Going out drinking with friends or family can sound awfully fun, especially if you’re young. But as we all know, too much ‘good cheer’ can mean a terrible hangover the next morning. It’s a solid reminder that drinking too much has consequences. Being hung over puts a person at a disadvantage, and although it’s unpleasant in real life, in crime fiction, hangovers can add to a story. People who are hung over are not as likely to remember things well, and that can add tension when the fictional police are questioning them. And it’s realistic to think that if a character goes out drinking, that character is not going to escape unscathed. Sometimes fictional hangovers can even add some wit to a story.

In Håkan Nesser’s Mind’s Eye, schoolteacher Janek Mitter wakes up with a terrible hangover after a long night of drinking. He slowly gets up and moves around, only to find the body of his wife, Eva Ringmar, in the bathtub. Inspector Van Veeteren and his team are called in and begin the investigation. As you can guess, Mitter is their most likely suspect. He’s so hung over that he can’t remember much about the night before, but he’s sure he didn’t kill his wife. There are no other viable suspects, though, and there’s evidence against Mitter. So, he’s arrested and tried. He’s found guilty, but since he has no memory of what happened, he’s placed in a facility for those with mental illness rather than a regular prison. Shortly thereafter, Mitter himself is killed. Now, Van Veeteren and his team have to go back to the beginning and find out who would have wanted to kill Eva Ringmar and her husband.

Dines Mina’s Garnethill is the first of her trilogy featuring Maureen ‘Mauri’ O’Donnell. One morning, she wakes up completely hung over after a long night of drinking. She makes her way into her living room where she finds the body of her lover, Douglas Brady. She calls the police, and immediately becomes a major suspect. They interview her right away, despite the fact that she’s disheveled, unwashed, and has a terrible hangover. She tries to explain that she’s not responsible for the murder, but the police aren’t so quick to believe her. She’s going to have to clear her own name if she’s going to avoid being arrested and imprisoned.

Christopher Brookmyre’s Quite Ugly One Morning begins as journalist Jack Parlabane wakes up after returning from Los Angeles to Edinburgh the day before. He spent quite a lot of time drinking and has a terrible hangover. He soon becomes aware that someone is making an awful lot of noise downstairs, and it’s making his hangover that much worse. Wearing nothing but his underwear, he leaves his flat and heads towards the downstairs flat to ask whoever lives there to be quiet. Unfortunately, he locks himself out of his own flat. When he gets to the downstairs unit, he finds the door unlocked and the body of a man on a chair inside. Parlabane doesn’t want any part of being mixed up in a murder, but he’s still locked out. So, he goes to one of the windows to try to climb out and up to the corresponding window in his own flat. That’s when Detective Constable (DC) Jenny Dalziel walks in and catches him. After a short time, Parlabane convinces her that he’s not a murderer. Once that’s settled, Parlabane tells her he’s a journalist, and she sees that he might be of use in the case. So, the two start sharing information to try to solve the murder.

Rob Kitchin’s Stiffed is the story of Irish ex-pat Tadgh Maguire, who’s moved to the US. One morning, he wakes up with a very bad hangover and a vague memory of drinking a lot. Very soon, he sees that the hangover is the least of his problems. There’s a dead man in the bed with him. Worse than that, Maguire knows who the man is; he is local gangster Tony Marino. Maguire knows that if he calls the police, he’ll be the natural suspect, so he doesn’t want to do that. What’s more, if Marino’s boss finds out where the body was found, he’ll suspect that Maguire was responsible, and that could be worse for him than being arrested. So, Maguire calls his friend Jason Choi for help. Choi and another friend help Maguire move Marino’s body, and it first, it seems that all will be well. But that turns out to be just the start of Maguire’s problems.

And then there’s Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor. When we meet him in The Guards, he’s lost his job with the Garda Síochána because of excessive drinking that led to a completely unprofessional encounter with a motorist. Now, he’s a private investigator who holds court in the local pub. That’s where Ann Henderson finds him and hires him to find out what happened to her daughter Sarah. It seemed that Sarah drowned, and her death was put down to suicide. But her mother is sure Sarah wouldn’t have done that. Taylor agrees to find out what he can, and at first, wades through more than one hangover as he tries to find answers. He actually gets sober for a time as the book goes on. Here’s his reaction:

‘Not being sick, hung over, was extraordinary.’

Several factors militate to draw Taylor back into drinking, but it’s a novel experience for him to feel what life’s like without a hangover.

Hangovers often get people to swear they’ll never drink again. That promise isn’t always kept, which is likely why hangover remedies are so popular…

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Billy Joel’s Big Shot.