Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries). But we see these major events through the individuals who live with those realities. So, instead of a ‘laundry list’ of events of the times, the novels offer the reader a look at what life was really like at that time.
In Peter May’s Entry Island, we are introduced to Sime Mackenzie, a police detective with the Sûreté du Québec. When the body of James Cowell is discovered on Entry Island, Mackenzie is seconded there to help investigate. He feels an odd sense of déjà vu there, although he can’t really explain why, but he soon discovers that his family has a link with the island. As the story goes on, we learn of his ancestor, also called Sime Mackenzie, who left Scotland for Canada at the time of the Highland Clearances of the late 18th/early 19th Centuries. The story of the Clearances, and the way they impacted Scotland, is told through the eyes of a boy who lived through the experience. In this way, May shares the lives of the crofters in a much more meaningful way than if he simply described what the Clearances were and when they happened.
One plot thread of Paddy Richardson’s Swimming in the Dark take place in early 1980’s Leipzig, in what was then East Germany. It was a very dangerous time, with the Stazi everywhere, and people risked their lives just by having ‘the wrong kind’ of conversation. People were encouraged to turn in friends, relatives, and co-workers, so no-one could be trusted. Against this background, a young Ilse Klein and her parents made the difficult decision to try to flee the country. Despite the dangers, they managed to make it to West Berlin, and then freedom in New Zealand. Richardson tells this part of the story through Ilse’s eyes, so that readers get a real sense of what it was like to live under this regime. Seeing life there through the experiences of one family allows the reader to feel the terror that many people felt – much more than if Richardson had simply outlined the history of East Germany at that time.
And then there’s Persia Walker’s Goodefellow House, which takes place in 1926 Harlem. Lanie Price is a former crime reporter who now works as a society columnist. One day she gets a visit from Ruth Todd, whose sister Esther went missing three years earlier. Very little has been done to find her; not only was she an adult when she left (so, could easily have left of her own accord), but she’s a Black woman at a time of blatant racism and sexism. Esther wants Lanie to try to find out what happened to Esther, and Lanie agrees. As she searches for the truth, she finds that it’s connected to some powerful people. There’s pressure on her to leave things alone, not only to protect those in power, but also to avoid yet more trouble for the Black community. In this novel, Walker shares Lanie’s experiences as she investigates, and we get a strong sense of the Harlem Renaissance, the racism and sexism of the era, and life in Harlem in a meaningful way, because the story is told through Lanie’s point of view.
And that’s the thing about stories told through the eyes of the individuals who live at a certain time. We get a more personal look at events, and that makes history come alive, as the saying goes. These are just a few examples. Over to you.
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joe’s Last of the Big Time Spenders.
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 