Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

In today’s world, people are vulnerable in a way they weren’t in the past. With today’s easy communication, cameras in telephones, and so on, someone’s worst moments could be posted online for everyone to see. Gossip goes around quickly, too. As you’ll know, this has led to a whole new sort of bullying, or at the very least, intense embarrassment. It’s certainly that way in real life, and it’s come up in crime fiction, too.

For instance, in Brannavan Gnanalingam’s Sprigs, we are introduced to Priya Gaian, a Year Eleven student at St. Simeon’s College in New Zealand. She’s somewhat shy, and has been raised in a conservative family, but she still wants to fit in. Her chance comes when she goes to a party held by the First XV rugby players at St. Luke’s College. At the party, Priya has too much to drink and is gang-raped by four of the players. What’s worse, the whole thing’s been recorded and passed around. On the one hand, that recording is instrumental in finding out who the boys were. So in that sense, it’s useful. But for Priya, it’s devastating. She can barely talk about what happened, let alone deal with its being posted. The whole thing shows just how vulnerable Priya is.

Claire Baylis’ Dice is the story of the trial of a group of teenage boys who live in Rotorua, on New Zealand’s North Island. They’ve been accused of rape and sexual assault crimes, and the jury’s charge is to determine which, if any, of the boys is guilty. It all started with a dice game in which the boys would have to engage in certain nonconsensual sex acts with whichever girl’s name came up when they rolled. As the trial goes on, some of the evidence comes from texts that the boys sent to each other and social media posts. In this case, there aren’t videos or photos. But there’s enough online discussion that it’s very difficult for the girls involved. Something very personal and painful is now ‘out there’ for the jury to see and hear.

In Donna Malane’s My Brother’s Keeper, Wellington-based missing person expert Diane Rowe gets a new client. Karen Mackie has recently been released from prison and wants to reunite with her fourteen-year-old daughter, Sunny. The problem is that Sunny’s father Justin has full custody of her, and Karen doesn’t know where they are. She hires Diane to find Sunny. At first, Diane’s reluctant; after all, Sunny may want nothing to do with her mother. But Karen insists, so Diane agrees. She finds Sunny easily enough, but she soon learns that things are not exactly as they seem. The case turns out to be a complicated one, and it involves some photographs that weren’t supposed to be seen, but that made their way to the Internet. Among other things, the novel shows how something like a private photograph can end up being much more.

Herman Koch’s The Dinner is the story of two brothers, Paul and Serge Lohman, and their wives, Claire and Babette. Paul and Serge don’t have much in common: Serge is an up-and-coming politician, while Paul is a former schoolteacher. One night, they meet for dinner at an ultra-exclusive Amsterdam restaurant. It’s the sort of place where you wait months to get a table. As the dinner unfolds, we learn about the Lohman family. It’s a dysfunctional group, and we see that especially when we find out the real reason the two couples are meeting. Each has a fifteen-year-old son, and the two boys have committed a terrible crime. What’s worse, it was recorded, and one of the boys’ friends posted it to YouTube. Now, the couples have to work out what they’re going to do as ‘damage control.’ Now that the film is ‘out there,’ there’s not much either boy can say to contradict the evidence, and that means devastation for both families.

There’s also G.R. MacDonald’s Murder and Blackmail in Bermuda. Scotland Yard’s Diane Davidson has retired and has decided to go to Bermuda for a well-earned holiday. She’s drawn into a case of murder when Bermuda’s Governor Sir Herbert Morley is poisoned during a dinner party Since the murder took place on British soil, Diane is asked to work on the investigation. It’s not long before she learns that everyone at that dinner party had a good reason to want Sir Herbert dead. As it turns out, he had a hold over each guest and was blackmailing everyone. The investigation has just begun when there’s another murder. Everything is now more complicated, and it’s going to be difficult to get to the truth. In this mystery, a compromising digital photograph that could be published in the local newspaper plays an important role in the story.

And that’s the thing about modern technology. So many people have phones with cameras, and you never know when a photo might appear online. On the one hand, those photos can help sleuths solve crimes. On the other, photos like that can wreak havoc on a person’s life.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from the Beatles’ A Day in the Life.