One thing that helps professional detectives catch a murderer is to find out as much as they can about the victim. After all, many victims are killed by someone they know. So, the better we know the victim, the easier it is to find the killer. It’s not always easy to get to know a victim, especially if that person led a very private life. But in the end that knowledge is worth a great deal when it comes to catching a killer.

Agatha Christie’s Death in the Clouds, for instance, begins in Paris as a group of people board a plane bound for London. Shortly before the flight lands, one of the passengers, Marie Morisot, is found dead of what turns out to be poison. At first no-one knows much about her. She seems like a normal enough woman who’s simply on her way to London. It soon comes out, though, that under the name of Madame Giselle, she was a successful moneylender who used her clients’ secrets to ensure that they would pay their debts. Once that information comes out, Hercule Poirot, who was also on that flight, is able to focus on the people who knew Madame Giselle. Several of them, as it turns out, had a motive.

In Arnaldur Indriðason’s Jar City, Inspector Erlendur and his team are called to the scene when the body of an old man named Holberg is discovered. On first look, he is an inoffensive elderly man with a ‘regular’ job. The initial explanation for his death is that it was a robbery gone very wrong. But it’s not long before little things suggest there’s more to this case than that. For one thing, Erlendur discovers a cryptic photograph in Holberg’s home. Then, it comes out that Holberg had been accused of rape years earlier, although he’d never been arrested or convicted. And it’s quite possible that he raped more than one woman. As the story goes on, we find that Holberg had a much darker history than the team thought at first, and that more than one person had a very good motive for murder.

Betty Rowlands’ Murder at Hawthorn Cottage introduces readers to crime writer Melissa ‘Mel’ Craig. She’s recently taken a cottage in the Cotswolds and is settling in when she gets a strange call from a man who thinks she’s someone called ‘Babs.’ At first, it seems like a simple case of a wrong number. But she gets another call from the same person, who keeps insisting that she’s Babs. Now, Mel is curious about who Babs is, so she starts asking questions. In the meantime, journalist Bruce Ingram wants to interview Mel for his paper, so she agrees to meet with him. From Bruce, Mel learns that a young woman named Babs Carter went missing a year or so earlier. Everyone thought she simply pulled up stakes and left town. Then, a body is discovered on the property next to Mel’s cottage, and it doesn’t take long to establish that it’s Babs. Now the missing person case has become a case of murder, and the police begin their investigation. Mel is content to leave the work to the police, but Bruce wants to find out the truth about Babs’ murder. Little by little, we learn who Babs was, and what her world was like. And in the end, getting to know Babs helps Mel and Bruce find out who killed her.

Anthony Bidulka’s Going to Beautiful features Toronto-based celebrity chef Jake Hardy. He and his husband, fashion designer Eddie Kravets, have a strong marriage and a happy, healthy adult son, Connor. In fact, Jake has a great life. Then one night, Eddie tragically dies from a fall off the balcony of their posh condominium. The police soon suspect murder, and naturally Jake becomes a ‘person of interest.’ He’s cleared quickly enough, but plenty of people still think he’s guilty. Eddie and Jake both wrote down their last wishes, and as Jake consults Eddie’s list, he sees the word beautiful. He soon works out that the word refers to Eddie’s hometown in Saskatchewan, and that spurs him to make a decision. He wants to find out about the part of Eddie’s life that he didn’t know, and he needs a break anyway. So, he and a friend travel to Beautiful. While they’re there, Jake finds out a great deal about his husband, including some things he’d never known. And in the process, he is able to work out who killed Eddie. That trip is, among other things, Jake’s way of finding out about a person.

In Nalini Singh’s Quiet in Her Bones, novelist Aarav ‘Ari’ Rai is staying at his parents’ home to finish recovering from serious injury. It’s not a happy visit, as Ari has never been close to his father. Still, he likes his stepmother, Shanti, and his half-sister, Pari, so although the atmosphere is tense, he’s trying to make the best of it. Then, the bones of Ari’s mother Nina are discovered. Everyone thought she had left of her own will ten years earlier, but now it’s clear that she didn’t. The police begin to treat this as a case of murder and start looking into the victim’s past and her relationships. Ari wants to know the truth about his mother, too. He always felt close to her, and never completely understood why she left. So, he starts asking questions to try to get to know his mother better. As the story goes on, we learn who Nina was, what she was like, and ultimately, what led to her death.

Everybody has some sort of history, and that includes murder victims. Very often, knowing that history, and knowing the victim as well as possible, are key to finding out who the killer is. It sometimes takes effort and time, but in the end, it’s usually well worth it.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Avril Lavigne’s My Happy Ending.