The saddest thing

by Rick Blechta

Too often we crime writers get caught up in our own plots and either gloss over the tragedy of sudden death or decide the pressure of keeping our story zipping along require us to just move on and not acknowledge that the death of the victim has will most likely create a mountain of heartache for those who cared and have been left behind to deal with it. I know I’m more than guilty of doing this.

On the other hand, paying attention to documenting the emotional fallout that always follows a murder would become emotionally crushing after awhile. I’m certain it would turn readers off. To be perfectly cold about it, in many cases it does slow down the story. We often use the dodge that “the killer must be found!” (Whether we’re consciously using this as a dodge or just a plot convenience is a moot point.) If we did stop and weave the sadness into our plots as a matter of course, our books would become overly depressing. Readers like to be told a good story full of twists and turns, populated by interesting characters, and at the end, all would be explained and the miscreants brought to justice. Real life is so depressing these days that who wants more to be piled on when reading for enjoyment?

Yes, sensitive writers do try to work something of this personal tragedy into their plots where they can, and that can be a good thing, but by and large it’s glossed over.

Now here’s where real life comes into our discussion. I’m sure we could all come up with multiple instances of tragic death that we’ve heard about in only the past week. But as uncomfortable and depressing as it is, maybe there’s something that could be used as a quick snapshot to bring the suffering that is visited on those left behind when a loved one dies.

I have a story I’m going to share and it happened here in Toronto last week. It is heartbreaking, but there is also a sliver of something that is uplifting nonetheless.

Two victims of the shooting down of the Ukrainian flight out of Tehran on January 8th, mother and daughter lived just north of Toronto. Reera Esmaelion, 9 years old had tickets to  a performance of Hansel and Gretel with her mom this past weekend. It would have been her first opera experience and as a budding pianist, she was very excited about it. In the aftermath her father Hamed asked that their seats be left empty to honour them. Here is the result of that request posted on the Canadian Opera’s Facebook page:

“Reera Esmaeilion and her mother, Parisa, had been excited to join us this weekend for our final Opera For Young Audiences performance of HANSEL & GRETEL. We were heartbroken this week to learn of their passing in the crash of Flight PS752 on January 8, 2020 and kept their seats empty yesterday afternoon, in honour of their memory and shared love of music. Our thoughts and hearts remain with Hamed Esmaelion, who kindly shared his family photos, and all those touched by this tragedy.”

Absolutely heartbreaking, yes. But perhaps a similar scene, a mere paragraph or two, would help hammer home the grievous story beyond the recounting of a violent death in a crime fiction story and allow a bit more humanity to shine through rather than racing on to tell our story and glossing over something so important. We owe it to our “victims.”

Considering the aftermath of murder

by Rick Blechta

My post this week sort of riffs off Vicki’s post from yesterday.

Every crime writing author has to face how they deal with violence and death, because let’s face it, that’s what our books are about at their roots. I won’t go over the same ground that Vicki has already covered so ably about her personal choices as a writer when her stories face and describe violent death.

I want to cover how we writers deal with something further down the line: the effects of violence and death on those unfortunate souls who are the “collateral damage” when someone’s life is taken: the families, the loved ones, friends, colleagues. Those effects can be horrible and long-lasting as well as wide-ranging. They can completely ruin lives. It takes a very strong person to put it all behind them and carry on.

In a previous post here on Type M, I touched on this. It must be pretty far back because I can’t find it in the past 4 years of our little blog. (Sorry!)

I have some personal experience with this. A high school friend had to face something beyond comprehension when his son was tried and convicted because of his involvement in the brutal death of a woman in her home. I’m not going to go into any detail about the actual crime, but instead how the son’s actions affected his parents.

Their support for him was unwavering, and since this was a crime that garnered national attention, the media presence was intense. All they said (stripped down) was that they loved their son and felt horrible about the death of the woman. I cannot imagine having to run the gauntlet of reporters shouting questions at them as they arrived at and left the courthouse every day of the trial. Knowing my friend (a kind and gentle person), it must have been unbearable. (I’m sure equally so for his wife.) I was so heartbroken for them. They didn’t deserve any of this.

A lot of crime novels can get pretty violent descriptively. These are ones I usually put down. I’m not squeamish, but I just feel that violence can be done in the setting of a novel without choreographing it exhaustively. It’s the difference between seeing the “results” of an attack as Hitchcock did in Psycho or actually watching each knife stroke in full gory detail — as it most likely would be shot in today’s world. Which is better? Which is stronger? I think you know where my choice lies. Knowing about murder is bad enough. My imagination is very good and I don’t appreciate having my face rubbed in it.

But we writers don’t often delve into the aftermath of violence such as I described in my personal example above, primarily because our plots are focused on the catching of the criminal(s) responsible, but we should at least think about the personal aftermath as we work through our plots, even if we don’t describe it. It can only make our other writing stronger.

Deliberate murder is an ultra-violent act, and we should be very respectful in our treatment of it. It’s not a plaything for us to use in a careless or frivolous manner. It is a tool, certainly, that must be used for us to tell our story, but we need to be mindful of its potency as a depraved human act.

We owe that to the dead — but also to those unfortunate souls left behind, sucked into a vortex not of their own making.