Crime Writer Margot Kinberg

As this is posted, it’s 51 years since the founding of Microsoft. Since then, it’s become a worldwide enterprise worth billions. You may even have your own Microsoft products. Big corporations make untold amounts of money for their shareholders, directors, and so on. And they provide products and services that are used all over the world. But with that size and influence comes a great deal of power, and that carries risks with it. Whether it’s risks to our privacy, health, or something else, big corporations can be a very mixed blessing. There are plenty of crime novels that address the impact of major companies. Here are just a few examples.

Carl Hiaasen’s Skinny Dip is the story of Charles ‘Chaz’ Perrone and his wife, Joey. Perrone is, at least nominally, marine biologist who’s never been good at the work, or particularly motivated. But he managed to get a degree, and that makes him useful to Samuel Johnson ‘Red’ Hammernut. It seems Hammernut owns a very large commercial farm that’s been dumping toxic waste in local Florida waters. He knows he’s in violation of the law, so in order to avoid fines or worse, he hires Perrone to tamper with water samples to prove that his company is not a polluter. Perrone is venal enough to accept the offer and at first, all goes well. Then, Joey begins to suspect that Perrone is tampering with the water samples. Perrone doesn’t want her reporting what she suspects; he also doesn’t want to deal with Hammernut’s wrath if he stops what he’s doing. So, he decides to kill Joey His plan is to take her on a cruise of the Everglades and push her overboard at the right moment. The trouble is, he’s forgotten that she’s a champion swimmer. So, when he does push her, things don’t work as planned…

In John Scalzi’s Starter Villain, we are introduced to middle school substitute teacher Charlie Fitzer. When his beloved Uncle Jake Baldwin dies, Fitzer learns that he is set to inherit a great deal of money if he consents to attend the funeral. And that’s when the trouble begins. As it turns out, Uncle Jake had a secret life. His successful parking lot company was actually a front for some global ‘businesses,’ and Uncle Jake was a supervillain. He belonged to a worldwide group of supervillains, who now think that Fitzer is going to take over his uncle’s worldwide enterprises. That puts him in the sights of his uncle’s rivals, but Fitzer is not without resources. As he learns the depth and breadth of these villains’ global businesses, Fitzer will have to decide whether to succeed his uncle – that is, if he can stay alive. Among other things, this book uses elements of speculative fiction (for instance, genetically modified cats that can type on a computer) and some wit to explore multinational arms manufacturers and other companies, and how they impact world events.

Anthony McCarten’s Going Zero features a company called Fusion, which has created powerful new spyware capable of tracking just about anyone. In the novel, the US government has partnered with Fusion to develop a system to catch terrorists. The company needs to beta-test the system, so it has selected ten people to take part in a competition. On the appointed day, each contestant will be given a ‘Go Zero’ alert. At that point, the contestants have two hours to go off the information grid. After two hours, Fusion Catch Teams will be given contestants’ names, addresses, telephone numbers and photographs. Anyone who is not caught by the end of 30 days will be given three million American dollars. Boston librarian Kaitlyn Day is especially in need of the money, since she wants to find a friend of hers who went missing in the Middle East. On ‘Go Zero’ day, Kaitlyn goes off the grid, determined to win. As she engages in a cat and mouse game with Fusion, we learn some uncomfortable truths about the vast amount of information Fusion has on millions of people. Just how safe is that data? Who has access? How is the information used? What happens if there’s a data breach? At the same time as Fusion Catch Teams are trying to find Kaitlyn and her follow contestants, Fusion’s leadership is coping with some of those larger questions and trying desperately to avoid being embarrassed (let alone being liable for millions of dollars in litigation). Things turn deadly as the stakes get higher.  Among other things, the novel explores the issues surrounding the vast amount of private information that some large corporations have.

In Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood, a New Zealand activist collective called Birnam Wood is working to reclaim land for growing and harvesting food. They find empty tracts of land and grow vegetables and other crops and then use the produce to feed themselves and support the collective. One of their founders, Mira Bunting, discovers an abandoned farm that would be perfect for the group’s purpose. While she’s scouting out the farm, though, she’s caught by tech billionaire Robert Lemoine, who owns the land. Lemoine wants to mine the land for rare minerals, but when he hears Mira’s story, he offers to let the group work the land. Not everyone is happy about the arrangement, though, and soon enough, we learn some disturbing things about Lemoine. And we see some of the serious implications of large corporations with unlimited money.

Worldwide corporations can also become the tools of unscrupulous people or even governments. Cat Connor’s series featuring New Zealand PI Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Tracey features this plot point more than once. Ronnie is a former New Zealand Intelligence agent who’s now a private investigator, although she still occasionally gets involved in intelligence work. She’s good at finding people who don’t want to be found, and her agency, Wherefore Art Thou, makes use of sophisticated information gathering technology as well as old-fashioned techniques like interviews and following people. In the course of her work, Ronnie encounters several large companies that serve as fronts for secret government operations as well as criminal organizations. She’s well aware that large corporations can gather immense amounts of information and can impact millions of people. It’s a sobering theme that runs through this series.

Of course, not all global corporations are dangerous. But the large ones do have a lot of power, and they influence many millions of people. That means there’s a lot of potential for trouble, and that, in turn, can make for a suspenseful plot point for a crime novel.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Midnight Oil’s Blue Sky Mine.