The Ethics of Murder

When I posted a blog about the murder on the grounds of Sandringham House, country estate of Queen Elizabeth, I commented that I wished the murder could have taken place during the reign of Edward VII so that I could have tied it in to the notorious Duke of Clarence.

Well, I got a comment that felt like a slap on the wrist. The commenter pointed out that there were grieving family members for this person and that I was being flippant about it. She was absolutely right, of course. One of the problems about being a mystery writer is that we become desensitized to murder. The corpse is a problem for us, a puzzle, a whodunit. We write a story around the body, and not about the body, and too often we forget that murder is a heinous act that tears apart so many lives.

When I think of my own more recent books I find that many of my murder victims were unpleasant people for whom we would not weep--who deserved to die, if you want to put it that way. Maybe this is my way of easing my conscience about the act of killing. When the victim has been an ordinary, likeable person I find that I do try to show how the death affects my sleuth. In the book A Royal Pain a lower class young man who works in a Communist bookshop is killed and Georgie visits his parents for more information about him, only to realize for the first time in her life what his death has done to his family.  And In Evan's Gate, which got me an Edgar nomination, the whole book is a study on what a missing child does to tear apart a family.

It was easier in the Evan books to study the ethics of killing and see things from the point of view of the victim and the villain. He was a down-to-earth local policeman and his cases often involved people he knew. M more recent Royal Spyness books are designed to be comedies. Not that I ever make light of the actual murder, but the social commentary around it is expected to elicit a chuckle or two. And so I kill off some truly obnoxious people. One does not weep when a disgusting womanizing army general from Bulgaria is killed.  In the Molly Murphy books the victim is often someone she doesn't personally know, or know well, as the murders stem from her detective business cases and from New York City life.

The problem is that we write from the point of view of the sleuth--at least I do, in the first person. And a detective can't get too emotionally involved in his or her murder cases. But I'll try to remember in future that it's not all about the puzzle, or the fast-paced plot, or the suspense of whodunit. It's about one person's death, and that it always leaves a hole in someone else's life and heart.

A royal Murder?

I expect you heard on the news today that a body had been discovered on the grounds of the Sandringham Estate, where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip are spending the holidays. It was a young woman and it has been established that she had been murdered.  Now the police are trying to link her to various cold cases, the most likely being a young Latvian woman who had vanished from nearby Kings Lyn a few months ago and had expressed fear for her life.

For someone like me who writes about royals and murder the wheels in my brain started spinning instantly to see if I could weave this into a future story. Too bad it wasn't back in the age of King Edward VII, whose oldest son, The Duke of Clarence was a ne'er do well, dissolute young buck who might well have dispatched of an inconvenient young woman  (see my take on his story in my book Royal Flush). He died under mysterious circumstances at Sandringham. However today's royals are all frightfully straight and honorable and are probably seriously miffed that someone chose their estate on which to dump a body and thus spoil their New Year's escape to the country.

Speaking of which, the queen went out riding on New Year's Day. Isn't she wonderful? Riding in her eighties? And the duke has recovered well from his heart surgery and he's over 90. They have both inherited Queen Victoria's tough genes.

In the meantime I'll be watching with interest to see if the police can identify the body and if there is any royal tie-in to the murder. If there isn't, well--I'll have to rely on my imagination to create a good scenario for a future plot. But right now I'm supposed to be starting a new Molly book. Can something interesting please happen in New York?

Will William be different?

Its royal gossip Monday and the first thing I saw on the news this morning was the engagement pictures of William and Kate Middleton. They look so happy that I'm hoping things will turn out differently for them than for Williams parents, and that William won't follow the age-old tradition of the heir to the throne keeping a mistress. Apparently that's one of the things that Charles said to Diana -- I refuse to be the first Prince of Wales, who doesn't have a mistress.  Not the sort of thing or wife wants to hear.
 Of course, in the old days, Royal marriages were business propositions, linking two nations , two economies.  Love did not come into it, although some royal couples became fond of each other.  So it was considered normal, but once the wife had done her duty and produced an heir, the husband could play elsewhere. Charles obviously followed that tradition, as did his great, great grandfather , King Edward VII and his great uncle, King Edward VIII.  Although not his great grandfather, George V, who was devoted to Queen Mary. This in a way was amazing as Mary was originally engaged to George's older brother, the Duke of Clarence, who died at the age of 28. Mary was then passed along to the next in line, who was George and they lived happily ever after.

I'm sure she was much happier married to George, who was a stable and simple chap, rather than his wicked and wayward older brother. In fact the whole country heaved a sigh of relief when he died, supposedly of influenza. Rumours flew for many years about whether he had died of natural causes or whether he had been helped to his death, leaving the way to the throne open for the more sensible George. I play with this scandal in my book  Royal Flush.

Let us hope that William and Kate can live without any scandals, although scandals do provide such good material for books, don't they?