As this is posted, it’s 161 years since the founding of the charity that was to become the Salvation Army. Of course, there were charities before then, and there’ve been many since, but the Salvation Army is one of the most famous. Charitable groups have a long history of filling in socioeconomic gaps between what people need and what the government (or families, etc.) provide. That’s especially true in times of recession, depression, and other economic difficulties. Those charities figure into real life (how often have you seen Salvation Army collection kettles at holiday time?), so it makes sense that we’d see them in crime fiction, too.
In Agatha Christie’s One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, for instance, Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of his dentist, Mr. Henry Morley. One of Mr. Morley’s other patients is Miss Mabelle Sainsbury Seales, who recently returned to England after several years in India. She’s been very active with the Zenana Missions there and is only too happy to discuss the charity with anyone who asks. Poirot and Chief Inspector Japp (who’s officially on the case) want to talk to her in more depth about her visit to the dentist. But, when they arrive at the hotel where she’s staying, it seems she’s gone missing. So now, Poirot and Japp have a murder and a disappearance to investigate. It turns out to be an outwardly complex case that, at its heart, is not so complex at all.
In Peter Temple’s Bad Debts, we are introduced to Melbourne private investigator and sometime-lawyer Jack Irish. He gets a call from a former client, Danny McKillop, who wants to meet with him. He’s guilty enough about Danny, since he did a poor job defending him against a drink driving charge that killed a woman. So he agrees to the meeting. When he gets there, though, he finds that Danny’s been shot. He decides to try to find out what happened, as a way to do something right by the McKillop family. Part of the trail leads to a man called Ronnie Bishop, who once worked for a charity foundation called Safe Hands. Jack pays the place a visit and finds out some important information about Ronnie. And that helps him work out who killed Danny McKillop and why.
Kerry Greenwood’s amateur sleuth Corinna Chapman is also based in Melbourne, where she has her own bakery. She’s also part of a local charity group called the Soup Run. The group has a bus that takes regular routes through the city to serve its street people. Volunteers provide food, non-alcoholic drinks, blankets, clothes and medical supplies, among other things. For some of Melbourne’s street people, that’s the only way they eat. Corinna takes her turn on the run, and even when she’s not actually on the bus, she provides bread and rolls for distribution. In fact, that’s how she met her lover, Daniel Cohen, who is instrumental in keeping the Soup Run going. It may not be housed in a building, with a national/international volunteer membership, but the Soup Run keeps a lot of people warm and fed.
Denise Mina’s Exile is the second in her Garnethill trilogy featuring Maureen ‘Mauri’ O’Donnell. In the novel, Mauri is working at a women’s shelter called Place of Safety. She has her own issues to deal with, but she’s trying to do some good. While there, she meets Ann Harris, one of the residents. When Ann goes missing, not much is made of it at first. After all, the residents aren’t required to tell anyone where they go. But when she doesn’t return, Mauri gets worried. Her worst fears are confirmed when Ann turns up dead in London two weeks later. It’s believed that Ann’s husband Jimmy is the killer, but his cousin, Louise, who works at the shelter, thinks he’s innocent. So, she and Mauri start asking questions. Among other things, this is a solid look at how women’s shelters do what they can to help survivors of domestic abuse.
There’s another example of the way charitable foundations (especially women’s shelters) work in Deborah Crombie’s In a Dark House. The real action in the novel begins with a fire in a Southwark warehouse. Firefighters discover the body of an unknown woman in the ruins, and the search is on for her identity. Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his partner, Detective Inspector (DI) Gemma James, take charge of the investigation. The fire was reported by a resident of Helping Hands, a shelter for women and their small children. It’s run by Kath Warren, who wants to do the best she can to help. And as it turns out, there may be a link between Helping Hands and the fire, since the body may be that of Laura Novak, who’s on the group’s board of directors. So as the novel goes on, we get a sense of how shelters work, how they’re funded, and what the staff and volunteers do.
There’s enough misery in the world that there’s lots of room for charitable groups and those who work for them. They’re woven into a lot of societies, and they’re woven into crime fiction, too. These are just a few examples. Your turn.
*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from The Dream Academy’s Life in a Northern Town.
Crime Writer Margot Kinberg 