It’s a fact of life that parents age. When that happens, decisions have to be made about how an aging parent’s needs will be met. There are several choices, depending on the parent’s particular situation, and the family’s income. None of the choices are easy, but the result is hopefully the right care situation. It’s increasingly an issue in today’s world, where populations are getting older. But if you look at crime fiction, it’s always been there.

In some cultures, it’s only natural that grown children look after their parents as they age. We see that, for example, in one plot thread of Tony Hillerman’s The Ghostway. Navajo Tribal (now Nation) Police Sergeant Jim Chee is searching for a missing sixteen-year-old girl, Margaret Billy Sosi. It seems that she ran away from the school she attended and hasn’t returned. Chee’s search takes him to the greater Los Angeles area. There, he traces Margaret to the home of an elderly relative called Bentwoman. She is cared for by her daughter, who lives with her. In the scenes where they appear, we see how Bentwoman’s daughter tends to her needs and takes care of the home. They give Chee useful information, too.

In Agatha Christie’s Appointment With Death, we are introduced to the Boynton family. Family matriarch Mrs. Boynton is elderly and not in good health. She lives with, and is cared for by, her adult stepchildren: Lennox, Carol, and Raymond, and by Lennox’s wife, Natalie, who is a nurse. As the story opens, the family is on a sightseeing tour of the Middle East, which includes a trip to Petra. On the second day of the trip, Mrs. Boynton dies of what looks like heart failure. Colonel Carbury, who has jurisdiction in the area, senses that something more may be going on, and he asks Hercule Poirot to investigate. Poirot is on the same trip to Petra, so he agrees. He soon learns that Mrs. Boynton was a malicious mental sadist who psychologically abused her family, so there is no lack of suspects. It’s not an easy case, and there’s more than one person who wanted the victim dead.

The first of Claire McGowan’s novels, The Lost, introduces Paula Maguire, a London forensic psychologist who’s originally from the town of Ballyterrin, in Northern Ireland. She mostly works with the police on missing person cases, and she’s done a good job. So, she’s a solid choice for leadership when Ballyterrin decides to set up a cold case review team. As it happens, Paula’s father has recently fallen and broken a leg, so the trip will give her a chance to look after him. She travels back to her hometown and begins her work. The team is especially concerned about the cases of two missing girls, Magella Ward and Cathy Carr. Then, Cathy Carr is found dead. Now the investigation turns from missing persons to murder, and Paula will have to work fast to find the killer before anyone else goes missing.

In Charity Norman’s Remember Me, London-based Emily Kirkland gets a phone call from a family friend. It seems that Emily’s father, Felix, has Alzheimer’s, and it’s getting to the point where he can no longer live alone. Emily reluctantly agrees to return to her native New Zealand to care for him. It’s not a happy homecoming, as Emily had her reasons for leaving in the first place. Still, she goes and starts to settle in. One of Felix’s coping strategies is to leave little notes for himself to remind him of what he should be doing and who the various people in his life are. One of those notes gives Emily a clue to a past tragedy. Twenty-five years earlier, Leah Parata, who lived next door to the Kirklands, went missing. Her body was never found. The note suggests that the Kirlands and the Paratas might have a connection that Emily never knew. That spurs her to try to find out what really happened to Leah Parata.

In Anna Jaquiery’s The Lying Down Room, we meet Commandant Serge Morel of the Paris Police. He’s single, and lives with his elderly father, Philippe, a former diplomat. The two do have a bond, but they argue sometimes, and at times, Philippe has memory lapses and other troubling signs of advancing age. It’s not always easy for Serge to look after his father, but he does. Serge’s life gets more complicated when he and his team are faced with a strange set of murders. The victims, who didn’t know each other, are found dead in their beds, wearing bizarre makeup and red wigs. It’s a difficult case, and Serge struggles at times to balance working the investigation with taking care of his father when needed.

There are also sleuths like Inger Ash Wolfe/Michael Redhill’s Detective Inspector (DI) Hazel Micallef, who live with their elderly parents even when those parents don’t need a lot of special care. Hazel lives and works in the town of Port Dundas, Ontario, where her mother, Emily, used to be mayor. The two do spar, and they’re both strong-minded. But they have a bond, and Hazel does try to make sure her mother has what she needs. Interestingly, Emily sometimes still ‘mothers’ Hazel, and insists that Hazel try to take care of her own health.

It’s hard when a parent ages and begins to need assistance. In some families, adult children live with their parents and care for them. In other families, and in other situations, elderly parents live in care homes and other facilities. Either way presents challenges, and that can make for an interesting layer in a crime novel.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car.