Thursday, May 19, 2016

'Poison Pens' Find Dangerous Cyber Power

The poison pen letter has been a plot device in some classic murder mysteries. For example, Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night and Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger featured these cruel communications--anonymous notes sent to the targeted recipient or third parties to humiliate, intimidate and discredit. A pen and ink letter seems quaint in this digital age. But the malice of the poison pen not only still exists, it has been further empowered by technology. Cyberbullying is one modern manifestation. Hurtful words and images can be unleashed 24/7 with free, anonymous clicks and delivered to large online and mobile social networks. The consequences have been especially devastating for vulnerable teenagers. Statistics show that 15% of high school students reported they were victims of cyberbullies in 2013, and the rising number of highly publicized teen suicides due to cyberbullying has sparked national concern. Some well-known mystery authors have taken note and incorporated cyberbullying in their plots. Start with Val McDermid's Splinter the Silence, featuring psychologist Tony Hill and former police detective Carol Jordan. The plot centers on the mysterious deaths of several outspoken feminists who were the victims of vicious cyberbullying. It is assumed that the torrent of abuse overwhelmed them and caused them to silence themselves in high-profile suicides. But Hill begins to see something even more sinister at work. In Roadside Crosses by Jeffery Deaver, his protagonist Kathryn Dance of the California Bureau of Investigation is called in when roadside crosses start appearing along the highways of the Monterey Peninsula--not as memorials to past accidents but as markers for fatalities to come. After the driver in a recent fatal car crash, a gaming-obsessed teen who’s been the target of cyberbullies, vanishes, Dance's manhunt takes her into the illusory world of bloggers, social networks and cyberbullying. Finally, veteran mystery writer Nevada Barr has penned Boar Island (an Anna Pigeon Mystery). Anna Pigeon, a National Park Service Ranger, finds out that the adopted teenage daughter of a friend is being victimized by cyberbullies and offers an escape by asking them to join her at her new post in Maine's Acadia National Park, staying in a house on nearby Boar Island. But a cyberstalker follows them, and soon Anna is dealing with a brutal murder as well. For more information about cyberbullying, read https://www.stopbullying.gov/cyberbullying/what-is-it/


Thursday, May 12, 2016

'Psychic Detectives' Only Shine in Fiction

A popular mystery subgenre features "psychic detectives," folks who help solve crimes with paranormal skills such as precognition or postcognition (extrasensory perception of future or past), psychometry (psychic info from objects), telepathy (mind reading), and "spirit medium" contact with the dead, including murder victims. These books offer a path to justice that is not blinded by the here and now, reading the secret thoughts of witnesses, culprits and victims, and detecting a crime unlimited by time, space or death itself. Psychic detectives certainly have won a place in popular culture--as seen from TV dramas and "reality" shows, such as NBC's "Medium" and Court TV's "Psychic Detectives," as well as repeated psychic detective appearances on hit talk shows. An example of a successful mystery series built around psychic detectives is Kay Hooper's Bishop/Special Crimes Unit (including her Shadows, Evil, Fear, Blood, and Haven trilogies). Yet, while fascinating to imagine, psychic detecting in real life has been repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers. Evidence of psychic crime-solving often turns out to have been fed to an uncritical media by the psychics themselves rather than independent sources. The police, FBI, and victim families consistently deny psychics' claimed involvement and helpfulness. Even successful psychic insights tend to use generality, ambiguity and probability to boost the 50/50 success rate of guesswork. Take a prediction that a missing person will be found dead in/near woods/field/water (depending on local landscape), and that someone with a close personal connection is involved. Such a prediction is likely to pan out because a person mysteriously missing for a length of time is usually dead, most people are killed by someone they know, and missing bodies are dumped in out-of-sight places--but that's hardly a revelation to police. Many reports of psychic achievement then benefit from historical reconstruction; vague claims become specific, misfires are ignored or replaced with correct predictions, and fabrications become facts. Nevertheless, the fictional fascination with psychics continues because popular authors offer some fun reads, including writers such as Kay Hooper, Heather Graham, Charlaine Harris and Victoria Laurie. After all, a psychic character and an omniscient author are playing much the same role. For a psychic mystery sampling, see http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/super-super-natural-mystery-novels-on-the-cozy-mystery-site-psychics-6th-sense.html



Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Injecting Poison Into the Mystery Plot

Poison is a rare murder weapon statistically but not fictionally. And here's a case where mystery plots may be more revealing than crime data. Many homicidal poisonings go undetected per experts, and only one in five verified murders by poisoning is ever solved. As an introduction to the topic, read The Poisoner's Handbook by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Deborah Blum. It's a historical thriller about how a medical examiner and toxicologist team uses trailblazing forensic science to bring to justice poisoners in early twentieth-century New York, setting new standards for forensic detection along the way. Structured as a series of linked stories about poison death investigations, it was a finalist for the 2010 Agatha Award for nonfiction and a New York Times bestseller in 2011. Or, you can turn to fictional inspiration. Agatha Christie counted many poison victims in her mystery books, from Cards on the Table, in which an evil doctor salts anthrax on a shaving brush to kill with a razor nick, to The Pale Horse, where tasteless, odorless thallium is the poison of choice. Another British mystery queen, P.D. James, used insecticide in a whiskey to poison a trainee in a nursing home in Shroud for a Nightingale. But how close are the fictional mysteries to real poisonings? Author-scientist Blum lists carbon monoxide, arsenic, radium, cyanide, nicotine, aconite, chloroform, mercury and thallium (kudos, Agatha) among her favorite poisons from historical homicides. And based on convicted poisoners (recognizing that they represent the minority of poisoners who have been caught), criminal profilers can say that, contrary to the popular notion that poison is a woman's weapon, the majority of convicted poisoners are male. The homicidal poisoner is also more likely to be in the medical field (doctor, nurse, lab technician) or in a care-taking role (wife, mother, nursing home attendant) where he or she has ready access to poisonous means and vulnerable, trusting victims. Psychological profiling of convicted poisoners shows that they tend to be clever, methodical, self-centered, emotionally immature and certainly unburdened by morality and empathy. And they are sneaky, often skillfully masking their true natures by pretending to be a loving spouse or caring nurse. For examples of more famous poisonings in literature, check out http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/16/ten-best-poisonings-john-mullan