by Peter Corris
Characters in contemporary novels in more secular times either don’t feel guilt when psychopaths (see S for serial killer) are able to rationalise it away, being aware in a hard world that, like conscience, it is a luxury and a negative impulse. Approved characters feel guilty about infidelities, neglect of children, deception of colleagues, but few self-respecting murderers would feel guilty about having killed someone.
G is also for gumshoe. This is a colloquial term for a private detective, implying that such operatives require rubber-soled shoes for their clandestine work. Another term is ‘shamus’, whose origin is obscure. It surfaces in the hard-boiled stories of the late 1920s. One suggestion is that it’s an amalgam of the Hebrew word ‘shamesh’, meaning servant, and the Irish name Seamus, a common name for police detectives. This seems unlikely and ‘origin obscure’ remains the best account while the jury is out. ‘Peeper’ is another name hailing from the time when private detectives were commonly engaged in divorce work—peeping through keyholes and under blinds and taking photographs of adulterous activity (see L for Latin tag).
G is also for gun. They’re not essential; knives, clubs, poisons and garrottes will do, but guns are the most efficient killers. Usefully, they leave clues behind—bullets, bullet casings, powder burns—giving investigators something to work with. A ballistics expert in an obligatory white coat, unbuttoned, is a serviceable character. Fingerprints on firearms have become less interesting for investigators. For one thing, everyone now knows to wipe a gun and for another, given the millions of guns in America, most of those used in crimes end up in the drink. The hit man with a favourite gun is a complete anachronism.
A book with guns as the absolute movers and shakers of action is George V. Higgins’s debut novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970).
G could also be for gloves, in this context, as in shooters wearing them, and modifications of guns like the sawing off of stocks and barrels can leave tell-tale signs behind.
Guns can be overdone. There are too many in the novels of Don Winslow and T. Jefferson Parker. Here the classics differ. Raymond Chandler said, ‘When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.’ On the other hand, writers might take note of Philip Marlowe’s observation, ‘Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains.’ I think it’s in the book; it’s certainly in the film, with Bogie’s sibilance working full on.
G is also for guts. They may be spilled metaphorically or literally, or, again metaphorically, displayed by the protagonist. At some point in a crime novel a hero should come under threat and display not foolhardiness, but a judicious courage.
H is for habits. Series characters typically have habits—Sherlock Holmes plays the violin, Hercule Poirot drinks tisanes and fusses with his moustache, Philip Marlowe plays auto-chess, Inspector Morse does cryptic crosswords, Nero Wolfe grows orchids. The function of these habits is to humanise the character and to alert readers to the workings of their minds. When Holmes scrapes the strings we know he is thinking deeply; when Morse cracks a difficult cryptic clue we know he is at the top of his game, and so on.
Conversely, for a criminal, a habit is a weakness, allowing an investigator to anticipate an action or set a trap.
H is also for hard-boiled. This is the accepted term for the tough school of crime writing that evolved in the United States in the 1890s and found its expression in magazines like Black Mask and True Detective. The first hard-boiled writer is generally thought to be Carroll John Daly, whose stories were dark, violent and uninterested in redemption. The origin of the term is interestingly discussed on the website The Straight Dope.2 It has a history dating back to the nineteenth century, had a vogue in post-World War I New York and was firmly attached to the seminal writing of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
The characteristic mode of hard-boiled stories is that they exhibit little of the emotional response of the characters to the events happening around them. Broadly speaking, the investigators are too busy surviving and fending off threats to describe their feelings or to admit to having them about the wider world. This characteristic, though modified, persists in contemporary crime writing (see P for pulp).
H is also for historical. The list of historical crime novels is so extensive you could not live long enough to read them all. The sub-genre has been popular at least since the work of Edith Pargeter, who wrote under a number of pseudonyms, most notably Ellis Peters. Her first novel had the unpromising title of Hortensius, Friend of Nero (1936), but she achieved great popularity with the series of medieval novels featuring Brother Cadfael, set at a time when the English throne was in wild dispute. The books inspired a short-lived television series.
Peter Lovesey has been a prolific writer of historical crime novels. His series character Sergeant Cribb (a descendant of bare-knuckle, prize-fighting champion Tom Cribb—another example of the usefulness of boxing as texture in crime novels) first appeared in Wobble to Death (1970), about the odd Victorian interest in marathon pedestrianism. As so often with successful English novels, a television series resulted.
Anne Perry, who was involved as a teenager in a murder in New Zealand, has produced a great number of historical crime novels. Her first novel had the evocative title The Cater Street Hangman (1979).
Cherry-picking among the many practitioners, Edward Marston’s Domesday novels are worthy of attention. The protagonist is in the service of William the Conqueror and surveys the kingdom’s resources while solving crimes in different counties and cities he visits. The Wolves of Savernake (1993) was the first of these interesting and informative books. Less successful to my mind, after admittedly a small sample, has been his series about the British railway network beginning with The Railway Detective (2004), set in 1851.
Pre-eminent among contemporary English historical crime novelists is C.J. Sansom, whose series about hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Shardlake, set in Tudor times, rises well above the ruck. Beginning with Dissolution in 2003, all subsequent books have been eagerly awaited by devoted readers. Interestingly, Sansom presents a much less sympathetic portrait of Thomas Cromwell than does Hilary Mantel in her Man Booker prize-winners Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012).
Historical crime writing is much less common in the United States than in Britain. When set in the nineteenth century, American crime stories tend to appear as Westerns, for example Ron Hansen’s excellent Desperadoes (1979) and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (1983).
Books about the Mafia are an exception to this. There was a historical dimension to The Godfather. Dennis Lehane provides another exception with his powerful book The Given Day (2008), set in Boston in the early years of the twentieth century. It focuses on crime and corruption, while his Live by Night (2012) is a convincing and compelling evocation of the Prohibition era.
A trio of crime novels set in Sydney in Victorian times by Martin Long—The Garden House (1989), The Music Room (1990) and The Dark Gateway (1991)—received much less attention than it deserved.
H is also for hit man. Contract killers, also known as button men or torpedos, figure in many crime stories. Their characteristic MO (see L for Latin tag) is a close-range shot to the head with a low-calibre pistol. Hit men tend to be off-stage characters, less the focus of investigators’ interest than the person who put out the contract.
Richard Condon’s 1982 novel Prizzi’s Honor tells the story of a husband and wife, both contract killers, who are hired to murder each other.
H is also for homicide (see D for death), and also for humour. Humour is a matter of judgement. Too much, as in the novels of Kinky Friedman, and the result is ludicrous; none at all and the effect is deadening. The one-liners stand out in Robert B. Parker’s novels. ‘Work for you?’ Spenser says to someone objectionable wishing to hire him. ‘I’d rather spend the rest of my life at a Barry Manilow concert.’
In the 1960s, Joyce Porter’s novels about bumbling, venal Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover (Dover One, 1964, and fo
llowing) were charming and funny in an old-fashioned English manner. Janet Evanovich has achieved much the same effect with an utterly up-to-date American idiom in the Stephanie Plum series (One for the Money, 1994, and following). ‘I’ll touch it,’ Steph’s feisty grandmother exclaims when a flasher invites the women to feel his member. Great scene.
H is also for Hong Kong. Australian William Marshall wrote a series of crime novels, beginning with Yellowthread Street (1975), featuring detectives Harry Feiffer and Christopher O’Yee, set in Hong Kong. The books provided the basis for a British television series and sold well in the 1970s and 80s.
With its interesting geographical location, political history, affluence and gambling culture, Hong Kong has provided a vibrant setting for crime writers. Michael Connelly’s twelfth Harry Bosch novel, Nine Dragons (2009), is one example.
H is also for horses, which didn’t figure much in crime fiction after Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘Silver Blaze’ story until Dick Francis mounted up. In a succession of best-selling books, ex-jump-jockey Francis had various damaged (one-armed, deaf, traumatised) protagonists, always middle class or above, dealing with villains lurking around the stables and the racetracks. The early books had, if the expression can be excused, pace, good inside information and sufficient characterisation to make them enjoyable. But they became increasingly formulaic to the point of being repetitive and displayed ever more conservative attitudes—understandable perhaps in one who rode for the late Queen Mother.
It has emerged that the books were practically written by Francis’s wife, Mary, who researched and developed them. When she died the job was taken over by his son Felix, who continued to write them after his father’s race was run.
I is for incest. This taboo subject does not figure much in crime fiction. However, two American taboo-defiers, James M. Cain and Jim Thompson, were preoccupied with the subject. Cain is said to have begun, and abandoned, a literary novel dealing with incest. His book The Butterfly (1946) is about it. Thompson, probably a victim of child abuse and certainly a witness to it, writes about incest in Heed the Thunder (1946) and The Alcoholics (1953) and touches on it in other works.
I is also for India. A number of writers, Indian and non-Indian, have set stories on the subcontinent but India has not achieved the popularity of the Scandinavian setting (see N for Nordic). Perhaps the most successful series of novels set in India are those of H.R.F. ‘Harry’ Keating about Inspector G.V. Ghote of the Bombay police (The Perfect Murder, 1964, and following). Keating avoided two pitfalls of writing about Indian characters—parody and condescension.
I is also for indigenous. The first notable indigenous detective was Australian—Arthur Upfield’s Napoleon Bonaparte. In a series of novels in the 1930s and 40s, Upfield had great success with part-Aboriginal (white father, black mother—the reverse would have been unthinkable at the time) Bonaparte. The books were distinguished by their accurate descriptions of the Australian bush. They were well-intentioned but racist, in that Upfield seemed unaware of the patronising condescension in the character’s name (harking back to the deplorable days of the ‘King Billy’ brass nameplates given to Aboriginal elders) and making Bonaparte’s intellectual abilities (he held an MA) attributable to his white ancestry while his instinctive talents came from the black side. The books are almost unreadable now on this account and for their sexism, stereotypical characters and stilted dialogue. However, Upfield’s books sold well in England and America.
Thirty years ago, at a writing conference in Stockholm, American author Tony Hillerman told me he’d been influenced by Upfield’s books, serialised in the Saturday Evening Post. If so, and he wasn’t just being nice to an Australian a long way from home who only had two books to his credit, this was the best thing Upfield did. Hillerman’s best-selling and award-winning novels about Navajo tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee really put the indigenous detective on the map. Books like The Blessing Way (1970) and others combine a profound understanding of Native American culture with sound crime-writing technique.
Hillerman’s books have been much imitated and there are now other indigenous investigators on the scene such as Inuits and, for all I know, Ainu and Veddas.
I is also for insanity. Insanity often plays a part in crime novels: sometimes as a motivation, sometimes as an excuse. Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep is insane, but compassionate Philip Marlowe believes she can be cured. Howard Hughes is insane in James Ellroy’s White Jazz (1992) and American Tabloid (1995) and cannot be redeemed—but that’s Ellroy. And Hughes.
Insane characters provided backdrop until Thomas Harris placed Hannibal Lecter centre-stage in Red Dragon (1981) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988). Mad, cannibalistic Lecter is like a force of nature—preternaturally intelligent and vicious, the energetic focus of the books’ plots, although in captivity for much of the time. It’s hard to imagine how he could be surpassed as a sociopath and psychopath. Unfortunately, in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, Harris overplayed his hand.
I is also for internet. Like other technological advances (see E for email, M for mobile phone, P for photograph and T for texting), the internet has had a profound effect on the plotting and texture of crime fiction. Investigators and criminals now have vast amounts of data literally at their fingertips and much plodding work can be avoided. It cuts both ways, with brilliant law-enforcement computer technicians vying with crazed criminal geeks.
Typically, characters like Harry Bosch and Jack Reacher have only a nodding acquaintance with the technology. Their talents lie elsewhere.
I is also for ‘in the wind’. This is a term in American crime fiction for a character who has gone into hiding or whose whereabouts are unknown.
J is for Jack the Ripper. Probably no series of crimes has inspired so many books, fiction and non-fiction, as the Whitechapel murders of 1888 in which five prostitutes were killed and mutilated. The perpetrator was never found. The name ‘Jack the Ripper’ was signed to a note sent to the London police, purporting to be from the killer. It was almost certainly a hoax but the name stuck.
Serious study of the crimes is known as Ripperology and two notable examples of works that attempt to identify the Ripper are Stephen Knight’s Jack the Ripper: The final solution (1976) and Patricia Cornwell’s Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, case closed (2002). Candidates for the perpetrator have included Prince Albert (the grandson of Queen Victoria), artist Walter Sickert, royal physician Sir William Gull and professional cricketer Montague Druitt. Frederick Deeming, who killed women and children in England and Australia and was hanged in Victoria, has also been proposed as a possible culprit.
The list of novels dealing with the crimes is very long and has drawn in historical figures such as Oscar Wilde and fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes.
J could also be for jail but no one much spells it that way these days.
J could be for jogging (see E for exercise) or joke (see H for homicide) but it’s also for journalist. Journalists stand very low in social esteem, down with used-car salesmen apparently, but they rate much more highly with crime writers. They are very useful characters as the holders and purveyors of information. Investigators can use their knowledge as a shortcut to gaining an understanding of people and circumstances and use their publishing power to further a cause, as in Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005, and following).
Journalists make very good partners for male detectives because of their contacts, but also conflicts of interest can arise between the journalist’s need to publish and the investigator’s need for security. This can make for dramatic clashes and resolutions as well as providing a desirable balance.
But times have changed and the internet has reduced the usefulness of journalists to investigators. Female journalists are also now more likely to be in the visual, rather than the print media, which has had the effect of making them better looking but dumber. A book making critical use of a TV journalist is Lee Child’s One Shot (2005). Unhappily, t
his didn’t make it a good book.
J is also for juries. These are crucially important in American crime novels, as the death penalty is still a possibility, less so in civilised countries where it has long been scrapped. John Grisham’s The Runaway Jury (1996) focuses on the bizarre US system of jury selection and manipulation. Juries are also central to Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller series of novels, starting with The Lincoln Lawyer (2005, and following) (see C for courtroom drama).
J is also for justice. Justice is assumed to be blind or capricious in crime novels, otherwise there would be no need for ethical lawyers, honest cops and private investigators.
K is for knife. The knife is a ‘wet work’ murder weapon with a lot to recommend it—a silent operation if properly delivered, the possibility of fingerprints and DNA, blood typing (rendered less useful by the discovery of DNA), and distinctive shapes and cutting edges allowing different white-coated experts to parade their knowledge. As the title suggests, Jonathan Kellerman’s The Butcher’s Theatre (1988) makes good use of knives, and of course they come into play in any book based on the Whitechapel murders.
It’s worth noting that knives are the only weapons that give Jack Reacher qualms, before he starts breaking wrists and arms and dislocating shoulders.
In cases of domestic fatalities, knives are usually found in kitchens.
K is also for knight and squire. This is a term coined by Barry Maitland for pairings such as Colin Dexter’s Morse and Lewis, Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe, and Ruth Rendell’s Wexford and Burden. It was to get away from this formula that Maitland chose to use the male and female team of Brock and Kolla in his police procedural series (The Marx Sisters, 1994, and following), although it should be noted that in romantic historical fiction squires sometimes turn out to be women, with obvious consequences.
