Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

One way to show what fictional characters are really like is for them to face a crisis. It might be a weather crisis (e.g. a flood), a financial crisis, or something else. Whatever the crisis is, it can give an author a unique opportunity to reveal character traits. That’s as true in crime fiction as it is in any other fiction.

For example, in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, ten people receive an invitation to spend time on Indian Island, off the Devon Coast. Each accepts the invitation, and the group gathers on the island. When they arrive, they find that their host isn’t there to greet them, but they’re advised to settle in. That night, just after dinner, each person is accused of being responsible for at least one death. Then, unexpectedly, one collapses and dies of what turns out to be poison. Later that night, another guest dies. Now it’s clear that someone is targeting the people on the island. The survivors have to try to find out who the killer is before they are murdered themselves. To make matters worse, a storm hits the island and cuts it off from the mainland. Even the telephone lines are down. These crises bring out each person’s personality (and some dark secrets each has).

There’s also what you’d call a natural crisis in Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Nine Tailors. In one plot thread, Lord Peter Wimsey and his valet, Mervyn Bunter, are on a road trip in East Anglia when their car breaks down. The local vicar, Reverend Theodore Venables rescues them and puts them up in the vicarage while the car is fixed. A few days later, they take their leave. They return when Reverend Vanables writes to Lord Peter, asking his help with some odd and eerie events going on in the village. All the while, a major storm is brewing in the background. It threatens the village, especially because of a weakened barrier in the area’s drainage system. When the barrier breaks, the village is flooded. Reverend Venables’ devotion to his parishioners is made clear as the waters rise and  he works to rescue as many people as possible. He takes on a leadership role that isn’t as apparent before the crisis arises.

In Owen Laukkanen’s The Professionals, we are introduced to four people: Arthur Pender, his girlfriend Marie McAllister, Matt Sawyer, and Ben ‘Mouse’ Stirzaker. They met in college and have stayed friends. Even with their university degrees, they haven’t been able to find much in the way of decent work, so they’ve hit on a new plan: kidnapping. The idea is to abduct a wealthy person and make their ransom demands reasonable, so it’ll be easy to pay the money. That way, the abductee doesn’t get hurt or killed. For a while, the plan works well. But then they abduct a target, Terry Harper, who isn’t willing to let things go. He alerts the police, and then the FBI gets involved. To make matters worse, the group’s next target has a Mob-connected wife. Now, the kidnappers face a crisis. The Mob is after them, and they have to stay alive. They also have to avoid capture by the legal authorities. The situation brings out each one’s personality in ways that we don’t see at the beginning of the novel, when the abductions are less risky.

Nishita Parekh’s The Night of the Storm is the story of recently divorced Jia Shah. She’s moved to Houston with her twelve-year-old son, and is hoping to start a new life. Hurricane Harvey hits the area, and Jia and her son are invited to ride the storm out at the posh home of her sister Seema. At first, Jia plans to refuse, for a few reasons that become more apparent as the story goes on. But finally she agrees, mostly for her son’s sake, and they join a small group of people who are at the house. The storm moves in, and the group is more or less marooned there. Then, there’s a murder that had to be committed by one of the people in the house. Because of that crisis, plus the storm itself, everyone goes to ‘survival mode,’ and several buried secrets come to light. People’s real personalities come to light, too.

There’s also Charity Norman’s The Secrets of Strangers, which takes place mostly in a popular London meeting place called the Tuckbox Café. One morning, a group of people happens to be at the Tuckbox when a gunman bursts in and takes everyone hostage (including the owner and the server). The police are alerted, and Detective Inspector (DI) Eliza McLean is sent to the scene to try to negotiate with the hostage-taker. As time goes on, we learn who the gunman is. We also learn what brought him to the point of taking hostages. There are also several conversations among the hostages, so we learn who each is, and something about each one’s past. We also learn more about Eliza as she works to get through to the hostage-taker and rescue those in danger. Saying more about the plot would give away spoilers, but I can say that this story slowly reveals each character’s personality, including things they may not show on the surface.

That’s what crises seem to do. They bring out different sides of who we are as people. And sometimes, those different aspects of personality are quite surprising.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure.