Let Detective Sidekicks Take a Bow

Most mystery readers enjoy imagining themselves with the sharp detective wits of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Endeavour Morse or Inspector Thomas Lynley. I'm sure emulation is a lot rarer for the sidekicks of those noted fictional sleuths, who are, in order, Dr. John Watson, Captain Arthur Hastings, Detective Sergeant (DS) Robbie Lewis and DS Barbara Havers. But sidekicks play a very important role. Imagine the mystery plot without them! A sidekicks helps move along the plot by engaging with the main detective character to convey thoughts and feelings quickly and conversationally, by acting as a sounding board for theories and courses of action, and by delivering both red herrings and hot leads. The "duo" concept moves the plot much more naturally and interestingly than if the writer had to resort to big chunks of internal monologue to provide clues and revelations! Sometimes the sidekick can even take over as narrator (reliable or unreliable) a la Dr. Watson. The sidekick narrator, always close to the action, is especially useful in artfully placing clues while keeping the detective's inner process veiled right up to the climax. All sidekicks also offer a way to humanize or deepen the main detective's character by adding humor, emotional interaction, personality contrast, or social commentary. The loyal sidekick can smooth off-putting traits of a complex lead detective, such as Holmes' cold arrogance, Poirot's petty fussiness, Morse's morose overthinking, Lynley's aristocratic maleness. And, of course, sidekicks can be very useful as agents for sudden twists and exciting confrontations and rescues. If you want to meet more mystery fiction sidekicks, in addition to the well-known sleuthing teams noted above (from the pens of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Colin Dexter and Elizabeth George), see Wikipedia's list of detective teams at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_detective_teams and Colin Dexter's favorite sidekicks: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1383782/Dr-Watson-Detective-Sergeant-Lewis-Colin-Dexter-greatest-sleuthing-sidekicks.html

Senior Lady Sleuths: Gray Locks Join Gray Matter

Now that I'm joining the ranks of senior citizens in a few years (I'm holding off true membership till age 65), I find myself more interested in mystery tales featuring older lady sleuths. Of course, Agatha Christie's Miss Jane Marple, the shrewdly observant spinster of St. Mary Mead, has an international fan base. And Jessica Fletcher, Donald Bain's retired English teacher and novelist, even won a TV following for the "Murder, She Wrote" series. There are many other outstanding examples: M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin, a retired PR agent turned PI; globe-trotting Mrs. Emily Pollifax, grandmother and spy, of the eponymous Dorothy Gilman series; and Eugenia Potter, widowed chef and star of the culinary cozy mysteries of Virginia Rich and Nancy Pickard. I wondered if there was some special set of skills offered by older ladies to make them appealing to mystery writers. And I came up with five reasons a mystery author might choose to create a gray-haired female detective. For one thing, as retirees, and often widows or spinsters, older women have more time to devote to detection without the constant, complicating drag of career and/or family on character and plot. Second, their judgment can be informed by age rather than years of police training, so they can draw on long experience with personal and social interactions to pick up the subtle clues to murder. Third, these fictional characters can be freed by age, maturely comfortable in their own skins and less constrained by worry over social conventions and sexual politics. This allows authors to create an eccentric, independent, adventurous or even comical character that would be less believable as a 20-something or 30-something heroine. Fourth, older ladies can approach evil obliquely and catch it unawares, because there are few people seen as less threatening than a grandmother or maiden aunt. And, finally, these fictional sleuths are not just older people, they are older women. Even today, most societies reward men for action, control and dominance, and encourage women to be more observant, emotionally attuned and socially participant. Female detectives can turn that gender bias into an advantage in terms of honed human observational skills. For some more senior sleuths, check out author Chris Well's post at http://chriswellnovelist.blogspot.com/2010/07/retirement-is-murder-10-senior-sleuths.html

Flashbulb Memories and Our National Psyche

We are about to embark on commemorations of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, reliving sights and stories that already seem indelibly burned into the national psyche. In the past, I have found that conversations about the now 15-year-old trauma include asking each other "Where were you when...?" And most people relate an especially vivid, emotional recollection of events. This phenomenon is what psychologists call a "flashbulb memory." People tend to have a detailed recollection of not only where they were when the dramatic public event occurred, but what they felt, what they saw, what they said, who they were with, etc. Other shared "flashbulb memory" experiences would include President John F. Kennedy's assassination, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, or even Princess Diana's death. These public traumas were unexpected, horrific and tapped strong feelings about an iconic person, institution or symbol. The emotional intersection between the personal and the public creates vivid memories, psychologists agree, but are such flashbulb memories really accurate, unchanging snapshots of our experience? Not exactly. Extensive research findings about 9/11 memories, for example, indicate that many of us forget or falsely remember more than we realize, both in terms of facts and emotional reactions. Those few who are closer physically and mentally to a public tragedy are apt to have more accurate recall than the majority who experience the event at a remove, say via televised reports. Yet, factual or not, the strong emotional context does have an especially deep impact on our minds, creating recollections that stand as landmarks in our personal and national stories. When revisiting your own 9/11 "flashbulb memories" in conversations this weekend, you can reflect on their accuracy while discussing them with others. But I bet the power of these memories will not be diminished by conflicting facts. Their emotional resonance is their truth, creating our shared popular history. For an interesting article on flashbulb memory studies, including those from 9/11, read http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/09/memories.aspx

Partners in Detection: Crime-Solving Couples

We're heading for the Labor Day weekend of family barbecues, end-of-summer trips and last-of-summer reading indulgences. So why not combine family and mystery themes with detective fiction that features married teams? After all, the detective couple is a cherished tradition. The era of mystery classics gave us Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence Beresford and Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles. More recently conceived sleuthing couples range from Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt in the foggy streets of Victorian London to Lt. Eve Dallas and husband Roarke fighting crime in the futuristic New York of the "in Death" series by J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts). Closer to our current time and place, there is the husband-wife team of Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock in the FBI Thriller series by Catherine Coulter and Faye Kellerman's LAPD Lt. Peter Decker and his Orthodox Jewish wife Rina Lazarus. What do couples have to offer readers that the lone detective can't deliver? Well, there is the spice of romance (yes, married people are still lovers, even outside of fiction) and the opportunity to add character interest--either extra tension/distrust (when the couple is in a rough patch) or amusing banter/camaraderie (when things are copacetic). Second, a sleuthing couple allows the author to combine mystery-solving styles to good effect; for example, one may be emotionally and socially intuitive, while the other is more scientific or legalistic. (If you assumed that the first description fits the wife and the second fits the husband, remember that good writers confound stereotypes.) Finally, the plot tension with a crime-solving couple is literally doubled as each half of the duo risks both personal safety and that of a loved one by confronting evil. For some more partners in detection, check out http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2013/01/novel-crime-solving-couples-corrina-lawson-geekmom-harriet-vane-eve-dallas