One of the realities of life is that the ‘bad guys’ aren’t always caught, and don’t always face justice. Sometimes it’s because the guilty party is rich enough to hide behind excellent attorneys and sometimes bribery. Sometimes it’s because of mistakes made during an investigation. Sometimes, sadly, it’s because the victim isn’t important enough to warrant a careful investigation, and the case is left to go cold. Crime fiction that reflects this can be realistic and can lend itself to a new case where someone goes back over the older case. But even when that doesn’t happen, it’s interesting when a crime story doesn’t feature the sleuth catching the ‘bad guy’ and justice being served.

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Abbey Grange, for instance, Sherlock Holmes investigates the murder of Sir Eustace Brackenstall. The police believe the killing is the work of a gang of thieves who’ve been operating in the area, and at first, the evidence is consistent with that. But Holmes notices a few things that don’t quite fit that explanation. Holmes makes his own deductions about what happened and propounds his theory. But that doesn’t mean that the person responsible for Sir Eustace’s murder is going to be caught and jailed by the police. It’s an interesting case on that score alone.

When Agatha Christie fans think of cases where the killer isn’t caught, they may think immediately of The Chocolate Box. Poirot himself admits that it wasn’t one of his successes. In the story, he tells Captain Hastings of a case in which he investigated the death of French deputy Paul Deroulard, who was living in Belgium. Poirot followed the leads and paid attention to the clues, but he named the wrong killer, and that person was imprisoned. It wasn’t until the real killer summoned Poirot and told him the truth that the case was solved. So, in one sense, the ‘bad guy’ was caught. In another, though, that didn’t happen. There’s another Christie story (no title, nor even the name of the sleuth – no spoilers here!) in which the murderer ends up shielded, if you will, by social position. That can happen in real life, too.

We certainly see it in Donna Leon’s long-running series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, who lives and works in Venice. In his world, those who are rich and powerful often get away with crime because of their status. In one plot thread of Fatal Remedies, for instance, Brunetti’s wife Paola Falier stages a protest against a travel company because it supports sex tourism and the sex trade for those who can afford it. The focus is (at least at first) more on the vandalism that Paola committed than it is on the wealthy clients who commit trafficking and other crimes. There are other Leon novels, too, where social position and money allow some characters to, quite literally, get away with murder. We see that too in Andrea Camilleri’s Salvo Montalbano series, which takes place in Sicily.

Lawrence Osborne’s On Java Road is, in part, the story of Rebecca To. She is a Hong Kong student activist who’s working to maintain all of Hong Kong’s press and other freedoms in the wake of the handover to China. She lives a dangerous life, as the local authorities don’t want negative press, and China insists on the benefits of the ‘harmony’ between Beijing and Hong Kong. Rebecca meets and begins seeing Jimmy Tang, who is a member of one of Hong Kong’s powerful elite families. When Rebecca goes missing, journalist Adrian Gyle wonders whether her relationship with Jimmy had something to do with it. And when a body is discovered that could be Rebecca’s, Gyle has even more questions. He’s not likely to get answers, though, as the elite of Hong Kong can basically get away with whatever they want. So, in that sense, no-one’s brought to justice. Fans of Qiu Xiaolong’s Inspector Chen series will know that Chen doesn’t always bring ‘bad guys’ to justice, either, and for a similar reason. The elite of the Shanghai in which he works can often protect themselves from prosecution.

As with police, private investigators, and so on, lawyers don’t always win, either. Every real-life lawyer can tell you a story about a lost case, even if that lawyer prepared carefully and went into the courtroom with a strong will to win. Fictional lawyers like Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason have a much better record of wins than their real-life counterparts. But not always. John Mortimer’s Horace Rumpole, for instance, loses his share of cases in court. He certainly has the skills, the oratory, and the passion for justice to defend his clients well. But sometimes that’s not enough, and the most he can do is lighten his client’s sentence.

And that’s the thing about investigations and their courtroom follow-ups. Sometimes the ‘bad guy’ gets away with it. Sometimes the detective knows exactly who’s guilty but doesn’t have the evidence. Sometimes mistakes are made. Those things certainly happen in real life, and it makes crime fiction more realistic when they happen in a story, too.

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Carole King’s Sweet Seasons.