Some people want to know about their backgrounds. That’s why companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com are successful. The information can be absolutely fascinating, and sometimes useful. There are times, though, when that knowledge causes heartbreak. There are plenty of stories, for instance, of people who found out painful truths about their parents or other relatives. Other people have found out they were adopted, and they have to face the fact that people in their lives didn’t tell them. Still, curiosity can drive people to do those searches, even if there are risks involved. We see that in real life, and crime fiction has plenty of examples, too.
For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead, Hercule Poirot travels to the village of Broadhinny to look into the murder of a charwoman. Everyone is convinced that her lodger, James Bentley, is guilty. In fact, he’s been convicted of the crime and is due to be executed soon. But Superintendent Spence convinces Poirot that Bentley may be innocent. Soon enough, Poirot learns that the people of Broadhinny have secrets, and that Mrs. McGinty could have found out something it wasn’t safe for her to know. And people’s backgrounds do play a role in the novel. There’s even an interesting discussion of the ‘nature v nurture’ debate. Christie takes up the topic of people’s backgrounds in other work, too (right, fans of Sad Cyprus?)
Sarah Ward’s In Bitter Chill is the story of the 1978 disappearance of Sophie Jenkins. She and her friend, Rachel Jones, went to school together one morning, but only Rachel returned. Now an adult, Rachel has little memory of what happened, although she’s told the police everything she knows. She and her mother have tried to move past the tragedy and make a life for themselves in another town. Everything is brought up again when Sophie’s mother Yvonne is found dead in a hotel room. On the surface, it looks as though she committed suicide, and that is possible. After all, she lost her only child. But there are questions about the case, so Detective Inspector Francis Sadler, Detective Sergeant Damian Palmer, and Detective Constable Connie Childs of the Brampton, Derbyshire, police investigate. In the end, we learn some surprising and painful truths about some of the characters’ backgrounds.
Steve Robinson’s In the Blood introduces genealogist Jefferson Tayte. As the story begins, wealthy Boston businessman Walter Sloane hires Tayte to trace his wife’s ancestry as a birthday present for her. Tayte has been able to go as far back as her first American-born ancestor William Fairborne. That part of the ancestry died there. But Tayte learns that in 1783, William’s brother James Fairborne, his wife Eleanor and his children Katherine, Laura, and George returned to England with a group of Loyalists. Sloane agrees to underwrite a trip to England so that Tayte can keep working on the ancestry. When Tayte gets there, though, he finds that there are people who don’t want him to unearth the Fairborne family history. As he continues to search for the truth, Tayte finds that looking into people’s backgrounds can be dangerous.
Mari Strachen’s The Earth Hums in B Flat takes place in a small 1950s Welsh village, where twelve-year-old Gwenni Morgan lives with her parents and her sister. When one of the villagers, Ifan Evans, goes missing, Gwenni’s naturally concerned. She’s babysat for the small Evans children more than once, and she knows the family. Gwenni is a little unusual. She’s a dreamer and a reader and sometimes lives in her own world. But she’s smart and she notices things. When a body is discovered, Gwenni starts asking questions. And as she searches for the answers, she finds out some painful truths about some people in the village, including her own family. And we learn that sometimes, it’s easier and less painful not to dig too deeply into the past.
There’s also a small Welsh village setting in Babs Horton’s A Jarful of Angels. In one plot thread, it’s the summer of 1962, and four children in the village spend a great deal of time together since they’re not in school. Lawrence ‘Fatty’ Bevan, Elizabeth ‘Iffy’ Meredith, Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Tranter, and William ‘Billy’ Edwards don’t have an awful lot in common, but there’s not much to do in the village, so the young people often seek out each other’s company. Little by little, they learn some painful things about the village, things some people want very much to keep hidden. They try to make sense of what they learn, but they’re children. Still, adult readers of the book understand what the children have found out. The other plot thread takes place some forty years later, when retired police detective Will Sloane returns to the same village after many years away. He learns that a child went missing in 1962. He decides to try to find out what happened, and as he does, we learn how the children were connected to some of the village’s secrets. And finding out about one’s background plays a role.
A lot of people want to know all that they can about where they came from and what their backgrounds are. But that can bring up some difficult things. And, as crime fiction shows us, it’s not always safe.
*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a song by Daryl Hall and John Oates.
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 