Omnimystery News is pleased to welcome Karen Dahood, whose first mystery in the Sophie and Sam series is Sophie Redesigned.
Today Karen writes about the aging of crime novel characters, or as she puts it, "New sleuths may wear support hose."
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Have you noticed that the detectives in mystery novels have been getting older?
Photo provided courtesy of
Karen Dahood
Take, for instance, Reginald Hill's Andy Dalziel, first introduced forty years ago. Most reviewers of Midnight Fugue (2009) don't mention Andy's aging, only that he's fatter than ever. However, Richard Marcus, writing for Blog Critic (Nov 28, 2009) gets it. The Superintendent has returned to work after a long hospitalization due to injuries in Death Comes for the Fat Man (2007). Marcus says:
Unfortunately, as anybody who has missed any amount of work could have told him, he discovers that in his absence not only hasn't the world ended because he wasn't there to keep it in one piece, his junior officers have begun to learn how to survive without him. Worse yet he begins to wonder if Pascoe's thought that he might have returned to work a little early might not be correct. What else would explain him rushing out of the house on a Sunday morning to ensure he's not late for his Monday morning conference?
[and]
For the first time in his life Andy Dalziel is actually slowed by self-doubts,
[and] …
Andy Dalziel [is] sitting in a cathedral contemplating his life …
Who at 70 could not love Andy? Who at 70 could not wish for their own cathedral?
Some famous fictional detectives were created to seem old whether or not they were in fact. Inspector Morse is one grumpy example. Sad to say, he had to die when the TV actor who played him passed away. It was smart to continue with his sidekick in the starring role, and now Lewis is growing more Morse-like. I met the author, Colin Dexter, when he gave a talk at St. Peter’s College, Oxford some years ago. I feel blessed to have had two kisses planted on my cheek in parting after the reception. I hope he’s getting rich.
Imagine my disappointment, then, in watching the Aurelio Zen series (first season, just imported from England). In the last few Michael Dibdin novels that I read, the Roman anti-hero is getting on in years, having suffered a great deal, finding it harder to climb around the hills, though still willing to bed women he loves. The author died at age 60 in 2007, and the last Zen novel was published posthumously. Masterpiece Mystery's new abomination turns me off, off, off. Besides, a layer of Italian dialect over British English is hard on the hearing aids.
Miss Marple, of course, is the first female elder sleuth anyone thinks of. There are others, such as Patricia Wentworth’s “Miss Silver,” renowned for unraveling crimes while she knit-stitches baby booties. These books are great fun but today we expect more psychological depth. Finally, Jane Marple is revealed to have had a life of her own in the latest television version.
In the United States, we now have a couple of newly minted oldtimers. I was attracted to Deb Baker's “Gertie Johnson” series especially because I lived in the “UP” (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) for seven years when I was a child. It is reassuring to know there are still lots of trees standing tall and close together, and that the snow continues to be feared. Gertie is a lot more colorful than the elderly people I recall. She is the mother of the Sheriff who always beats him to the punch.
In Florida (where my own elder sleuth resides) we have “Gladdy Gold.” Rita Lakin, a career publicist in Hollywood, has created an ongoing series of capers for a gaggle of occupants living in apartments at a retirement complex on Florida's East Coast. Gladdy and my Sophie have commonalities; both are retired librarians with crushes on cops. I swear, Ms. Lakin, I started drafting my books about 25 years before you published yours! Anyway, Sophie lives on the Gulf Coast, and she doesn’t gaggle.
Of the modern English, female amateur sleuths, I am fascinated by the peripatetic house-sitter in a series by Rebecca Tope. Thea Osborne is a loner, almost homeless, you might think. She’s also a widow. The crimes she comes across can be bizarre, and she’s not someone you might expect to know, only glimpse and wonder why she’s in your village. She’s not quite old enough to be an elder sleuth at 42. I’m hoping she’ll live to be 70 at least.
My favorite in recent years is “Hetty Wainthropp” from a BBC series, starring Patricia Routledge. The origins of this socially conscious, spirited problem-solver in contemporary northern England is a novel titled Missing Persons by David Cook, and the incidents were “inspired by his own mother's real-life experiences,” (Wikipedia). Hetty is a married matron “who has a knack for jumping to conclusions and solving crimes of varying bafflement which often are too minor to concern the police.” (again Wikipedia). But she does seek their advice.
My “Sophie George” is in Hetty’s realm. She is acutely aware of the stresses and strains of aging on her peers, but she does not shrink from the realities of a changing world. She enters a new profession at age 65, and develops a working relationship with a grumpy police detective somewhat like Morse. As their partnership strengthens, and they learn more about each other, they learn more about themselves. I don’t aim for happy endings. It’s the elusive answers that matter to serious fans of mystery fiction and, as well, to thoughtful people in their later years. For that reason, I call my books “not-quite-cozies.”
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Karen Dahood is a septuagenarian whose non-fiction writing career has included the arts and humanities and some health care. As she witnessed older friends and family members struggle to keep their dignity in a culture of ageism and denial, elder issues became more important to her. She now infuses these issues into the web of her mysteries. Karen Dahood’s website is MoxieCosmos.com.
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About Sophie Redesigned:
She knows she's smart, but she's bored. When Sophie meets "Sam," a pre-Internet police detective who depends on her professional skills at the Dorado Bay Public Library, she decides to retire and go freelance. He's reluctant to hire her as a consulting researcher until she beats him to the murder scene and knows the victim. They awkwardly proceed to solve the crime with opposing techniques, uncovering a decades-old killing corporation and a religious cult, all in the same dysfunctional family.
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BlackBerry and mobile phones.
Crime novels by Stuart Neville reviewed by 
