In many crime novels, we meet the victim before that person is killed. That lets the reader form an opinion about that person and gives insight into what that person is like. In some cases, though, the victim is already dead when the story begins. Using that strategy means that the reader learns about that person through the eyes of other people (family members, friends, and other witnesses). A portrait of the victim emerges from those recollections. It’s an interesting approach to character development and can work well if it’s done effectively.
Agatha Christie used that strategy in a few of her novels. For example, in 4:50 From Paddington, Elspeth McGillicuddy is on her way to visit her friend Miss Marple. During her train ride, she happens to look out of her window while another train passes, going in the same direction. She glances into a window in the other train and, to her shock, sees a man strangling a woman. She alerts the conductor, a body wasn’t discovered on the other train. What’s more, no-one has been reported missing. As you can imagine, the authorities don’t set much store by what Mrs. McGillicuddy says, but Miss Marple does. She works out how it could be possible to kill someone on a train without a body being found and, with the help of her friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow, finds out where the body is. But we never meet the dead woman herself. As the novel goes on, we learn who she was, what she was doing on the train, and who killed her, but she never gets to speak for herself.
Neither does Roseanna McGraw, the victim in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s Roseanna. Stockholm homicide detective Martin Beck and his team are called to the scene when the body of a young woman is pulled from Lake Vättern. At first, nothing is known about her, and it takes some time to even identify her, since she wasn’t Swedish. As the novel goes on, Martin Beck and his team do learn who she was and that she was an American tourist. Bit by bit, they find out about her from friends and people who met her during her trip. And in the end, after a long investigation, they find out who killed her and why. But we never meet her in person.
The same is true in Qiu Xiaolong’s Death of a Red Heroine. The story opens with the discovery of the body of an unknown young woman in Baili Canal near Shanghai. Chief Inspector Chen Cao and his assistant, Detective Yu Guanming, begin an investigation. The woman is identified as Guan Hongying, a national model worker and therefore, somewhat of a celebrity. At first, it’s believed that she was raped and murdered by a cab driver. But Chen has his doubts, and he and Yu begin a more detailed search for answers. Little by little, they get to know things about the victim, and it’s soon clear that they’ll have to be very careful with this case. The trail leads to some very high places and could embarrass some powerful people. We don’t meet Guan Hongying before her murder, but we learn about her as the story moves along.
Anthony Bidulka’s Amuse Bouche is the first of his novels to feature Russell Quant, a Saskatoon-based PI. He is approached by Harold Chavell to find Chavell’s missing fiancé, Tom Osborn. It seems that Tom has gone to France, where the couple was planning to go for their wedding trip, and is following the honeymoon itinerary. Russell goes to France to trace Tom but is unsuccessful. Harold calls him back to Saskatoon with the idea of ending the search. Then, a body is discovered… In this novel, we never actually meet Tom Osborn. Instead, we learn about him through conversations with people in his life, and through other information Russell gets.
There’s also Judy K. Walker’s Back to Lazarus, which features Tallahassee-based PI Sydney Brennan. A new client called Noel Thomas hires Sydney for an unusual case. In 1980, Noel’s father, Isaac, was imprisoned for the murder of her mother, Vanda. Years later, he died, supposedly of suicide. Noel can’t see why he would have waited so long to commit suicide if he was remorseful about the killing. But if that’s not the reason for the suicide, then what was? And if it wasn’t suicide, what was it? Noel wants her questions answered, and Sydney agrees. The trail is a very dangerous one, and as Sydney links the two deaths, she finds that some people do not want the past to be brought up. Still, she perseveres, and we learn what really happened to both people, and why. Sydney can’t speak to the dead people, so she learns about them from public records and from conversations she has with people who knew them.
And that’s the thing about some crime-fictional murders. We don’t get to meet the victim in person and must form opinions through what other characters say and do, and sometimes from official information. It’s an interesting approach to character development.
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Elton John’s Candle in the Wind.
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 