Tag Archives: detective stories

THE INVENTION OF MURDER

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BY BOOKJudith Flanders

The story of murder in the Nineteenth Century promises more than this book gives. In Nineteenth Century England an active swirl surrounds death, accusation, murder, trial and execution. According to the book not many murders happened, but enough gained public attention. Some stories survived decades; one Seventeenth century death was picked up during the Nineteenth century and used. The Invention seems to tell this story. It does in the first 110 pages when I stopped reading repeat actions and stories of death, accusation, etc… Victorian England had to be a dull place for the masses and the middling peoples to be enthralled by this sort of deviancy.

What could interest me in this book’s subject was developing detection of crimes and causes into evidence presented in court. This is no indication that this knowledge or ways were of interest, but the same trip, all well-put down. However, this book is neither a cultural anthropology nor a sociology. It is one telling of death, one after another, as though the public insisted upon new deaths to become sensational to engage them. One prays for the public’s interest to be distracted – like professional sports, largely a Twentieth Century invention coming from America.

How to judge this for The Invention? From a case that lasted decades, any reader and watcher of bit plays, would expect the basic facts of death, accusations, etc to be used as procedures and processes of detection became sophisticated; those ways and means would be written into the story as the time from the events distanced. Note the criminal is not the protagonist; nor is the victim. But investigators become prominent and their methods interesting. MORALE: the bad people are caught and punished.

In the one telling of a 1840’s murder, the story, according to the book, had to be close to the real facts for a long time. What Victorians seemed to like was thoroughly retro and religious: Repetition of accepted facts and outcomes as though to reassert the foundations of the purity, the justice and righteousness of their society. No one has to read 480 pages of that. However, writers might be expected to mention and use changing methods of detection. Those writers did not exist.

By 1894 Conan Doyle changed crime and detective stories, and decades of more nonsense followed. Raymond Chandler’s writing analyzes some of that, chopping up popular, misleading detective stories for readers to observe the nonsense. Chandler used current methods changing criminal investigations and writing. And what of detective stories today, and of the last 25 years? Can anyone spell DNA?

CALL FOR THE DEAD

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John Le Carre

This short book is instructive and a delight to read. 

1. For writers who have wondered about the differences between detective stories and espionage tales, this story, having both, is an example.

2.  For writing wondering how much dialogue to put into a story and where, this story    presents  dialogue judiciously well. There are no frills. The dialogue advances the story.

3.  Writers wondering about description by using adjectives, a phrase or a prepositional phrase, the scenery and the characters are further developed by description.

This writing advances each story well until the stories break into their constituent parts. It seems like a free for all, except bad guys (or spies) are identified or caught and the success of the espionage is identified and analyzed. 

The story revolves around the death of a British civil servant who is identified as a possible security risk. An interview with George Smiley causes his East German handlers to kill the civil servant and everyone else associated with him. Murder is committed to insure security (espionage) but some of the acts are unnecessary and criminal. Not much is investigated about each course. Smiley predicts who will be the next victims. I suppose the story does not need Smiley’s report to his superiors in the last chapter: It is a reminder that espionage is a dangerous business.   

CRIME 3: STUPIDITIES

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When I watch real crime shows sometimes the stupidness of victims, cops, witnesses, friends and family, jump out, are truly incomprehensible, inexplicable mind-numbing and appalling. Herein I will attempt to give as many facts as I can remember, which are or seem connected to the incidences presented on the tube, to describe and define the utter failure of human behavior and investigation.

In April 2017 and in July 2017 I published CRIME I and CRIME 2. CRIME 3 is my latest summary of aberrant, decadent, deceptive behavior.

I. Fifty year old girlfriend has hot relationship with victim and plans to move to Florida with him. She leaves for the day. When she returns to his house, where she had been staying; boyfriend is not there. Girlfriend is crushed. She walks around the house. She sees boyfriend-victim inside. He does not move to her knocking. She believes he is ignoring her. She goes to a bar, has a few drinks and is disgusted he won’t answer the phone. She returns to her house, heartbroken. Three days later boyfriend’s daughter calls a friend who checks the house. The police get involved.
When girlfriend was knocking on the door and seeing boyfriend inside, murderers of
boyfriend were hiding inside. If girlfriend were aware and was not crushed, she was awake and engaged, she only had to call 9ll, wait and expect the crime to be stopped. NOPE.

II. Regarding Wills. A woman kills a second husband, also using anti-freeze. She goes to a
friend after the death; friend witnesses a new will of the second husband. Does perjury come to mind? How about forgery? How about conspiracy? How about civil actions of conversion and conspiracy? Would no one notice any of these acts in an investigation of the husband’s death?

III. Too dumb. Man marries a childhood sweetheart as soon as possible. A kid came. Financial hardship. Divorce. Other partners. Husband has no idea how to handle exes and his present women. His IQ descends to 61, but no one who knows or associated with him sees his decline. While visiting with his ex, he is shot in the chest with a shotgun, but the verdict is manslaughter – 12 year sentence. Nobody can believe the victim’s behaviors in life. The ex-wife serves only two years of the 12.
The apparent moral of the story: A murderer can kill as many stupid human beings as she wants.

IV. Two family murders, or relive your childhood. Mother-daughter, father-son forget all sense of family. They are comfortable because they are familiar with each other. And frequently it is the parents who succumbs to the child’s violent actions and ways of thinking. The murderous parents learn that telling lies as an adult is less convincing and less excused than lying as a teenager.

V. No one can understand unless they’ve gone through a horrible crime (rape, kidnapping, home invasion, etc.) themselves. This statement has nothing to do with solving a crime, and is irrelevant. It is also WRONG. People who say such things have no imaginations; they do not understand the significance and importance of books and intelligence. Law enforcement understands enough, or more, to capture such criminals. Novelists, non-fiction writer and journalists must understand to relay the stories.

VI. A woman can have a high IQ, be bright and engaging, have a promising imagination, be the star of her school, garner awards and achievements, and be in a lucrative profession. Next, the world learns this woman is a complete moron about love – dating bad boys, failing to use her intelligence to discriminate, differentiate and judge among men, and finding herself at great disadvantages physically, mentally and emotionally.
MORAL: A woman should use her strengths to investigate and decide before socially
engaging.

VII. Female victim works at a donut shop. She’s likable. Cops patronize the shop. Victim is
found dead. During the investigation the same cops find the body but don’t or can’t
identify her.

VIII. Do not rely on any person to kill another. If captured, the killer always talks and you’re screwed. Do not try from jail or prison, to have someone on the outside killed. Fellow inmates are not reliable, and THEY are hearing everything.

IX. Older men/younger women. It is easy to deceive the woman. Inexperience. Guy is no
good if he has no money. He will be insecure and possessive. He will demand she love
him always. Don’t mother him.
The woman usually jumps at the chance for security, and perhaps a kid. But the old man
can’t do everything she wants. That blank in a women’s life, a huge area for mischief
and wrongful acts, usually is.

X. Do not have long term relationships, and not many short term encounters, currently
known as “friends with benefits.” That will become the first social connection the cops
will find and stick to as a motive for murder.

XI. The odors and smells in morgues and around corpses are why deodorants, air fresheners and strong cleaners are used. Those products also cover up animal smells for humans who keep pets. But if there are no pets and the cleaning smells are present, there is likely a dead human nearby.

XII. Parents, especially mothers, should not sleep with their children. The children will never learn independence, self-reliance or gain confidence -physically, psychologically and emotionally. These arrangements may open a road to crime: These children will not grow up to be complete, mature human beings.

XIII. Do not murder someone and a few days later go to the police station wearing the same clothes for an interview about the killing. The cops will notice and arrest you.

XIV. If you have a criminal business that provides you with a decent income, and the cops don’t seem interested in you, don’t commit other crimes like murder, rape, kidnapping or assaultive robbery. You’ll be arrested and the whole enterprise will shut down.

XV. Idiocy in California. Sister and drug-addicted brother live together in city. She is a
graduate student. He gets her started on drugs. With her remaining wits she finds a
boyfriend and plans to move to New York City to live with him. Brother does not like
that; sister goes missing. Thereafter, brother withdraws money from her account and forges her checks to support his drug habit.
Parents call cops. Sister/daughter is missing. Cops have found her car; they do not
process it. They go to daughter’s apartment; brother/son refuses their entry. They leave
and wait.
Family arrives. They cannot find daughter/sister.
They move from the apartment. Cops get a search warrant after brother/son and
family leave, and after new tenants have moved in. Cops find blood; they find blood in
the car. They never find a body.
Drug-addicted brother refuses to talk to cops; they get nothing. Family supports him; they are sure he did not kill his sister.
MORALE: Women are expendable. Having a drug-addicted son is better than a happy
daughter in New York City. Daughter may as well have been born dead.