Sleepwalking Murder in Fact & Fiction

My brother was a sleepwalker, and I still remember with unease my childhood encounters with him in the night--appearing silently in my room, shuffling past down a dark hall, mumbling to unseen companions as he moved blind-eyed through his dream world. The strange phenomenon of sleepwalking has been the basis for real and fictional murder mysteries. One of the most famous cases of homicidal sleepwalking was that of Kenneth James Parks, a married 23-year-old Canadian man who left his bed in the early morning hours of May 1987, and, still asleep, drove to his in-laws' home where he assaulted his father-in-law and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. The next thing he said he could recall was arriving at the police station, saying “I think I have killed some people...” Despite skepticism of his sleepwalking defense, his consistent story, lack of motive, the testimony of sleep specialists and abnormal EEG readings resulted in his acquittal by a jury. Sleepwalking has captivated fictional mystery writers as well. In last year's The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian, Annalee Ahlberg goes missing, and her daughters assume another sleepwalking incident. Annalee's husband flies home from a business trip, and search parties comb the nearby woods, but only a small swatch of nightshirt fabric hanging from a tree branch is found. Drawn to a detective who continues to stop by, her older daughter begins to wonder about the detective's motives, why no body has been found, and why incidents seem to occur when her father is absent. Another eerie entry from 2013 is The Nightwalker by Sebastian Fitzek: Leon Nader had been violent as a young man while sleepwalking but believes he has been cured by psychiatric treatment—until his wife disappears from their apartment. Nader fits a movement-activated camera to his forehead, and when he looks at the video the next morning, he makes an unimaginable discovery about his nocturnal personality. In 2011, B. Michael Radburn published The Crossing set in Tasmania. Traumatized by the disappearance of his daughter, Taylor Bridges' marriage breaks down, and he exiles himself to Tasmania's Glorys Crossing as the only national park ranger in an isolated town slowly disappearing under the rising waters of a new dam project. Taylor is a chronic sleepwalker, and when another young girl of the same age as his lost daughter goes missing, he begins to worry about his unknown behavior while sleepwalking. Among the more traditional novels about sleepwalking homicide are The Ivory Dagger by Patricia Wentworth, in which her sleuth Miss Silver solves the case of a young woman, prone to sleepwalking, who is accused of murdering her wealthy (but disagreeable) fiance, and I've Heard That Song Before by Mary Higgins Clark, in which a young woman who begins to doubt her new husband's suspicious nighttime wanderings, especially since he is connected with a vanished former girlfriend, a drowned wife, and bodies newly discovered on his estate. For more true stories of homicidal sleepwalking, see https://www.thoughtco.com/homicidal-sleepwalking-is-it-real-4098185

Can Illegitimacy Drive Modern Mystery Plots?

Illegitimacy and the consequential stigmas of extramarital children have played a key role in the works of great authors, including Shakespeare, Voltaire, Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Hardy, to name but a few. Some noted mystery writers also have used out-of-wedlock birth as a plot centerpiece, including Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White and Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors. But there's no arguing that times have changed. As of 2015, 40.3% of all births in the U.S. occurred outside of marriage (compared with 7% in 1940). And today's illegitimacy rates are even higher for most European countries. The majority of births (over 50%) are outside of marriage in Iceland, Estonia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Portugal, and nearly half of births also are extramarital in the Netherlands, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Belgium, Hungary, Spain, Austria and Finland. As out-of-wedlock birth has become more commonplace, the social and legal status of illegitimate children, unwed mothers and cohabiting couples has improved. In the United States, for example, U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1970s found that most legal disabilities imposed on illegitimacy violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. Yet extramarital children can still provide mystery writers with murder motives. Even the old "Secret Shame" plot can be updated. For example, while illegitimacy alone may no longer be as socially unacceptable, illegitimacy resulting from other taboos--such as incest, rape or even adultery--can create a secret that someone will murder to conceal or avenge. Another plot device that still resonates is "The Unwanted Heir." When there is an inheritance to divide, even legitimate siblings can turn on each other, and a family outsider who stakes a claim can spark more than rude confrontations. "Cain and Abel" is one of the oldest plots around, so it's easy to imagine bitter feelings between marital and extramarital siblings going to lethal lengths as they vie with each other for social status, financial gain or parental affection. Finally, there's the traditional "Revenge" plot. Although many loving couples raise happy children outside of marriage today, there are less sanguine situations in which the violent feelings of a spurned lover, a betrayed spouse or an abandoned child can lead to murder. For more famous fiction works with an illegitimacy theme, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimacy_in_fiction

How Universal Fears Power Mystery Writing

The "dark and stormy night" is a cliché illustration of how writers appeal to universal fears to heighten suspense. Just look at the National Institute of Mental Health's list of the 10 most common phobias: fear of public speaking, fear of death or dying, fear of spiders, fear of darkness, fear of heights, fear of socializing or being in a crowded place, fear of flying, fear of confined spaces, fear of being unable to escape an open place, and fear of thunder and lightning. So let's set the scene with our protagonist trapped in a dark closet crawling with spiders while thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, and a killer lurks on the other side of the door! That's the stuff of a B movie, but good writers do the same thing more subtly. Consider author Stephen King's cogent remarks about fear in the introduction to his short-story collection Night Shift: “Fear is the emotion that makes us blind. How many things are we afraid of? We’re afraid to turn off the lights when our hands are wet. We’re afraid to stick a knife into the toaster to get the stuck English muffin without unplugging it first. We’re afraid of what the doctor may tell us when the physical exam is over; when the airplane suddenly takes a great unearthly lurch in midair. We’re afraid that the oil may run out, that the good air will run out, the good water, the good life.... Fear makes us blind, and we touch each fear with all the avid curiosity of self-interest, trying to make a whole out of a hundred parts. We sense the shape. Children grasp it easily, forget, and relearn it as adults. The shape is there, and most of us come to realize what it is sooner or later: it is the shape of a body under a sheet." Horror writers and murder mystery writers approach that mortal fear from different angles, perhaps because of the nature of their readers. The murder mystery reader handles fear of "a body under a sheet" by turning it into an intellectual puzzle to solve; and while thrills along the way make the puzzle-solving exciting, the mystery reader's strong sense of justice and order demands a resolution of fear, that the evil threat is punished and removed. For mystery writers, fear's blinding quality is also a great way to distract readers from clues to the who, how and why. But I also would hope that by facing fears in fiction, readers can deal better with fears in real life. Cue Dr. Robert L. Leahy, psychiatrist and author of the lauded The Worry Cure and Anxiety Free: Unravel Your Fears Before They Unravel You. One of his suggested ways to cope with fear: "Turn your anxiety into a movie (or a book, I would add). You can let go of a worry by disconnecting yourself from it... sit in the audience, eating popcorn, a calm observer." For more of Leahy's advice, see http://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/emotional-health/ten-ways-to-cope-with-anxiety-00000000021548/index.html