Power balance is an important part of nearly every relationship. Sometimes it defines the relationship. Relationships in which one person has more power are quite different to relationships where the balance of power is relatively equal. Sometimes, unequal relationships can turn toxic. But even when they don’t, the balance of power matters. It certainly does in crime fiction, and it can add a layer of character development, tension, and more.

For instance, in Agatha Christie’s Appointment With Death, we are introduced to MP Lady Westholme. She has an outspoken personality, strong opinions, and a habit of getting her own way. In the story, she takes a sightseeing tour of the Middle East with a group of other people. One of them is former nursery governess Miss Annabel Pierce. She’s a mild-mannered, somewhat vague person who likes to keep the peace. Lady Westholme and Miss Pierce drift together and begin what you might call an acquaintanceship. But it’s not at all a balanced relationship. Lady Westholme has much of the power, and Miss Pierce doesn’t seem to mind it. During a three-day trip to Petra, another member of the tour group, Mrs. Boynton, is poisoned. Hercule Poirot is in the area, and he’s asked to investigate. He soon finds that nearly all the members of Mrs. Boynton’s family had a good reason to want her dead. In fact, the question isn’t which of them is the most likely culprit; it’s really which of them probably didn’t commit the murder. As Poirot investigates, he interviews both Lady Westholme and Miss Pierce, and we see a clear example of just how uneven their balance of power is.

Beryl Bainbridge’s Harriet Said begins as the unnamed thirteen-year-old narrator is waiting for her friend Harriet to return from a holiday in Wales. A little restless and bored, the narrator strikes up a sort of friendship with Peter Biggs, a middle-aged unhappily married man. She feels the first stirrings of hormones but doesn’t want to do anything about it until Harriet returns. That’s an important clue to the imbalance of power in that friendship. When Harriet does come back, we see that even more clearly. It’s Harriet who decides that, instead of an emotional reaction, the two girls need to observe and see this as more of an objective experience. It’s Harriet who decides that they should ‘humble’ Biggs. And it’s Harriet who makes a plan to spy on Biggs. When the girls do, they see something they weren’t meant to see, and in the end, it leads to tragedy.

There’s an interesting question of the balance of power in Peter Robinson’s Gallows View. Trevor Sharp is an Eastvale, Yorkshire teenager. He doesn’t fit in very well at school and has a difficult relationship with his father. So it’s not surprising that he soon takes up with Mick Webster, who’s been in and out of trouble for a long time. Trevor and Mick skip school and go on ‘adventures’ that land them in a lot of trouble. Trevor’s father has told him to stay away from Mick, and so have the teachers at school. But as you might imagine, Trevor ignores them all. He looks up to Mick and is content to do what Mick wants to do. And what Mick wants to do ends up getting tangled up with a spate of home invasions, a voyeur, and murder. Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Alan Banks has a set of threads of these cases to follow as he and his team make sense of them. Throughout the novel, we see how balance of power impacts what happens in the story.

Lawrence Osborne’s On Java Road is in part the story of a friendship between journalist Adrian Gyle, and wealthy, elite Jimmy Tang. They met at Cambridge and became friends, although they’re of different classes. Their friendship has survived for twenty years, too, and now both find themselves in Hong Kong. Since the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, Gyle’s job has been tricky. He’s supposed to report on the news, but some of that news involves protests against the Chinese government’s policies in Hong Kong. He has friends and contacts among the activists and among Hong Kong’s elite, of which Jimmy Tang is one. In many ways, the power balance between Gyle and Tang is uneven. Tang has money, looks, a powerful family, and so on, and Gyle knows it. That’s a thread that runs through the story when Tang’s latest ‘conquest,’ Rebecca To, goes missing. When the body of a young woman is pulled from Victoria Harbor, Gyle tries to find out if it’s Rebecca. That’s difficult enough to do, considering the political atmosphere in Hong Kong. But then, Tang goes missing. As Gyle tries to put the pieces together, he gets into more danger than he imagined, and we see how the power balance in their friendship plays out.

The balance of power turns out to be an important part of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer. As the story opens, Korede Adebe gets a call from her sister Ayoola. It seems that Ayoola has killed her current boyfriend, Femi, and needs help getting rid of the body and cleaning up. Korede has always felt protective of Ayoola and will do anything to look after her. As the story goes on, we see why she feels this way. We also learn that Ayoola has a way of getting everyone, especially the men she dates, to do what she wants. It makes for a really interesting dynamic between the sisters. Everything starts to change when Ayoola sets her sights on Dr. Tade Otumu, who works at the hospital where Korede is a nurse. Korede was already interested in Tade and Ayoola knows it. Even harder for Korede is the fact that Tade is in love with Ayoola. Meanwhile, the police are investigating Femi’s murder, and Korede knows that she will be expected to protect her sister. But with everything going on, how far will she go to do that? Among other things, this is a fascinating look at power dynamics in relationships.

Balance of power can be an issue in any relationship. When that power is unequal, any number of things can happen. And it can lead to disaster, at least in crime fiction.

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