Does anyone remember the story of the blind men and the elephant? Six blind scholars all try to discover what an elephant looks like by touching one part of the animal. Because an elephant is composed of many shapes (trunk, ears, legs, tail, etc.,) running your hands over one part of it doesn’t give you an accurate picture of the animal, but it does show what a limited perception can discover. And, when it comes to some episodes of history, we’re all blind folks trying to survey an elephant. Val McDermid tackles this idea in her mystery novel, The Grave Tattoo. On the surface, it’s a modern day story about the discovery of a body near the Lake District of England. Although the corpse has been underground for awhile, it’s easy to see this is neither a recent death nor the discovery of an ancient caveman. What’s interesting are the number of complicated tattoos still discernable on the decedent’s skin. And therein hangs the link to a historical debate and the mysterious elephant in the room. The debate is who was at fault for the mutiny on the H.M.S. Bounty, Fletcher Christian or Captain Bligh? The popular opinion has switched back…
They say publishers love novels that turn into a series. The characters in these collections of stories develop their own fan base assuring the publisher of a a steady and increasing audience to gobble up each new adventure as soon as it hits the stands. Still, it’s tricky to write that kind of series because each book has to serve two plots. Each book has a primary, short plot: it finds and resolves a conflict that involves the new characters and most (if not all) of the permanent cast. The second plot is harder because it’s part of the overall arc of the series. This plot creates some incremental change in the lives of the permanent cast and lets them create or resolve underlying conflicts (Continuing characters must evolve from book to book or the reading public gets bored and leaves). Interweaving these two plots in each book is a little like jumping rope double-dutch style: it takes skill, balance and concentration. Thriller/Mystery novelist Val McDermid has created three different detective novel serials, the most popular of which are the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books. Her latest in this series, Splinter the Silence, shows how a good author can make some…
My mother tried to raise kids who didn’t know fear. I think she must have experienced some very bad moments in her own childhood because she understood the nature of childhood terrors and did her best to keep me and my sister from everything scary. Our TV shows were monitored, our movie choices screened and Mom made sure that the books we read could never frighten or intimidate us. All of this careful planning had a funny result: we grew up scared of a lot of things and although my sis recovered fairly quickly, (she’s far braver than I am) it takes me some extra work to get past the terror on the screen and in fiction. I work at this because I don’t want to miss something good, just because it is disturbing but sometimes I have to ask (as my Mom must have before every Halloween and roller-coaster), “Why do we like to be scared?” The wish to be frightened is part of Halloween tradition but this goes back a lot further than a “Haunted-House-for-Charity” (think about this: these days, we get startled out of our wits in order to give money to a worthy cause. Must we…
There are a lot of genres in crime fiction. There are cozy mysteries and hard-boiled detective tales, capers and whodunits. There are police procedurals, legal thrillers, psychological suspense books and we’ll have some more genres next Tuesday. In the meantime, one of my current favorite writers is Val McDermid, the journalist who created what she calls “Scottish Noir”. This means her characters have the uncompromising, tough and amoral personalities the frequented Dashiell Hammett’s novels but McDermid’s stories are settled in the cold, bleak areas of Scotland. Add to this mix a set of villains so strange that Thomas Harris could have invented them and you’ve got Scottish Noir. These books aren’t for everyone but, boy, are they good. McDermid is best known for her Carol Jordan/Tony Hill series but if you want an introduction to her work, I’d start off with the thriller, A Place of Execution. A Place of Execution is about the twin investigations into the disappearance of Alison Carter, an adolescent that disappeared one night in December of 1963. Allison’s home was Scardale, a one-road village where half a dozen families have lived since the world began. The young Detective Inspector, George Bennett, has to figure…