Decency and Crime Fiction by Rev Glynn Cardy

Some 14 years ago, propped up in a hospital bed with some time on my hands, I was reintroduced to Crime Fiction. People would loan me their favourites from their libraries to read. I was lent all sorts. Enough to keep me distracted from the unpleasantries of hospital life.

I discovered a lot of people read Crime Fiction, though I suspect for different reasons.

For some, and this ‘some’ can include me at times, there is the attraction of an ordered universe. This is where bad guy hurts innocents, then hero finds bad guy, overcomes the odds, and hurts him. Bad deeds and bad people get dealt to.

Lee Childs, with his hero Jack Reacher, has made a fortune out of this. Justice is when the bad get punished, even if Jack murders them. It is not surprising that Childs’ books sell well in America where this shallow understanding of justice seems to dominate.

My guess is that the appeal of an ordered universe is particularly attractive in times of upheaval and uncertainty, when the old markers about who and what to trust are changing or gone. Part of coping with the stress of it all is to relax into a fictional world where good and bad are plainly and unambiguously portrayed.

Likewise, fundamentalist religions can offer a similar plain and unambiguous. Only their leaders mistake fiction for fact, and then try to convince the rest of us.

I think finding relaxing ways to take time out and away from the stress of change and uncertainty is essential for survival in our modern world. Whether it be sports, singing, movies, long walks, playing with animals, or reading Crime Fiction.

For some readers of Crime Fiction, also including me at times, there is the attraction of a puzzle. This is where the villain is unknown and the hero, and his or her team, must follow the clues. Which they do, and the villain is caught. Well, nearly always. Unless its Moriarty.

While there is an ordered universe here too, the puzzle is often complex, and the personalities of the characters likewise. The appeal is more than an old Agatha Christie whodunnit. The appeal is the personalities. Particularly the hero(es), their team, and other key characters when they reappear in novel after novel.

Then, to add to the puzzle and the personalities, is the cultural context. The Crime novel can take you to the Oxford Bar and down the wynds and closes of John Rebus’ Edinburgh. It can take you to

Montreal and the Quebec countryside of Armand Gamache. Or post-WWI London and the Kentish countryside of Maisey Dobbs. Or to Venice.

I am currently reading the latest Donna Leon novel with her hero, Guido Brunetti, set as with her other 32 novels, in Venice. If you tire of the drunken, relationally dysfunctional, but brilliant crime-solver, like a John Rebus. If you tire of insubstantial and somewhat predictable heroes, like what David Baldacci (and of course Lee Childs) gives us. Then try Brunetti. Lots of humour. Especially in how Brunetti and his colleagues navigate their way around a buffoon of a boss and Italian regulations. Lots of nuance. Lots of delight in the grand mosaic of intersecting lives. Lots of coffee. Oh, and a little bit of crime solving.

Yet what I think Donna Leon is really offering us (like Louise Penny does with Gamache) is a decent human being. Someone who listens. Someone who values curiosity, reading, and food. Someone who gets it wrong sometimes, even badly wrong. Someone who has a lovely and long relationship with his spouse and children. Someone who values people, sees the best in them, and tries to bring out the best in them. Someone who sees the good in both the ones suffering and the ones causing the suffering.

I find it intriguing that Crime novelists, not just the Leons and Pennys, are trying to help us define what is decent. To help us find our way to decent relationships and decent community.

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