Hope and justice for the real world

 It's been a tumultuous week in the world. This past weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, but many of us have been struggling with the appalling news out of the Middle East. On top of the wars in Sudan, Armenia, and the earthquake in Afghanistan. Before that the flood in Libya and the earthquake in Morocco. Thousands of people have been killed and millions more injured, homeless, and suffering.

It's difficult to feel like celebrating and being thankful when so much of the world lives in pain and fear.  Difficult too to put my mind toward editing my latest novel. As I sit in my cosy house in my safe, peaceful neighbourhood, with my full fridge and my warm bed, typing away on my modern MacBook and checking my facts on my fast, reliable wifi, it feels so trivial and so privileged. I acknowledge that I have much to be grateful for, but I do so with a twinge of guilt. 

The weekend's horrors put me in a very dark place, and as my novel contains a lot of darkness (it's a mystery, after all), I have channelled my mood into the feelings of the characters and the atmosphere of the story. But I will have to reread it all once I have regained my sense of balance. Whether they are cosies or nail-biting thrillers, mysteries endure because they are about finding justice and righting wrongs. In difficult times, they provide a sense of satisfaction that some semblance of justice has been restored to the world, at least in the book.

My stories are often dark and emotionally hard-hitting, and I want readers to be touched and moved by the struggles I explore. I believe in the power of compassion and empathy. But I don't want them to slit their throats at the end; instead. I want to give readers a sense of hope, even if it's only a faint flicker.  

I don't feel that sense of hope in the world right now. As Donis said, we need some great leaders capable of rising above their self-interest and their love of power long enough to lead us out of this morass. On climate change, on regional wars, and on universal human rights. We may have to start small, but we have to start somewhere.

 Meanwhile, I will continue to try to infuse a little hope, compassion, and justice into the fiction I create. Throwing up my hands is not an option. 

Motive, justice, and the many shades of gray

 Douglas's Monday post resonated with me, as do many of the varied posts on this blog. Having a collection of authors from different countries and writing in different sub-genres (all while murdering people) makes for an entertaining and thought-provoking commentary on the creative life.

Douglas talked about the compulsion to write. Even if we won the lottery and could travel the world or retire to a tropical paradise, the writing muse would eventually find us. Possibly thinking up a story about death on a cruise ship or transcontinental train. Ideas come to us from everywhere, all the time. Most will be discarded, and others will find themselves as small scenes or subplots in our larger novel. 

But some, like the poignant story that John Corrigan described in last week's blog, Kernel of Truth, are made to form the cornerstone of a powerful story. So many stories could be told from that short, emotion-laden snippet. So much human tragedy, so much good, evil, and moral ambiguity to be explored. And that is what good storytelling does at its heart. It mines the powerful depths of human experience and pushes those insights to their limit. There would be heroes and villains in that story, often in the same person. There would be cruelty, despair, desperation, frustration, and outrage. There would also be moments to rise above that, to explore compassion, hope, and redemption.

Many crime novels make short shrift of the motive behind the murder in their story. It might be drugs, turf wars, intimidation, or impatience to get at Great Aunt Mabel's millions. But to me, the motive is the core of the story, and the most powerful motives are the ones we can relate to because they stem from primal human emotion. Jealousy, revenge, fear, despair. These are universal whether you live in a wealthy enclave or a tent city. I want readers to care about what happened, to care about the victim, the killer, and those who are left behind. Even the sleuth. I want them to question the moral ambiguities and to walk in the characters' shoes. Ask themselves "What would I do?"

Most crime novels also aim to provide justice of some sort, to bring order back to the world disrupted by the murder. There is satisfaction in seeing justice served at least in fiction, when it sometimes fails us in real life. I am not a fan of "tie it all up neatly in a bow". Life is messy and complex. Most of the time, there are no easy answers. In my books, I near the climax of the first draft without a clear sense of how it will end, or even of whodunit although the why has slowly emerged from the mess and complexity. And I sometimes waver over the "what is justice" question for some time before finding a resolution that reflects justice of a sort, or the best possible justice under the circumstances.

And so I have already started thinking about John's story of the eight-year-old boy and wondering what that justice would be, and what the path towards that outcome would look like. 

A question of just desserts

Aline has written a terrific and thought-provoking post on the question of the death penalty in detective fiction. In jurisdictions that still have it, or in historical fiction, crime writers have to deal not only with the guilt and capture of their fictional villain, but also with the possibility that the actions of their clever detective will lead to the death of that person. Moral and emotional questions come into play that can add depth and power to the story.

In most detective novels there is an implicit contract between writer and reader that justice will be served, which usually means that the "bad guy" will get their "just desserts". You can leave several loose ends at the end of your novel, but if you don't reveal who the killer is and give at least a hint that they will face justice, the reader is likely to throw the book at the wall.

But what constitutes just desserts? And indeed, what constitutes a bad guy?

Those of us who love to explore the grey area between right and wrong, between good and evil, often play with these two questions. Sometimes the victim is the truly bad guy, and the villain is the one righting a wrong, albeit in vigilante fashion. One of my books dealt with this moral ambiguity, and once my detective figured out who the killer was, he (and I) had to decide what would serve justice; compounding the suffering or letting the person walk away. Interestingly, I never had a single reader complain about the way I chose to solve that dilemma.

For me, the most complex villains are ordinary people pushed to desperate ends or thrown into extraordinary situations for which they know no other answers. Ending the novel in a way that acknowledges that desperation but also serves the course of justice is part of the challenge. That's why serial killers and psychopaths don't interest me. Unless you want to argue they are victims of their faulty biology, there is little moral ambiguity there. Little humanity to sink our teeth into.

Another question raised by Aline's post, and by the thoughtful comments on it, is whether the detective (and writer) need concern themselves with what happens after the killer is caught. Of course some novels deal expressly with the trial process, but in the classic whodunit, the story usually ends when the killer's identity and motive are revealed. Sometimes the writer may hint at what comes next, but most is left to the reader's imagination. Is that enough? Does the reader need to know the police have sufficient hard evidence for a conviction in court? Or conversely, that although the detective knows the killer is guilty, there is not enough evidence to go to trial? How much certainty do readers need to feel satisfied?

I rarely worry about what will happen in court., but I do have the luxury of writing contemporary stories set in jurisdictions without the death penalty. Having that hanging over my head would add a whole other level of moral complexity to my detective's choices. But justice can be served in many other ways besides in a court of law. Life itself can provide its own punishments. I usually end my novels not with a certainty but with a hint of what is likely to happen to the villain, either in court or on the streets of their life to come. I make a moral decision on what punishment I think fits the crime, and I hope my readers share my sense of satisfaction. Those who want the definitive answer of the hangman's noose are unlikely to enjoy my novels anyway.

I will end these rambling philosophical musings with the story of two horrific murderers recently sentenced in Canada. Both men pleaded guilty. One killer was a young man who shot six people (and wounded numerous others) during prayers at a mosque. In Canada, a life sentence means twenty-five years before the possibility of parole. Automatic life sentences can be served concurrently or consecutively, but in this case the judge chose the rather odd middle ground of 40 years before the opportunity to apply for parole. Both sides were outraged; the Muslim community who felt the sentence was an affront to all the lost and traumatized lives, and the killer's family, who felt it took away all hope. Two very different views of "just desserts".

In the other case, a 67-year-old serial killer of eight (at least) men who could have served 200 years in prison was given concurrent life sentences, meaning he will serve 25 years and be eligible for parole at age 91. Once again, outrage in the community. Although in this case most wanted him to rot and die in prison, some felt that the sentence almost certainly assured that he would do just that.

So equally tricky for the writer trying to see that justice is done, is that justice is partly in the eye of the beholder. Thoughts?