Sometimes, people face a decision from which there’s no turning back. For instance, if you decide to take a new job and then leave your present job, it’s usually not possible to go back to your old job. Sometimes people risk even more than a job. Making such decisions isn’t easy in real life. In crime fiction, though, that situation can heighten tension and make for a very interesting plot point.

In Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs, for instance, Carla Lemarchant hires Hercule Poirot to investigate the sixteen-year-old murder of her father, famous painter Amyas Crale. At the time, her mother, Caroline Crale, was assumed to be guilty. In fact, she was arrested, tried, and convicted in the matter and died in prison. But Carla has always believed her mother was innocent, and now she wants Poirot to prove it. Poirot does agree to investigate, but he warns Carla:

“One little moment. I have said I will find out the truth. I do not, you understand, have the bias. I do not accept your assurance of your mother’s innocence. If she was guilty—eh bien, what then?”

Carla insists that she wants the truth, regardless of where it all leads. From that point, there’s no going back to the way things were. Poirot interviews the people who were on the scene at the time of the murder and reads each one’s account of what happened. From that information, he works out who is guilty. It’s a real turning point for Carla, as she won’t see the people involved in the same way again.

As Beryl Bainbridge’s Harriet Said begins, we meet the thirteen-year-old unnamed narrator. She lives in a small Lancashire town and is a bit at loose ends. She’s waiting for her fourteen-year-old friend, Harriet, to return from a trip to Wales. While she waits, she strikes up a friendship with a middle-aged man called Peter Biggs. Biggs is unhappily married and pleased to have a friendly young person to talk to; for her part, the narrator feels the first stirrings of hormones but doesn’t dare to act on them until Harriet gets back. When Harriet does return, she insists that they be completely unemotional about Biggs, treating him as a sort of experiment, and chalking the whole thing up to experience. In fact, she wants to humble him. One day, the girls are spying on Biggs when they see something they weren’t meant to see. Now, things take a more sinister turn. There’s a point at which the narrator debates what to do. In the end, she decides to go along with Harriet’s plan of action. There’s really no going back, and the result is tragedy.

In James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, insurance agent Walter Huff happens to be in the Hollywood Heights section of Los Angeles. He decides to visit a client called H.S. Nirdlinger to see if he can get a policy renewal. When he gets there, Nirdlinger isn’t home, but his wife, Phyllis, is. He and Phyllis start talking, and before long, Huff finds himself attracted to her. She does nothing to discourage him, and soon they’re having an affair. Then, Huff learns Phyllis’ plan. She wants her husband dead, so she can get his money. At this point, Huff is so besotted that he goes along with the plan. He even writes the double indemnity insurance policy she wants. Once he makes that choice, there’s no turning back. The murder goes off as planned, but it brings with it all sorts of tragedy that Huff hadn’t considered.

Walter Mosley’s A Red Death is the second in his Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins series. Rawlins worked at an aircraft manufacturing plant until post-WW II layoffs left him jobless. Since then, he does occasional investigations for people (later in the series, he gets a PI license). In this novel, Rawlins gets a threatening letter from the Internal Revenue Service. Unless he pays thousands of dollars (that he doesn’t have) in taxes, he’ll go to prisonl. Rawlins is resigning himself to his fate when he gets a reprieve. An FBI agent called Darryl Craxton promises to make Rawlins’ tax problems go away if he helps the agency bring down Chaim Wenzler, an ex-pat Polish resistance fighter who’s suspected of being a communist. The novel takes place during the height of McCarthyism, so the FBI’s request isn’t shocking. At first, Rawlins agrees readily enough. But as he gets to know Wenzler, he finds that he likes the man, and he isn’t as eager to see him arrested or worse. Now, Rawlins has to make a choice: does he continue to do what he promised to do (and keep the taxman at bay) or does he do what his conscience is beginning to tell him to do (and risk everything)? Whichever way he decides, Rawlins knows there won’t be any going back.

Qiu Xiaoilong’s Inspector Chen Cao lives and works in late 1990s Shanghai. He is expected to catch offenders, but that sometimes clashes with the expectation that he will do nothing to embarrass China or the Party or anyone in the Party. So, Chen has to work very quietly. In Enigma of China, he investigates the death of Zhou Keng, head of Shanghai’s Housing Development Committee. Zhou had been arrested for corruption and was being held in a hotel room pending a trial. When he was found dead, it was assumed to be suicide, but Chen suspects otherwise. He’s gone after high Party officials before, but this time, the stakes are very high; he’ll have to decide how much he’s willing to risk by finding out the truth about Zhou’s death. Once he makes that choice, there is no going back, and we see in subsequent novels what happens as a result.

People do sometimes face difficult choices, and sometimes, there is no going back from them. When that happens in real life, it can be stressful and painful. In crime fiction, those watershed moments can add much to a story.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Tears For Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World.