Sunday, April 14, 2013 - North Shore News - A7
A red herring in the library with the butler WHODUNIT? Who cares?
That’s what a friend of mine says when the topic of mystery novels comes up. The process of solving a fictional crime, no matter how heinous, is of no interest to her whatsoever. Nor can she understand what it is about such books that grips millions of people so tightly. My husband Stanley, on the other hand, simply can’t stand the suspense at the core of the whodunit genre (which, to my mind, includes detective fiction, crime fiction, and thrillers). He doesn’t like to relinquish control of his emotions to some manipulative typist — or film director — with no restrictions on his or her imagination and a strong impulse to scare strangers. There are all kinds of reasons not to read these books. But for those of us who are hooked, it’s a combination of factors that gets us going. There’s the adrenalin of coming upon the crime scene itself, then our compulsive gathering of the clues, and red herrings, that a deft writer strews around the scene. There are the insights we get into the psychology of both the flawed investigator and the heartless killer, and the adventure of the pursuit. An evocative setting and believable secondary characters further the appeal
Going Coastal
Kate Zimmerman of a taut plot. A good detective book is a challenge, a great mystery writer the consummate tease. Of course, his or her protagonist is going to solve the riddle of whodunit before we do — but maybe not. Do we really delude ourselves into thinking that this time, we’ll be able to out-fox Scotland Yard’s Detective Chief-Inspector Adam Dalgliesh (protagonist of more than a dozen P.D. James novels), and tie things up before the expert does, with time to spare for a ploughman’s lunch? Do we honestly believe that if only we didn’t find bloody carcasses nauseating and reassembling bones tedious, our brainpower would leave Kathy Reichs’ forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan’s in the dust? Just call us optimists. We’re also reading (and
watching) this stuff for the background details. In contemporary British mysteries like those by James, the locations are usually historic, architecturally outstanding, wind-blown, saltwater damp or fireside cozy. The gumshoes, when they’re not hoisting a few while feeling distaste for something-or-other, spend their off-hours admiring old buildings and tromping the moors. For me, their treks are a welcome mental getaway and whaddaya know — they usually either stumble on evidence or reach a crucial conclusion while they’re at it. The hardboiled works of Raymond Chandler (d. 1959), though much different in tone, are set in equally rich and compelling terrain: dark, decadent, alcohol-soaked corners of otherwise glaring L.A. Chandler’s cynical detective Philip Marlowe regularly slides out of the heat and into a cool bottle of bourbon, allowing him to make such observations as “It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.” (I suppose I ought to be grateful that I can’t say that about Lynn Valley.) Unlike me, blogger Arial Ramchandani, of moreintelligentlife.com, finds the behind-the-scenes in most crime fiction rather dreary. “Downtime in murder mysteries is inevitably a bit
awkward, a place for hateful tea-sipping in country estates, relentless self-examining and the occasional romantic tryst,” she writes. For her, the second volume of the late Stieg Larsson’s famous Millennium Trilogy is a welcome departure. There, the hilariously detail-driven Swedish author has his anarchic, pierced, tattooed heroine Lisbeth Salander lavish some of her leisure hours on a massive shopping spree at her local IKEA. He actually lists each of her purchases by name. “The result is sheer consumerist poetry, banal and familiar,” says Ramchandani. This scene actually seems interminable while you’re reading it, though the thought of fierce, impatient Lisbeth Salander having to assemble a Svansbo coffee table sure takes her down a few pegs. Maybe that was Larsson’s intention, to give Salander the same middle-class
backdrop as your average investigator, in or out of fiction. One of the most important qualities of a good detective is that she (or he) is not a snob — no matter what the level of her intelligence, or how snarky her persona, she can infiltrate any level of society when required. I can’t tell you who solves the crime in the bestseller Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, because that would be cruel. Man, what a ride. Flynn is a former TV critic for Entertainment Weekly and her grasp of popular culture helps make this read feel upto-the-minute. It tells the tale of a picture-perfect couple, Nick and Amy Dunne, who’ve recently moved to Missouri from New York. The uprooting has been stressful. The pair is set to celebrate its fifth anniversary when Nick arrives home to find his domicile a shambles and his pretty wife gone. Has she been kidnapped?
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Murdered? And if so, why? Amy was made famous by her psychologist parents’ popular children’s book series about a well-behaved girl they called Amazing Amy. Her disappearance therefore constitutes a celebrity story, preyed upon by TV opinionmakers with agendas of their own. If whodunits are your thing, this is a must-read. If they aren’t, that’s a mystery to me. kate@katezimmerman.ca
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It’s National Immunization AwarenessWeek in Canada from April 20-27. One hundred years ago, infectious diseases were the leading cause of death DARYL worldwide. In Canada, PHARMACIST they now causes less than 5% of all deaths... thanks to immunization programs across our country. We hear a lot about cutting down our salt intake. Some sources say Canadians eat too much salt, sometimes double the recommended 1500 mg daily maximum. Our bodies need only 1000 mg daily to function.To put that visually, that’s around a half teaspoonful. Something to think about at our next meal. Take charge of your own health. Let our pharmacists be part of your health team
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