When you’re deciding whether to see a film or play, go to a restaurant, attend a concert, or check out an art exhibit, do you pay attention to what the ‘official’ critics say? Whether their judgements are in newspapers, on TV, or online, what critics say can make a very big difference. A good review means more patrons or visitors; a bad review can do real damage. So, it’s little wonder that critics also play a role in crime fiction. Space doesn’t permit me to mention more than a few, but I’m sure you can think of more than I could, anyway.

In Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral, we are introduced to Mr. Alexander Guthrie, who is a noted art critic. He is invited to the home of Cora Lansquenet to assess the value of some paintings she’s acquired. By the time he visits, though, Cora has been murdered. As it turns out, her older brother Richard Abernethie died not long ago, and it’s possible that the deaths are connected. In fact, the day before her death, Cora said that Richard had been murdered. Mr. Entwhistle, the family solicitor, asks Hercule Poirot to investigate, and he agrees. He finds more than one suspect and several possible motives for murder. And Mr. Guthrie finds that he is drawn into a murder mystery.

Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who… series begins with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards. Jim ‘Qwill’ Qwilleran is a former reporter who’s just been through a terrible divorce and needs to get his life together. His former boss, Arch Riker, hires Qwill as a features writer for the Daily Fluxion. That’s how he meets the paper’s art critic, George Mountclemens, who rents him a room. When there’s a murder in the Lambeth Gallery, Qwill takes an interest and starts investigating to put a feature together. Then, Mountclemens is also murdered. Now, the case becomes more complicated, and Qwill starts digging deeper to find out who’s wreaking havoc in the art community.

Elizabeth Spann Craig’s Memphis Barbecue series features Lulu Taylor, who owns Aunt Pat’s, a very popular barbecue restaurant. In Delicious and Suspicious, Lulu has learned that Rebecca Adrian, food critic for the Cooking Channel, will be visiting Memphis to choose the best barbecue restaurant in the city. Everyone at Aunt Pat’s works hard to prepare for the critic’s visit. But, only hours after her meal at Aunt Pat’s, Rebecca Adrian dies of what turns out to be poison. And it’s not long before talk begins that the food at Aunt Pat’s is responsible. In order to protect her restaurant’s reputation (and her own), Lulu decides to find out the truth about the murder.

When we first meet Madhumita Bhattacharya’s Reema Ray, in The Masala Murders, she is a Kolkata-based freelance writer for Face, a lifestyle magazine. As a part of that job, she visits local gourmet restaurants and does write-ups and interviews. It’s not what she wants to do; she’s trying to get her PI business, Steele Securities, off the ground. But it pays the bills, and she does get to eat in Kolkata’s top restaurants. Readers follow her columns, too. One day, she finds out that a gourmet food importer named Prakash Agarwal has been murdered. She takes an interest, since she had recently interviewed him for a column. When she visits the victim’s widow to pay her respects, Mrs. Agarwal surprises her by asking her to pass along any information she finds out about Agarwal’s death. Reema agrees and starts asking questions. It may not exactly be a paying contract, but it will help her reputation if she finds out who the killer is.

Kalpana Swaminatham’s The Page 3 Murders takes place during a weekend house party hosted by Dr. Hilla Driver. She’s invited several ‘A-listers’ to her new home, both to show it to her guests and to celebrate her niece’s eighteenth birthdays. One of the guests is noted food critic Felix Rego. Hilla’s chef, Tarok Ghosh, wants this event to help put Hilla’s home on the culinary map. So, he’s planned a very special ‘foodie’ weekend that’s to culminate in a seven-course banquet. On the night of the banquet, Tarok begins by serving each guest a custom-made appetizer. Each appetizer is a hint to a secret Tarok knows about that guest, and that includes Felix Rego. Later that night Tarok is murdered and Rego becomes a suspect. Hilla has also invited former Mumbai police detective Lalli and her niece to the house party, so she asks Lalli to investigate.

And then there’s Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions For You. Bodie Kane is a Los Angeles-based critic and podcaster. As the story begins, she’s been invited to Granby, New Hampshire, to give a two-week course in podcasting at an exclusive boarding school. This is a sort of homecoming for Bodie, since she is an alumna of that school. She settles in and begins working with the students to help them choose their podcast topics and get started. One student chooses the murder of Thalia Keith, who attended the school years earlier. This hits home for Bodie, because she knew Thalia; in fact, they were roommates for a time. She doesn’t exactly want to return to that time, and in any case, someone was already arrested and imprisoned for the crime. But the student insists that that person may not be guilty. Bodie takes an interest and she and her students start looking into the case again.

As you can see, critics have their say in a lot of crime fiction. They can make effective victims, or sleuths, or witnesses. And, they can add interesting angles to a crime novel. Which ones have stayed with you?

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Superchick’s One Girl Revolution.